School excursion

chim0 · **Posted:** Wed Feb 18, 2009 6:12 am

jbaconnh wrote:

Technology when I was in HS was...
- Programming on a VAX from a vt52 terminal using RSTS-E
- Praying you didn't drop your card stack on the way to the reader across the room
- Soldering together your first personal computer (Sinclair zx80), so you didn't have to share the Tandy TRS-80 Mod II with your dad.
- Perfboarding an agc onto your cassette recorder to use as data storage

And in college using a dremel to cut a hole in my CoCo's case so I could piggyback memory chips to hit 64k, then building a little air scoop out of friendly plastic to cover them - looked kinda like the hood scoop on my 78 Camaro.

dude, you're from the stone age! lol

i dont understand a word of what you're saying but it sounds like fun

joshd963 · **Posted:** Wed Feb 18, 2009 8:42 am

jbaconnh wrote:

Technology when I was in HS was...
- Programming on a VAX from a vt52 terminal using RSTS-E
- Praying you didn't drop your card stack on the way to the reader across the room
- Soldering together your first personal computer (Sinclair zx80), so you didn't have to share the Tandy TRS-80 Mod II with your dad.
- Perfboarding an agc onto your cassette recorder to use as data storage

And in college using a dremel to cut a hole in my CoCo's case so I could piggyback memory chips to hit 64k, then building a little air scoop out of friendly plastic to cover them - looked kinda like the hood scoop on my 78 Camaro.

jesus christ ive heard my dad talk about that kinda stuff :mrgreen:

darkadam · **Posted:** Wed Feb 18, 2009 12:17 pm

Lol ! I didn't even hear my dad talk about this kind of stuff ! He's 50+ btw :P

jbaconnh · **Joined:** Tue Jan 20, 2009 5:43 am **Posts:** 48

Geez, I'm only 42.

VAX was a series of mainframes developed by DEC (Digital Equipment Corp), at one time a competitor to IBM. They were fairly popular in the 70's and early 80's. Their offices and factories were pretty much scattered around the northeastern US. If there was an office or factory in your town chances are your HS computer department had their equipment. The vt52 was a dumb terminal (replaced by the telnet application). Because 8" floppies and streaming tape was expensive, students ended up using much older technology like punch cards.

The sinclair zx81 was one of the first affordable home computers. In the early 80's it was available as a kit for $99. Use the Zilog z80 processor and had 1k of ram. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_ZX81 I think I still have an unassembled kit sitting around somewhere (yes I am a packrat).

Koitenshin · **Joined:** Mon Jan 26, 2009 1:09 am **Posts:** 292

jbaconnh wrote:

students ended up using much older technology like punch cards

Did someone say Fortran? You're all lucky. the only excursion I've ever had at my school was to go outside when I "accidentally" set the Chemistry lab on fire. The teacher didn't believe me when I told him two compounds mixed together would catch fire and burn the blue flame. (The hottest kind of flame you can get)

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