Nostalgia
by Volker Weber
Stefan has a brand new Sun Fire T2000 server. In order to set it up, you need a serial terminal. Unfortunately you cannot connect via a DB25 or DB9, so you need an adapter to translate from RJ45 on the Sun box to a serial cable as used by a PC. I know it makes sense to have RJ45 in data centers and use the ubiquitous patch cable to connect the box to a terminal server that you can telnet into.
Serial terminals however remind me of times long gone:
Flashback to 1978. This, young apprentice, is a DEC VT100. Not a VT100 terminal emulation, but the real thing. It was my upgrade from IBM punch cards.
Yes, I have been around for a while. :-)
Comments
1978 was the year, when I bought my first "PC" then known as a Microcomputer. This TRS-80 Model I is still stored somewhere in a section called "Computer Museum" together with a handful of other machines from the last 28 years ..... :-)
I am not exactly sure whether I was already able to say "Mommy" in 1978. But I am sure if I had been able to, I would have wanted a PC (ahem, Microcomputer) as well. That came about ten years later then.
And yes, that's right, I haven't consciously experienced the pre-Microsoft era. Sorry for that!
My earliest computing memory is conducting a 'heap sort' for my father on the MAFF computer some time around 1968 - ie. I dropped a tray of carefully placed punched cards while carrying it to the computer room. Okay, it's an old joke but it really happened, and has evidently scarred me for life.
I took the somewhat classical career path:
- Commodore C-64 in 1983 - with brown function keys IYKWIM ;-)
- Amiga 2000 (4096 colors in HAM, wow!)
and then... inevitably(?) the PC in the middle of the nineties. Since then I've started fighting really hard not to become a mere 'user' - as opposed to the curious geek I once was...
I started with a ZX Spectrum somewhere in 1982 or 1983, then with a paltry 16 Kb (that's KILOBYTE) RAM, and upgraded later with an external RAMpack to 48Kb. Later on a Commodore 128 and then the Amiga and very much later, a setback to the PC when Amiga folded.
Those were the days. I remember I created my first Sinclair Basic program of a circle getting smaller and smaller, and found out I had created a space tunnel on my Black and White telly. Wowie !
And later on, buying magazines and typing in page after page after page of basic commands to get a game running...
Somehow it was fun, but I wouldn't want to do it again...
VT100? That's nothing. I started with VT52s. Remember them?
Oh, and I had a DEC PDP-8. They booted off a row of switches on the front panel and read their entire OS from punch tape.
What's a terminal? Punch cards, man.
I had a horrible experience getting a couple X2100's off the ground a month or so ago - they start up on console, but then switch to serial only. There's an option in the BIOS to even turn off the serial output of the BIOS, which can get very confusing. Then to make it output to console as well you have to get inside and run an eeprom command. Lovely. At that point I just wanted to throw debian on the damn box.
My "Main box" History:
1983-1986 - C= 64
1987-1991 - Amiga 500
1991-1994 - Amiga 3000T
1994-1999 - Powerbook 540
1999-2000 - Misc Pentium Trash
2000--now - Micron 1Ghz Athlon box
2003--now - Powerbook 12"
2005--now - Mac mini
2006--now - Mac mini Intel
