Re: Introductions and Current Status

Nope, TDL BASIC was much more advanced than Microsoft's

On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 11:35 AM, Lee Reynolds <Lee.Reynolds@asu.edu> wrote:

> Did Bill Gates chastise you for stealing that BASIC interpreter?****
>
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> Lee Reynolds****
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> ASU Advanced Computing Center****
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> *From:* plug-discuss-bounces@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us [mailto:
> plug-discuss-bounces@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] *On Behalf Of *Dazed_75
> *Sent:* Tuesday, November 15, 2011 11:27 AM
> *To:* Main PLUG discussion list
> *Subject:* Re: Introductions and Current Status****
>
> ** **
>
> ROFL !!!
>
> I got my start in High School when the National Science Foundation decided
> to start a revolutionary thing called Computer Math for secondary schools.
> We started by learning how to do math in binary and then progressed to
> binary logic. By the middle of the 1st year we were writing Fortran IV for
> the Univac (?) 1600 at the university. We wrote code on coding paper, our
> teacher would take it to the University where some poor schmuck would
> keypunch it into IBM cards while the teacher learned what to teach us the
> next week.
>
> It was maybe 7 years later I got my first computer. A Technical Design
> Labs Xitan Z80 kit with 8 KB memory and front panel switches and light for
> I/O. You would write little programs on paper and enter each byte into
> memory with the switches and HOPE you made no errors! It did come with
> BASIC on a paper tape, but you had to build the paper tape reader which I
> never did.
>
> I converted a TV into a monitor and bought a surplus keyboard. They
> announced a way to convert an audio cassette player/recorder into mass
> storage and you could get an assembler and BASIC on audio tapes. You had
> to enter an IPL program via the switches in order to load from the tape.
> But after that is was fun and mostly easy to write extensions to BIOS for
> the tape and burn a new BIOS EEPROM that understood how to use the tape.
>
> It was the cat's meow when I moved up to 64 KB of RAM and I thought I was
> in 7th heaven when I bought dual 8" double sided double density floppy
> drives for $2500. I tried to add a 10 MB hard drive a couple of years
> later, but never got it to work. I never did find out if the problem was
> the drive, the controller, or the BIOS extension I was writing.
>
> Now that all sounds very primitive to you all, but I did the billing for
> my employer on that system and that was around $1 million per month where
> the units of billing averaged one cent each (though a LOT of them). Some
> years later I bought the very first IBM AT to be delivered to Denver. I do
> not remember when I first tried Linux. I just remember it was a very early
> Red Hat and I spent maybe a month of evenings trying to get it to work.
>
> So believe me when I tell you that ALL distributions work well compared to
> those days!
> --
> Dazed_75 a.k.a. Larry
>
> The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain
> occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.
> - Thomas Jefferson****
>
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--
Dazed_75 a.k.a. Larry

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions,
that I wish it always to be kept alive.
- Thomas Jefferson
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