yeah, now imagine a 10 year old picking it up in an afternoon? that was the mistake my dad made when he left me with a co-worker at the electronics facility that he worked at in upstate NY. I was pretty good at scripting, but I really hated it for the tediousness of the work. How I miss my old apple IIe and its simple to use basic interpreter. made a lot of short basic programs to do some math (conversions mostly). Things pretty much went that way all through high school. I did a lot of my homework on those old machines and would dial into Honeywell and play star trek on their mainframe. :) the nice thing about a screen, it didn't waste paper. :)

these days, 110 baud is like a snail crossing a frozen lake. ah well, at least I can keep up with the kids (still have a sharp brain, even after 50 years).:)

DE n7zzt Eric

On Nov 3, 2015, at 8:54 PM, Pat Byrne wrote:

> Eric,
> Got my first programming job in 1968 writing Autocoder for an IBM 
> 1400 series box with 80K of storage, half of which was available for 
> us to use.  A far cry from the 4k 1401 I learned to program 
> on.  Evolved in to DOS/360 and all its offspring until 1995 when I 
> left the ineustry for other interests.  All good stuff and fond 
> memories! And yes, JCL was always a large pain in the ass!!
> pat, K9JAUAt 09:37 PM 11/3/2015, you wrote:
>> thats almost as bad as knowing job control language for an IBM AS/360 =
>> Mainframe. :) Also, working on reel to reel tape machines. Its really =
>> too bad that most people these days don't remember the technology that =
>> was the predecessor to the current media. You ask a kid today what a =
>> floppy disk is and they might look at you like a deer caught in the =
>> headlights. Or how about coders these days that couldn't conceive of a =
>> program written in basic and having to work tightly in only 8k of ram. =
>> Pretty soon, I imagine, keyboards are going to be quaint reminders of an =
>> old computing past.
>> 
>> DE n7zzt Eric
>> 
>> On Nov 3, 2015, at 8:11 PM, Tom Fowle wrote:
>> 
>>> Knowing how things work, or used to work is never useless.
>>> At the least it's interesting.
>>> =20
>>> Used to run 16 MM projectors in highschool in the 60s, but don't =
>> remember
>>> the filter. Maybe those school units didn't have the freeze frame.
>>> thanks for the fun
>>> tom Fowle WA6IVG
>>> =20
>>> On Tue, Nov 03, 2015 at 02:22:44PM -0600, Martin McCormick wrote:
>>>>     A lot of what is left of my brain is useless knowledge by
>>>> today's standards. When I worked as a technician with the OSU
>>>> Audio Visual Center in the eighties, I repaired 16-millimeter
>>>> film projectors among many other things and I have a whole
>>>> treasure trove of trivia in my head that doesn't get you very far
>>>> today.
>>>> =20
>>>>     Did you know, for instance, that if the film stops moving
>>>> for even a fraction of a second that the heat from the projection
>>>> lamp is sufficient to melt it? Most projectors had a freeze-frame
>>>> function but it only worked because a special piece that greatly
>>>> reduced the amount of heat/light was supposed to drop down
>>>> between the film gate and the film, itself.
>>>> =20
>>>>     We had a few machines that came in because a mechanical
>>>> part that held the filter piece up and out of the way failed and
>>>> the piece would slowly swing down and cause the light output to
>>>> appear to go very dim.
>>>> =20
>>>>     How does a person who is blind work on a film projector?
>>>> Most of the mechanical failures that befall 16-millimeter
>>>> projectors cause audible issues also.
>>>> =20
>>>>     Sound film projectors must yank the film through the gate
>>>> in a series of 24 very fast jerks per second so that each frame
>>>> of the picture is still for 1/24 of a second. When the film
>>>> reaches the sound pickup, it must not have any trace of the jerky
>>>> motion and moves as smoothly as audio tape. There are failure
>>>> modes that cause the film to move more smoothly than it should
>>>> through the film gate and other failures that make it move in a
>>>> jerky manner through the sound pickup. Those usually make the
>>>> machine clatter with an extra loud sound or the sound has a
>>>> terrible flutter in the speed which is unacceptable. It is
>>>> necessary to examine the film transport to diagnose the problem
>>>> and fix the broken parts.
>>>> =20
>>>>     There is a Walt Disney movie which I think might be
>>>> "Bambee" in which there is a scene where animals are talking to
>>>> each other while under water. Their voices all sound fluttery
>>>> like someone with water in their throat. One time, my wife and I
>>>> watched this film because she wanted to see it again after many
>>>> years and I had never watched it at all. I almost fell out of my
>>>> chair when that scene came on. Some technician simply blocked the
>>>> rotation of the sound drum and fed that audio in to the movie as
>>>> a special effect. I thought it was brilliant and never imagined
>>>> that someone would actually want that sound to appear, but it was
>>>> perfect for the scene.
>>>> =20
>>>>     I remember running across many weird problems that were
>>>> usually the fault of wear and tear on belts, gears and clutches.
>>>> That's where I accumulated all this useless knowledge.
>>>> =20
>>>>     So, what makes the film stop and melt? Ripped out sprocket
>>>> holes along the edge. That will turn torn-up film in to torn-up
>>>> melted film. If this had been back in the really old days, the
>>>> film which used to be made of celluloid would have burst in to
>>>> flame and started a real fire.
>>>> =20
>>>> Martin
>>>> =20
>>>> Colin McDonald <[log in to unmask]> writes:
>>>>> ah, I love teachable moments!!!
>>>>> They call me a walking encyclopedia of mostly interesting, but =
>> useless
>>>>> facts...