Re: Beehives...

[Aron Insinga <ainsinga@infomation.com>]

At 10:34 AM 5/5/98 -0600, you wrote:
>I remember that the
>2741 had a _fractional_ baud rate... something like 34.5 baud?

Yeah, leave it to IBM to try to create such a nice "industry standard" -- I
think it was 134.5.  (Find a UART baud rate generator chip data sheet; it
should be the only fractional number.)  The 2741s could also lock the
keyboard, and shift was a separate character transmitted over the wire.

>I also remember seeing my first daisy-wheel printer at DELTA.
>Naturally it belonged to Boas/Uffelman and we couldn't use it :)

(I keep reminding myself that corporate politics are simple compared to
university politics.  I'm sure that I don't know very much of this story
and I'm probably better off for it.)  The one bad thing that I remember off
hand about Boas was hearing that he'd removed other people's names from the
comments in programs.  That was probably bad enough, but if there were
other things to earn emnity, I've forgotten them.  What I do recall is that
the EE dept. wanted to get a DECSYSTEM-20, but Delta (or Education) didn't,
and that's when the relationship ended.  Maybe there was a problem with the
effort to convert from RSTS BASIC Plus to TOPS-20 BASIC, which was more
primitive.  Dan went to DEC and got a non-disclosure view of one; they
weren't announced yet.  Instead, EE got the computer center to scale back
from a 2 CPU X 2 IOP B7700 to replace the B6700 to a 1 CPU X 1 IOP B7700
and a DECsystem-1090 running TOPS-10.  And a CDC Cyber-174(?) for Pluto I
mean Plato [but I did run at least 1 FORTRAN program on it in batch], and
an HP minicomputer and an 11/70 rounded out the new computer center next to
the solar house.  And a few racks of Gandalf port selectors, which someone
mentioned earlier.  The new building was off campus, so we could get a Coke
machine instead of a Pepsi machine, which was a major feature.  Until the
Coke machine arrived, we took turns collecting quarters (this was when a
Coke cost 25 cents) and running across the street to the gas station, which
had an old open-the-tall-narrow-glass-door-and-pull-the-bottle-out Coke
machine, and carrying an armful of bottled back across the street.

- Aron