phantom files

[Knapp]

On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 5:00 PM, Karl Larsen <k5di at zianet.com> wrote:
> Knapp wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 12:04 PM, Erik Christiansen
>> <dvalin at internode.on.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 04:46:37PM -0300, Derek Broughton wrote:
>>>
>>>> Karl Larsen wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>> I started with a PDP 11 UNIX system. At the time I had no idea what
>> that meant though. Then went on to a os9 minicomputer. At about that
>> time I started working for a company making c64 software in basic and
>> 6502 assembly. After that computer fad died. I moved to dos and then
>> windows until the blue screen of death drove me to the edge. I had
>> tried Linux before but it was so hard to use that I never installed
>> it. At about this time Mandrake starting working well for newbies, so
>> I installed that. Then it got really bad and I jumped ship to Ubuntu
>> after having a brief stab at running a Gentoo box (worked well and had
>> the fastest startup of any system ever until I tried to update the box
>> and never recovered from that mistake). So all in all I can't say that
>> I am a from windows or dos but I did walk that path for a few years.
>>
>>
>    I started with pads of 8 1/2 by 11 lined paper. As I wrote the
> Proposal, or Paper it was many pages of paper with some pages longer
> than others. I had to "cut and paste" and used lots of sticky clear tape
> to put it together. This went to the Secretary who had a typewriter and
> she/he would type very fast a first rough draft. This I would cut and
> paste as appeared necessary. Then a second rough draft came back quick
> and a lot less cut and paste.
>
>    Usually the second went to the final. I had to proof read this and
> any changes just had to be made. Then it went out.
>
>    At home I had a Radio Shack Level 1 computer. It had not much
> capability but it did work and I found a C compiler for this tiny thing.
> I wore out 5 inch floppies putting in one and start. Then another with
> the compiler and some very basic libraries. Then another with all the
> things I was working on. I bought another floppy drive and more RAM (it
> came with 16k).
>
>    Then a Commodor-64 which had good software written for it's 64,000 K
> of RAM. It was sure fun to play with and even had an EDITOR program! I
> bought one for work as well and soon after 10 more. We had a lot of tape
> cassett's and they made their way around. Problems too which I think
> were un-known then RAM write problems.
>
>    Then I bought for home a cheap copy of the IBM PC Pheonix BIOS. I
> loved it. Even bought a Giant 40 MByte Hard Drive and replaced the 1 MHz
> CPU with a After-Market 10 MHz zoomer! I bought several real IBM PC's
> for the business and a printer and a lot of expensive software.
>
>    I was sent a cd-rom with Slackware Linux by a college friend who
> went into IT. Had heck getting it loaded but when done I loved it. Used
> it at home a lot and then on my work computer.
>
>    Since then I have become 73 years old and I still love Linux and use
> it. Sold the Company and they were by then all using Linux :-)
>
> Karl

WOW, sounds fun. I can still remember paper too! I learned to type on it!


-- 
Douglas E Knapp

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