Age

I'm 49. Started at age 15 by learning to program an Olivetti Programma 101 - http://www.science.uva.nl/faculteit/museum/Programma101.html for those who care. Shortly there after I started learning about "Gotran" and got to run a couple of programs on a IBM1620 at Occidental College in Pasadena. Shortly there-I started learning Watfor, and got access to the IBM370 at USC. You could walk in off the street with a deck and get 15 seconds of execution time for nothing. There were a few other high-school students doing the same thing I imagine. Anyway - I took a Fortran class trough Glendale Community College after my Senior year in high-school and learned Fortran, then Cobol on a Burroughs B2500 that Glendale Unified had. Next the Junior College got a Nova 2/10 (I think..) and I became one of the two computer operators. Learned Basic and ws the lab assistant for that. It ran a DOS by Ball if I recall correctly. It had a card reader that kept blowing up ;-) and 4 ASR-28s that people ran Basic on when it wasn't trying to run Fortran. The other computer lab assistant got an Altair (had serial number 3 of 8K Basic..) and we both drove to New Mexico for the very first personal computer convention in 75. Went on to four year college and majored in EE. Saw a Bendix G15 there (didn't use it), and PDP-11's running RSTS. Did my senior project on an LSI-11 in Fortran. Went to work for Burroughs as a computer designer on the B1000 series - Did that for 3 years. Later worked at Cydrome on the Cydra-5 (a mini-supercomputer ) around 85. Worked at National semi in the 32K architecture group also for about 9 months before went into consulting. I would love to help resurrect a B1965 or a Cydra. Steve Wilson