13 Mar
2013
13 Mar
'13
11:34 p.m.
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 2:09 AM, Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> wrote:
On 2013 Mar 13, at 9:25 PM, Ethan Dicks wrote:
No problem.
(HP) 9830... lazy-T cursor...
Thank you for mentioning this. I've asked on the list now and again about
a computer I used c. 1976 that had a "lazy-T cursor"... HP 9830 with
an HP 9860 mark-sense card reader.
Well that's very prescient, you're answering a question I was just about to
ask. Rob and I have been discussing 9830s lately (and
thanks to Rob I have one to
work on here)
Very cool.
and we realised, somewhat to our surprise, that we had
both
encountered the 9830 in school in the mid-70's...
Both instances had the mark-sense card reader too. Everybody sat at their
desk in class and pencil-marked off their first program (10 PRINT "<MY
NAME>"..), lined up at the computer and submitted their card deck for
batch-style processing...
Yep. Similar experience.
Keeners could use the machine after hours and type
and edit directly on the keyboard and LED display (whoo-hoo!).
Never got that chance.
So just how widespread or prevalent were 9830s in
schools - did anyone else
here encounter the 9830 in highschool (or gradeschool)?
Grade school for me. It was some sort of science/technology day, and the
HP 9830 was brought down "from the district" and set up, and we did the
aforementioned "10 PRINT "<NAME>"" exercise with the cards. I
remember
seeing the unit about a year later when I accompanied our teacher to
one of the downtown school buildings to get science supplies (a trip on
which I got a full-sized classroom periodic table chart that still hangs in my
bedroom). The unit was off, but I remembered it from its visit to my school.
This would have been, as I said, about 1976 and 1977, in Columbus, OH.
By 1977 I was already going down to the main library to sign up for
an hour a week on one of the two 4K chicklet-keyboard PETs, then two
years later, we got a 32K PET for home, but I never forgot that "Lazy-T".
-ethan