Do You Remember.....................

[Deleted member 126251]

Abacus’s

I learned to use one - very logical bit of kit.

 

[BTB 500]

My mother (in the 60s) was Managing Director od a company that used these machines. The "comptometer" was the forerunner of the electronic calculator and they were eventually put out of business by the advent of the PC. IIRC they used all 10 digits while pushing buttons repeatedly to do calculations.

I remember seeing some of those around when I started in commercial IT ('70s). But these were the weapon of choice in the business by then:



I worked on a sales ledger system and was sent to work as a manual ledger clerk in a regional depot for a week, which was an eye-opening experience. The printed output from these machines was stapled to forms as proof of calculations, and was considered 100% reliable as they were still basically mechanical. However one enterprising chap managed to commit fraud for some time by winding the paper roll forward, entering an extra amount, then winding it back again to print the total (which now didn't match the numbers listed above it). This was used to make inflated payments to a 'tame' supplier.

 

[BTB 500]

I remember The Lotus Suite being on 27 3.5" floppies

I remember installing Lotus 1-2-3 on an original IBM PC with twin 5.25" floppy drives and no hard drive!

 

[BTB 500]

Using a computer without a mouse?

Never mind mice, I remember using paper tape (for large commercial systems). I was involved in converting a factory payroll from paper tape to 'state of the art' punch cards I still have a tape hand punch somewhere

 

[Deleted member 65149]

Might have been mentioned before, 47 pages, anybody remember or used a Facit machine??
Not one of the more modern electric ones but an original manual version.View attachment 94913

I can remember using one in my dad’s London accountancy office back in the mid 50s when I went there for a day to get out of my mum’s hair. I thought it was brilliant winding the handle and seeing all the numbers change.

 

[Deleted member 65149]

Ditto mostly telephone poles when I was a kid. Mother would get really annoyed as it destroyed a school shirt.

I was in Sea Scouts (on a dam ) and Scouting had a massive place on one of the countries biggest dams. We'd go for camps ans would build & reapir jetties, outbuildings etc - all creosoted. Split pole (ranch style) fencing was also popular around homes in those days. Horrible stuff.

I was in the Sea Cadets, I’ve no idea what the difference is. Perhaps we were a bit older and didn’t have any creosote on our Lee-Enfield 303s that we had to race up and down hills with.

 

[Deleted member 65149]

Never mind mice, I remember using paper tape (for large commercial systems). I was involved in converting a factory payroll from paper tape to 'state of the art' punch cards I still have a tape hand punch somewhere

I remember paper tape as part of my introduction to computing in the early 70s. I had to write equipment instructions in FORTRAN, manually download the code to paper tape, then put the tape into a transmitter to send it across the pond to be uploaded onto a mainframe (there were no PCs then) in the States. That’s a lot of places where errors could occur, and did. The need to get it right first time is what made me so OCD about everything.

 

[MercedesDriver]

Seeing some of the "IT" equipment you guys are remembering is a bit of a learning curve for me TBH as I never saw those before.
My first was Atari 130XE like this one.

The problem I had (my parents actually) was that the games and the software were VERY expensive and hard to find while all my friends had Commodore 64 or Sinclair Spectrum 48 and had much more fun.
The only advantage I could find was that my Atari was counting to 1000 faster than both (small program in Basic I had made for benchmark)
<-How I felt

 

[Deleted member 65149]

I purchased one of these HP 9825s for my company in 1977 soon after it was released. It was one of the first in the country and used HPL programming, not too dissimilar to BASIC. Being such new technology it did suffer quite a few hiccups that needed tweaking. I was finding mistakes faster than HP’s own people so I spent quite a bit of time with them at their South Queensferry HQ sorting things out. They didn’t like to admit it, but HPL had too many limitations to be of extended use.

 

[Gollom]

BBC Micro? I remember visiting a Customer at ICI Billingham who gave me a tour. I was astonished at the number of processes that used them for control including (if I remember) the ammonia plant. Ralph rejoiced in telling me that if all the BBC Micros in there failed, Billingham would be a hole in the ground!

 

[ShaunB]

I was in the Sea Cadets, I’ve no idea what the difference is. Perhaps we were a bit older and didn’t have any creosote on our Lee-Enfield 303s that we had to race up and down hills with.

Frig, that brings back some memories.
I was in the army cadets for about 4.5 years, I remember the Lee-Enfield 303's very well.
I'm also pleased to say I earned a marksman badge with that rifle, and also the .22 rifle which was used on indoor ranges.

And we didn't have any ear protection either.
Actually come to think of it, back then (35 odd years ago) there wasn't a terrible lot of H&S.
I can remember groups of us being out on night training exercises when away at weekends, and flash grenade type things going off very nearby.
And sparring also with no head gear.

 

[belongabob]

White dog sh!t

What happened to that?

 

[Deleted member 126251]

I was in the Sea Cadets, I’ve no idea what the difference is. Perhaps we were a bit older and didn’t have any creosote on our Lee-Enfield 303s that we had to race up and down hills with.

Sea-Scouts was like normal scouts with all the same badges etc but we also did a lot of waterbased activities, badges and competitions.

Just had a flashback to the pre HSE days when I used to rub meths into my palms every day to harden my skin for rowing & canoeing......

 

[Deleted member 126251]

I remember seeing some of those around when I started in commercial IT ('70s). But these were the weapon of choice in the business by then:


.......

Yea the comptometer companies did "bulk" calculation services for various companies e.g. quantity surveyors where a BoQ might run to many 1000s of items. Databases and spreadsheets took over.

I remember using Lotus 123 to do calculations for our BoQs (I worked in engineering & construction project management). We'd disable "auto recalculate" do all the updates / inputting, hit the "calculate" button and go and have a cup of coffee. It (286) would take about 30 minutes to an hour to recalculate a large spreadsheet.

 

[Deleted member 65149]

Frig, that brings back some memories.
I was in the army cadets for about 4.5 years, I remember the Lee-Enfield 303's very well.
I'm also pleased to say I earned a marksman badge with that rifle, and also the .22 rifle which was used on indoor ranges.

And we didn't have any ear protection either.
Actually come to think of it, back then (35 odd years ago) there wasn't a terrible lot of H&S.
I can remember groups of us being out on night training exercises when away at weekends, and flash grenade type things going off very nearby.
And sparring also with no head gear.

I remember those army cadets well. Often your lot would attack our ship (a prefab next to the Grand Union Canal) and try to scare us with those noisy flashing things. Our PO was an absolute hardnut and would black up (probably not allowed nowadays!) then run outside with his 303 and bellowing like an elephant on heat.

I never really got on with the 303, finding the kick too much for my skinny 15 year old shoulder, but I loved the 22. I finished up in a rifle club and managed to win quite a few competitions at places like Bisley. Kids and trying to fit in a part time MSc put an end to all that

 

[BTB 500]

I remember paper tape as part of my introduction to computing in the early 70s. I had to write equipment instructions in FORTRAN, manually download the code to paper tape, then put the tape into a transmitter to send it across the pond to be uploaded onto a mainframe (there were no PCs then) in the States. That’s a lot of places where errors could occur, and did. The need to get it right first time is what made me so OCD about everything.

When I started as a COBOL programmer all our coding was done on paper forms. Once finished we would 'test' the program by manually running through the hand-written code line by line, writing down down the contents of all the variables on sheets of paper. When we were happy with that the coding sheets were sent off to an external bureau to be typed onto punch cards. When we got those back we'd compile the program by adding JCL cards to the front and back, creating a huge deck of cards in several parts (occasionally the operators would load them in the wrong order, or drop a deck on the floor ... not good!). You were expected to get a 'clean compile' first time - we only got to run 1 job in the morning and 1 in the afternoon (1 a day if you needed more than a certain amount of memory), and machine time was very expensive. In a very few years the situation reversed and it became cheaper to let the computer find the errors, we actually got a dial-up terminal (one for the whole department), etc. Happy days

 

[ShaunB]

I remember those army cadets well. Often your lot would attack our ship (a prefab next to the Grand Union Canal) and try to scare us with those noisy flashing things. Our PO was an absolute hardnut and would black up (probably not allowed nowadays!) then run outside with his 303 and bellowing like an elephant on heat.

I never really got on with the 303, finding the kick too much for my skinny 15 year old shoulder, but I loved the 22. I finished up in a rifle club and managed to win quite a few competitions at places like Bisley. Kids and trying to fit in a part time MSc put an end to all that

We had a team go to Bisley once just during one of our weekends away.
We used to go fairly regularly to a local place in Northern Ireland called Ballykinlar Barracks for shooing competitions.
We regularly went up against the UDR(they're not the terrorists ), and usually beat them too, which was brilliant when you were just kids still.

They were good times.
I do remember fierce rivalry between us and the sea cadets, especially on remembrance Sunday parades, everybody made sure the uniforms were pristine, and the boot were fantastically clean, with toe caps extra shiny to try outdo the sea cadets.

 

[ShaunB]

When I started as a COBOL programmer all our coding was done on paper forms. Once finished we would 'test' the program by manually running through the hand-written code line by line, writing down down the contents of all the variables on sheets of paper. When we were happy with that the coding sheets were sent off to an external bureau to be typed onto punch cards. When we got those back we'd compile the program by adding JCL cards to the front and back, creating a huge deck of cards in several parts (occasionally the operators would load them in the wrong order, or drop a deck on the floor ... not good!). You were expected to get a 'clean compile' first time - we only got to run 1 job in the morning and 1 in the afternoon (1 a day if you needed more than a certain amount of memory), and machine time was very expensive. In a very few years the situation reversed and it became cheaper to let the computer find the errors, we actually got a dial-up terminal (one for the whole department), etc. Happy days

Thankfully technology evolved.
Nothing wrong with good old COBOL though, I spent probably 20 odd coding with it.

Now, anyone remember 6502 or 6510 assembly language?
I created games for the C64 in assembly language for about 5 years for a company who were subcontracted by the big boys like US Gold/Ocean Software

 

[Deleted member 150136]

BBC Micro? I remember visiting a Customer at ICI Billingham who gave me a tour. I was astonished at the number of processes that used them for control including (if I remember) the ammonia plant. Ralph rejoiced in telling me that if all the BBC Micros in there failed, Billingham would be a hole in the ground!

I used to live in billingham in a past life.
I was in bed when the ammonia plant had an explosion!
I lived the far side about 4 miles away and heard it.
I went in the following week with a 1000t crane to help repair the damage!

 

[BTB 500]

Frig, that brings back some memories.
I was in the army cadets for about 4.5 years, I remember the Lee-Enfield 303's very well.
I'm also pleased to say I earned a marksman badge with that rifle, and also the .22 rifle which was used on indoor ranges.

And we didn't have any ear protection either.
Actually come to think of it, back then (35 odd years ago) there wasn't a terrible lot of H&S.
I can remember groups of us being out on night training exercises when away at weekends, and flash grenade type things going off very nearby.
And sparring also with no head gear.

I was a Naval cadet (CCF), yes we did stuff that would give people heart failure nowadays. We did similar night exercises with military grade thunderflashes, got to fire a Bofors 40mm which was fun, also winched up into a Wessex helicopter with just a strop under my arms. I remember the safety briefing for that - "don't lift your arms up or you'll fall out of it and die"