Any ex-DECies in TV?
 

Are there any other folks here that used to work for DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation)? I started with them in 1981 and was with them until my entire group was laid off in 1994. Actually met my wife at the Bedford, MA training center.

My wife and I both worked at DEC. I left in about '82 and my wife in the early 90's.

Yep! in the 70's

Good to know I'm not alone. While I moved on to other things, my wife has survived the DEC/Compaq and Compaq/HP mergers and is now scheduled to retire at the end of next May.

Anyone know how to program in VMS ??? :laugh:

It's been a long time, but what are you trying program in? Something in VAX or Alpha Macro?

Nothing any longer...I spent a lot of time with VAX computers and the VMS OS. That was ok, but the PDP 11 OS was a bear to use...

Haven't used a VAX computer since about 1992 or so... Actually, we used Fortran for programming purposes... Yikes! I'm dating myself.

Don't feel bad. When I started out as a programmer in the early 70's we were coding in COBOL and Fortran - on punched cards.

ha ha...been there; done that.

During my college years, I left a 10,000 card deck in the back of my car for a few days. Seems those cards don't like humidity....

Nothing wrong with RSX11M
 

Or for that matter RSX11m+. However to really date myself how about I programmed on PDP8-Es, 11-34s and 11-44s.

I never worked for DEC but I did use a number of their systems such as the PDP-11/34, DEC System 20 (or 10, cant remember which), and a bunch of VAXs. DEC, of course, pretty much owned the world with the VAX. The PDP-11/34 was the first system I used that didn't have punch cards. I also remember using a DEC PC-like system but can't recall the name. I never used any of the DEC Alpha based systems. I do remember the Alpha EV-4 processor (also used in the Cray T3D) being a real dog performance wise. DEC did get it right with the EV-5 and follow on processors.

I did, and still do, use Fortran. Most of the heavy lifting around the world (in the science arena) is still done in Fortran but C/C++ continues to increase in popularity.

I also used a number of larger systems such as IBM System 360, IBM System 370, CDC Star100, CDC CYBER 203, CDC CYBER 205, Cray X-MP, Cray-2, Cray Y-MP, Cray C-90, Cray T-90, CRAY T3D, Cray T3E, IBM POWER2, POWER3, and POWER4-based clusters, and most recently various Intel based Linux clusters with typically 10K to 100K cores. The increase in capability, as well as user friendliness, is amazing. I started out using punch cards. It is amazing how things have changed over the 40+ years I have used systems.

I can help you program your television remote control? Whew heavy duty stuff mentioned above.

Well..... if you can program a TV remote, you're one up on me! :bowdown:

I agree - lots of heavy duty stuff in tucillo's post. I got out of the programming business in the mid 70's and went to the hardware side. I worked as a DEC Field Service Engineer maintaining/repairing the largest systems they made (DEC 10's, 20's and big VAXes). The largest system I had was a DECsystem 10 that was over 30 feet long. The PC I'm sitting at right now has a faster processor and scads more memory than that machine, but that system easily supported over 100 users at a time, and it seemed like you had the whole machine to yourself.

After about 6 years I got really, really tired of being on call every other week and transferred to DEC's Training department where I wrote and delivered all levels of VMS training, including internals and crash analysis. Was part of a small team that worked directly with the Alpha engineering group to develop and deliver Alpha VMS training, prior to that product being introduced.

Long story, short - the people who took over DEC after the founder (Ken Olsen) was forced out, decided that internal Field Service training was no longer needed, so except for a couple of admin people, our entire group of almost 100 people was laid off. Up until a couple of years before I left, it was a great place to work.

This was lile a trip down memory lane. In college (Drexel University), in our mini-computer class, we entered our code on PDP8's by toggling the switches. Read off answers in Octal from the lights. When I took other computer classes on the mainframes. used punch cards.(Still have some. saved ones with one mistake. Were perfect for Writing contents on a VHS tape, fit right in)

When I graduated and worked for DoD we used punchcards. all in FORTRAN. did read in 7tk and 9tk tapes and wrote them a times. Wrote 7tk tapes to be used on our plotter.

We upgraqded some film readers with PDP8's .


Did some VAX-11 code, some in Assembly a bit in machine code.

Was funny trying to explain old code the young kids had to convert to C, did not nknow that the slash 1h (/1h ) in the format meant go to the next card.

They are spoiled

85-94 Toronto and Vancouver