Re: The Macintosh is a girl's computer!

J. J. Lodder <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

J. J. Lodder <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[snip]

Nonsense. Real men do it in DOS,

Pfft. Nah, *real* men do it in machine code - entered as binary.

Reverse hexadecimal, if you know your classics,

<cough> I do. You don't. Read on and learn.

I used to attend Manchester University[1]. While there, I met the
retired Atlas console parked outside the Computer Science department's
library. You wanted to enter code before boot, you entered it in binary
- there was a long row of data switches for that purpose. The bootstrap
programme[2] was written on a bit of paper stuck to the console so the
operator didn't have to look far to find it if the machine needed
powering up or rebooting.

Ditto the Manchester Mark 1 and the Manchester Baby - but they only had
photos of those.

I've attended a private demonstration of the rebuilt Manchester `Baby'
computer at the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry, which is a
good replica of the first general purpose digital electronic stored
programme computer. The presentation was conducted by the man who ran
the reconstruction project.

You wanted to enter data, you set up the binary on the switches, which
had been intended for a Spitfire's HF radio.

Back to school, Mr Lodder. Hex data entry came along later.

The early method of getting data into the `production' Manchester
computers was by typing on a teletype keyboard, producing a punched tape
to be fed into the actual computer - you had to memorise the
op-code/character correspondence, mind. I didn't say it wasn't machine
code. Must have been like typing machine code into a ZX81.

Rowland.

[1] The faculty of science and technology, that is.

[2] The spelling used at the time by all - Yanks included. They used
to use `programme' to indicate a computer rather than any other sort of
`program'; much as modern Brit usage has `program' for that job.

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