[Ham-Mac] OT: Older Mac Software Available

Sun Mar 15 20:59:04 EDT 2009

Until the - uhh -? mid-seventies it must have 
been, computers and software were just being 
introduced into the consumer market.

Until that time, I had the standard old Burroughs 
equipment - ? - in my business office, which was 
used for printing all the monthly bills to 
patients.  Well, guess what. The machine broke 
down and I had to find some way immediately to 
produce statements. Burroughs were no longer 
being manufactured or even supported, and 
computers were just being introduced, but they at 
that time, were all configured for (1) large 
business use - not for small business or for 
personal use but with a capacity of only 2 kb or 
so on one disc. I had to find an immediate 
substitute.

I did find the only possible substitute available 
at the time.  One of the very first, what? 
Commodore 64s perhaps - ? but it was the first 
and only computer that would do what I needed, 
however all data was entered on 8 or10 inch 
floppy discs with a capacity of - my guess - 
perhaps 2 kb. In order to produce the volume I 
needed, I had to get ten (#10) of these drives, 
and even with all of those, it took all night to 
process the statements. With the technology being 
what it was at the time, someone had to monitor 
the process continuously to catch any computer 
failure, and until the statements were done.

And guess what! I couldn't ask any of my staff to 
spend the night at the office, so just who did 
it! Moi. Me. I did it. And the office had to have 
a fan to keep it cool while the drives 'purred' 
in the background. This was before private air 
conditioning. I didn't get any sleep, but I got a 
lot of reading done. A lot!

AhMe. Memories

de/smitty/w6cs

ByWay. When we built Foothill College -1960 or 
1961 - we were faced with much the same problem, 
but multiplied by a coupla thousand times or 
more. We built several buildings scattered around 
the campus, each with air conditioning (the only 
AC on the campus at that time) and each building 
was engineered specifically to house our/the 
business computers (Not those for student use, 
They came later). I think the heat generated kept 
Los Altos Hills warm all year around!

Whoops! Here comes another 'memory':

During our planning process for Foothill College 
I had to go back to Washington DC on behalf of 
the Board of Trustees (of which I was one) to 
attend an informative national meeting. The first 
day, I had a couple of hours 'off' to sight-see, 
so I wandered into the Defense Department 
building. I met a friendly staffer who 
volunteered to show me around in non-secured 
areas - not sealed off from visitors.

At one point we walked into a huge room, long and 
narrow and so long that I couldn't see from one 
end to the other. And this huge room/space was 
filled with row, after row, after row of metal 
cabinets, perhaps each one 5' tall, by 3' wide, 
and perhaps 15' or so feet long. Row after row as 
far as my eyes could see. And my 'guide' said:

   "Now this one room contains all of the 
personnel records of the US Military services."

I suspect that these records could now be filed 
in a desktop computer!! (Well, that may be a bit 
of an exaggeration, but not as much as we might 
expect!)

de/smitty/w6cs

>I got CPM, DOS, old mac disks still.  I don't like to get rid of it 
>either, I don't know why I keep it, but I do. Some of it's on 5.25 
>inch floppy and some is on audio tape.  May not even be good anymore.  
>It will be recycled someday.
>
>Dale, K9VUJ
>
>
>On 15, Mar 2009, at 15:42, Dick Kriss wrote:
>
>>  On Sunday3/15/09 2:59 PM, "Dino Papas, KLØS" <kl0s at cox.net> wrote:
>>
>>>  For all you connoisseurs of old Macs....
>>
>>  Sad to say but some of us have an attic full of that stuff....
>>  including a boxed up Mac Plus with and external floppy drive. I
>>  recall booting from the internal drive and you could run and
>>  store everything you could think of on one or two floppies.
>>
>>  Ham radio was fun in 1986 with Red Ryder that was the father
>  > of White Knight.  John, WD1V and I maintained a HyperCard
>>  stack called PktMacs that could be updated via HF packet at
>>  300 baud.  The stack contained a card of every know ham that
>>  had a Mac and was into packet or RTTY at the time. RTTY was
>>  all done with terminal programs and TNC's until Steve Fine
>>  released his shareware program called PacketMac that was
>>  later sold to AEA as MacRATT.  It was great program until taken
>>  over by someone else and then orphaned when AEA went out
>>  of business.
>>
>>  Dino I know how you feel getting rid of the old stuff.  Getting
>>  rid of the PK-232 and going  from FSK to AFSK and sound
>>  card technology was a big change but I have no regrets.
>>
>>  I hope you find a good home for classic software.
>>
>>  73 Dick AA5VU
>>
>>  ______________________________________________________________
>>  Ham-Mac mailing list
>>  Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/ham-mac
>>  Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
>>  Post: mailto:Ham-Mac at mailman.qth.net
>>
>>  This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
>>  Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
>
>______________________________________________________________
>Ham-Mac mailing list
>Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/ham-mac
>Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
>Post: mailto:Ham-Mac at mailman.qth.net
>
>This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
>Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html

-- 
Robert C. Smithwick, DDS
25215 La Loma Drive
Los Altos Hills, CA   94022-4540
Telephone; 650  948-3209
Fax:  650  948-8438

http://www.medishare.org/