I'm 49.
Started at age 15 by learning to program an Olivetti Programma 101 -
http://www.science.uva.nl/faculteit/museum/Programma101.html for those
who care.
Shortly there after I started learning about "Gotran" and got to run a
couple of programs on a IBM1620 at Occidental College in Pasadena.
Shortly there-I started learning Watfor, and got access to the IBM370 at
USC. You could walk in off the street with a deck and get 15 seconds of
execution time for nothing. There were a few other high-school students
doing the same thing I imagine. Anyway - I took a Fortran class trough
Glendale Community College after my Senior year in high-school and
learned Fortran, then Cobol on a Burroughs B2500 that Glendale Unified
had.
Next the Junior College got a Nova 2/10 (I think..) and I became one of
the two computer operators. Learned Basic and ws the lab assistant for
that. It ran a DOS by Ball if I recall correctly. It had a card reader
that kept blowing up ;-) and 4 ASR-28s that people ran Basic on when it
wasn't trying to run Fortran.
The other computer lab assistant got an Altair (had serial number 3 of
8K Basic..) and we both drove to New Mexico for the very first personal
computer convention in 75.
Went on to four year college and majored in EE. Saw a Bendix G15 there
(didn't use it), and PDP-11's running RSTS. Did my senior project on an
LSI-11 in Fortran.
Went to work for Burroughs as a computer designer on the B1000 series -
Did that for 3 years.
Later worked at Cydrome on the Cydra-5 (a mini-supercomputer ) around 85.
Worked at National semi in the 32K architecture group also for about 9
months before went into consulting.
I would love to help resurrect a B1965 or a Cydra.
Steve Wilson
Received on Mon Feb 28 2005 - 22:39:09 GMT