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Talk of The Villages Florida - Rentals, Entertainment & More
Talk of The Villages Florida - Rentals, Entertainment & More
Talk of The Villages Florida - Rentals, Entertainment & More
Talk of The Villages Florida - Rentals, Entertainment & More
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#1
11-09-2015, 12:39 PM
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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.
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#2
11-09-2015, 12:59 PM
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My wife and I both worked at DEC. I left in about '82 and my wife in the early 90's.
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#3
11-09-2015, 01:23 PM
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Yep! in the 70's
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#4
11-09-2015, 01:53 PM
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#6
11-09-2015, 02:08 PM
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#7
11-09-2015, 02:24 PM
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Haven't used a VAX computer since about 1992 or so... Actually, we used Fortran for programming purposes... Yikes! I'm dating myself. |
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#8
11-09-2015, 02:32 PM
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#9
11-09-2015, 02:35 PM
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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.... |
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#11
11-09-2015, 03:11 PM
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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. Quote:
Last edited by tuccillo; 11-09-2015 at 04:03 PM. |
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#13
11-09-2015, 04:44 PM
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 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. |
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#14
11-09-2015, 05:14 PM
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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
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Kyrie Eleison Philadelphia(Germantown) 20 years, Brandywine Hundred, DE 3 years, St. Mary's County, MD 38 years, Villages |
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