I chuckled over the latest Bastard Operator from Hell today. Now being middle aged, I probably fall into that category of where I tend to regurgitate stories of what Telecoms Technology was like when I was a lad, Grandpa Simpson style.

Having worked on the DEC PDP/11 mini-computer systems for a while, I was very bemused to come across a PDP/10 being used for research in a psychiatric hospital. The systems were worlds apart technology-wise but the common thread could be seen. Similarly, anyone familiar with a modern day Pentium PC would smile if they came across an original IBM PC. They seem so primitive now but the building blocks are the same and they felt pretty cool & sharp at the time.

It seems worlds apart from when I first started programming and had to write the code onto sheets for it to be punched on cards and compiled out of hours, each debugging iteration being in 24 hour increments. (Look at the compile dump, work out what went wrong, tweak the software code, batch schedule the next compile out of hours, wait for tomorrow’s printout and repeat in ever diminishing circles…)

Another culture shock was in seeing 10″ floppy drives in the Siemens lighting control at the Royal Opera House. They looked absolutely huge and could store a grand total of about 150k. At the time, 8″ ones were old hat, 5.25″ the common one and 3.5″ drives starting to take off (even the strange 3″ ones in the Amstrad PCW8256)

When I was at college, I remember my mate Wally sending me a computer punch card through the post with a cryptic message on. In retaliation, I etched my reply onto a copper coated printed circuit board and stuck a stamp on! (I can’t remember if it was a double sided board or not though). Ironically, in my next placement, I could have sent him paper tape messages and he probably had access to the technology to read them.