History of Computing exam question

From: Lance Costanzo <lance_at_costanzo.net>
Date: Fri Nov 30 20:53:03 2001

At 12:08 PM 11/30/01 -0600, you wrote:
>I would add: HP2000 timeshare system..widely used, often provided the
>first exposure to computers that got many of us started in the field.

My first intro to "real" computers:
IBM's ITF (interactive terminal facility) timeshare system that
ran on the 360/370 mainframes.
Not widely used (I heard it was 10 installations worldwide),
but must have been a huge development effort on the part of IBM.
A scaled down locked down (but I did figure out how to crash it) TSO with
Basic and PL/I programming langs.
Changed my life, possibly for the worse, 25+ years ago. Hmm...

Others I'd put on the list from personal experience:
IBM/360
Early HP3000 (series I,II,III)
PDP-11
Apple II
IBM PC 5150
Received on Fri Nov 30 2001 - 20:53:03 GMT