Re: Old farts and new Linux

From: Guy Fraser (guy_at_incentre.net)
Date: 05/06/04

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    Date: Thu, 06 May 2004 14:55:13 -0600
To: For users of Fedora Core releases <fedora-list@redhat.com>

    Jeff Lasman wrote:

    >Did you ever meet Art Schawlow? He worked at Bell Labs from '51 through
    >'61, but I know he was back a lot in later years.
    >
    >Art was (according to the Nobel committee, anyway) inventor of the
    >Laser, and he was an active proponent of using Microcomputers; trying
    >to get the TRS-80 Model 1 into Stanford University to replace their
    >Wang word processors.
    >
    >
    Oh ya, that brings back some memories.
    After graduating from Electronics, I almost got a job working for
    Wang but ended up working on Micom's for a real pr**k {pardon the pun}.

    At 38 I'm practically a newbie compared to many of the people
    contributing to this tread. I made my first $40 programming the Truancy
    and Achievement application in BASIC for my High School when I was 15.

    Since then I have worked on platforms and programing languages,
    including PostScript. Yes for those of you who didn't know PostScript
    is a programing language with stack based {reverse polish notation}
    math functions. One of the programs was used for displaying mathematical
    functions, it was easier to do in PostScript than anything else I had
    access to. I never did learn COBOL or FORTRAN, but used to teach JDL and
    similar things to Banking Systems Operators in Bermuda, used to process
    print jobs for Xerox Centralized Printing Systems. These were great big
    laser printers that pushed cut sheet paper at up to and over 120 pages
    per minute, while merging graphics, forms and data from either 9 track
    tape or from HIP {Host Interface Processor} connections to IBM
    mainframes. While working in Bermuda I also maintained Sun Boxes that
    accepted jobs from a DEC mainframe using LAT and RIPed the PDL jobs
    to InterPress and sent them through XNS to Xerox Centralized Printers
    over 10B5. I wrote a few programs that converted HPGL, PCL and XES to
    InterPress, XES and eventually PostScript as well as converters for
    EBCIDIC to or from ASCII translation that allowed Mac's and PC's to
    submit jobs to the Sun boxes using LPR.

    Then color laser printers came out and I got tired of being tormented
    by people complaining that the blue on there word document did not look
    the same on the printed page, as well a being treated like a slave in Bermuda {guest workers were not covered by labor laws}, so moved back to
    Canada. And have been working for ISP's ever since. When I started, all
    the workstations were Mac's and the servers were all Proprietary UNIX
    variants, in 1995 I started moving some services to linux, and eventually
    all our servers. After the first signs of trouble with RH 8.0, we moved
    all our servers to FreeBSD. I still use a linux workstation at work
    running FC1 and have an RHL 9 machine at home {which I hope to move to
    FC2 soon}.

    I recently started to toy with robotics, and quickly remembered what the
    old days were like. Using controller boards with a 2048 bytes of ram,
    and programming in assembly was not as romantic as I remembered it to be.
    :-) 

    -- 
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