On 01/01/2020 16.27, James Knott wrote:
On 2020-01-01 10:16 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
I learned pascal on a VAX at University. But we only saw a terminal. The machine was in a closed room with a glass window.
The machine was so overloaded with students that it could take half a minute to respond to a keypress on the editor, when everybody was compiling their exercises. So I finally decided that I would buy a PC, an Amstrad 1512 DD, to practice pascal. I found a friendly teacher that copied my source code from my floppy to the vax using, I think, kermit. Then I had to change Turbo Pascal constructs to Pascal constructs.
I worked in that "closed room with a glass window". When my company built the computer room, they installed windows all along a hall that ran along side, so they could show off the systems to visitors.
I worked on a variety of systems over the years, starting with Data General Nova 800 & PDP-8i. I later moved onto Data General Eclipse, DEC PDP-11, Collins 8500C, VAX 11/780, various Pr1me models and others. In all that, there was also one, count 'em, one XT clone! ;-)
I took Electrical Engineering at night school, where we used an IBM mainframe, but I did my FORTRAN homework on a VAX at work. I could dial in from home to do it.
By the time I got to IBM, I was doing software support on ThinkPads and desktop systems.
:-) -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.1 x86_64 at Telcontar)