I would like to clear something up.

[k6ccc]

PDP1104 used for an remote site alarm system.  If we had to do a completely cold start, we had to open a book with around 30 lines of printed data.  For each line, there was (I think) 8 binary bits for address and 8 binary bits of data.  The computer had a row of toggle switches for the address and data and then one for load.  You loaded in the around 30 bytes and pressed run.  That was the bootstrap.  After that it would load the program and remote alarm configuration from paper tape using a model 35 teletype machine.  That got retired in the mid 1980s.

 

[ItsMeBobO]

8 hours ago, tlogan said:

whatever year it was under Reagan that the Air Traffic Controllers went on strike and got fired

That was 81.  My cousin Gustave was controller LaGuardia and was fired.   ~1984 I went to his graduation from chiropractic school in Brooklyn. 

[Orville]

Another cassette user here too on my first computer, a TRS-80 Model 1.  I, got my first computer when RS released the old Model I TRS-80 right after I got out of High School, 4K Ram, monochrome {black and white monitor, 4K RAM {I ran out of Ram with the first program I ever wrote for it!  And that was on the same day I got it home and set it up! LOL}, No Hard Drives or Floppy diskettes were available, paid 5++ times more for it than any home system out here today.  Had to take out a loan to buy it, glad those days are gone!   Then the expansion interface came out for it, then floppy drives, 5-1/4" diskettes, and upgradable to 16K, finally 5 MB Hard drives became available and went up from there.  Then a TRS-80 Color Computer, back to cassette again, UGH, but also used game cartridges, which was pretty awesome at the time., then the others started coming out from them like the Model 2 and Model 3 systems, which were big improvements.  I actually started operating a BBS system on a Model 3 TRS-80 and moved up to an IBM Clone later on with more options and power, a whole whopping 64K ram and color monitor, had a lot of ANSI games on my BBS as well for users to play, also had Fido-Net messaging system and another messaging system that came out a few years later down the road, can't recall the name of that one.  Last BBS Software I ran was called TriBBS, then quite a few years running that and the internet finally went public and the BBS systems basically fell by the wayside.  Of course, I started with a 300baud modem, then 2400, and finally ended on that note with a 56K modem.  And I do remember when AOL was the only BBS type option available too, and expensive too at the time.

And when I took programming classes in high school, it was a punch card reader connected to a calculator, hanging chads' anyone?  If you didn't punch the card correctly and left any of those, it could sure mess up the results of your program, or it wouldn't run at all.  Using that stylus to punch holes in 30-50+ cards was just, oh, so much fun!  Wasn't it?

BTW: The name of my BBS was "Cematary BBS", might have been spelled "Cemetary" or "Cematery", yes I know Cemetery was misspelled, that was done on purpose  That was a LONG time back, mid to late 80's through the early to possible mid 90's, so I'm not exactly sure how I spelled it back then.  But it was one of those. LOL  And the SysOp's name I used was always M.T. Tombs.

And the longest distance call I ever received to my BBS was from somewhere down under, Australia. Chatted live with this guy for over 2 hours!

 

[tlogan]

1 hour ago, Orville said:

And when I took programming classes in high school, it was a punch card reader connected to a calculator, hanging chads' anyone?  If you didn't punch the card correctly and left any of those, it could sure mess up the results of your program, or it wouldn't run at all. 

When I was learning to program at the Computer Learning Center, (remember that?) we started on punch cards. ONE of the card machines had ONE character that didn't punch what you typed. It PRINTED what you typed so that it read right, but it didn't PUNCH the letter you typed. You had to find that out the hard way. You generally got one shot per day to run your program and the first time you used that machine it could take all day to figure out why your program didn't run the night before. You had to check every printed line and punch card against your hand written coding sheet. Once you got past the first couple of weeks, you could submit your sheets to the key punch operators and have them do it (again, lucky to get the card deck back the next day) but they were prone to typing errors too.