I'm 41, born 1963-06-21, and to make a short story long: I allways was interested in technical gear, so at the age of 8 or 9 when my father used an IBM Mag Card Selectric to acces an IBM Mainframe I first heard of computers. Took one or two years till I saw the first computer in my life (my father bought a pdp8/m in 1974). The years went by and after using programmable calculators Commodore PR100 and TI-59 my father allowed me to put hands on the pdp8 in 1979. Thereafter came some other machines - dds2 cs (TI9900), dg eclipse, Commodore 4008, 8032, zx81, VAX 11/750, 780, the unavoidable PCs, Daisy, some 68K Unix Machines (force, eltek,..), Sun sparcs, HP 3000, Siemens RM, Sun Ultra Sparc, Fujitsu-Siemens PrimePower. I learned programming on the pdp8 (FOCAL, PAL8, BASIC9), studied computer science (FORTRAN IV, Pascal, 8085) wrote MS-DOS drivers in x86 and C (modified Borland C runtime system to do that) did hardware development (active ISDN adapter for PCs - tina ds from Stollmann) ported the Unix System VR3.2 STREAMS evironment to DR FlexOS, wrote STREAMS drivers for redundant connections over OSI layers, ported OSI layers 3 and 4 from/to Sinix (Reliant Unix), HP-UX, Solaris, SCO-Unix, Interactive Unix, Linux. And now doing Unix (mostly Solaris) administration since 1999. Collection: pdp8/m TI-59, dds2-cs, (not vintage) Ultra Sparcs (E250, E450, E3500). New to come (April) Two fully loaded pdp8/e racks ;-)) Greetings Gerold

I started my life in the computer business by joining IBM in 1961 after college. I was initially a Field Engineer on the IBM 7090/7094. The systems I worked on were located at Lockheed in Mountain View, CA, Ames Laboratory (NASA) and Stanford University. I was subsequently promoted to IBM's Development Labs in Poughkeepsie, New York where I developed diagnostic software for the IBM 7040/44. I subsequently wrote a diagnostic monitor for the (first) IBM 360/40 and then worked on the development of MVS - the operating system for System/360 mainframe. After leaving IBM I worked for the Federal Reserve System - running IT at the Philadelphia Fed. - and from there several other computer related jobs - and I finally started a consulting practice in 1988 specializing in network design and later (currently) computer related IP (intellectual property) matters. My first "home" computer was a CDC-160A which I purchased (for more $ than I'd care to admit) around 1968. I subsequently acquired a PDP-8/L, PDP-8/I, PDP-12, and a RPC-4000 (drum machine). I donated all of the above to various museums - the PDP-12 and the entire DECUS PDP-12 library going to the Computer History Museum here in Mountain View, CA. My current collection includes lots of various S-100 bus CP/M systems (Including IMSAI 8080, Polymorphic, etc.), Lots of Silicon Graphics systems (from PI -> Onyx Infinite Reality), Lots of Sun SPARCs (including a rare Sun portable of which only two prototypes were built), several IBM RS/6000's, several HP HP-UX systems, multiple VAXes, DEC PDP-11/23+, PDP-11/83, early Macintoshes, NeXT cube (w/Dimension Graphics), NeXT mono/color, Data General Nova clones, IBM AS/400, etc., etc. I also have a lot of software for the above - including OSs for all of the above. So I'd classify myself as one of, if not the oldest, "fart" on this list - with way too many computers... ;-) Cheers, Lyle -- Lyle Bickley Bickley Consulting West Inc. http://bickleywest.com "Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"

On Sunday 27 February 2005 16:37, William Donzelli wrote: I used the "excuse" that I was going to use it for a home based business - but I really just wanted one to "play" with. It was fortuitous that I was working at IBM when the "$ to standard-of-living ratio" was good.... I purchased the it directly from CDC and paid $25,000 for the 160A and it's associated Frieden Flexowriter (both in "used, rebuilt" condition)... That was a lot of bucks in 1968 dollars, but I was "desperate" for a home computer... Lyle -- Lyle Bickley Bickley Consulting West Inc. http://bickleywest.com "Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"

Ok, I guess I'll bite too. Age: 42 (born in 1962) First significant computer exposure was in '76 or '77 with my cousin's Altair 8800. Then spent a couple of summers in high school at university programs where I got to play with PDP-11s, some of the HP lab "calculators" and the Heathkit analog computer we all wish we had. While still in high school, I picked up a couple of 6800 based thingies. Went to Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology for BS in CS and EE. More fun with PDP-11s and a little with a VAX 11/780. This was my first exposure to UNIX. Then went to work for a telecom equipment compant first in engineering then in research. While in the research center, I did an MS in EE at Notre Dame. Next step was going back to school full-time at Purdue for a Ph.D. in CS (machine learning). After that I've taught at Rhodes College, worked for a telemetry company, an aftermarket automotive electronics company and now doing R&D at a logistics/shipping company and teaching part-time at University of Memphis. Brian L. Stuart

Okay, Microsoft Outlook has some really interesting quirks. One of them is that it displays a little pop-up message on the screen when a new piece of mail arrives. It's a small preview box, containing who the mail is from, when it was sent, the subject line, and a snippet of the message itself. The snippet I got for this particular message was a good one: "I'm 30. It's a simple story. Parents bought my brother" Now, I don't know why, but I was expecting something other than the follow-up of "and I an Intellivision" when I opened the e-mail. I mean no offense, but for some reason I was thinking the full message would be more along the lines of a Weekly World News story about how your parents had bought your brother and you from space aliens or something. The actual story about the game consoles was a little bit of a letdown. Again, I intend no disrespect -- for my own part, my mother always told me that I looked like the milkman when I asked her which side of the family I resembled... -- Tony -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Computer Collector Newsletter Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2005 2:21 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Age I'm 30. It's a simple story. Parents bought my brother and I an Intellivision, with just Pong, I don't remember if it was the late 1970s or early 1980s. Then we graduated to an Atari VCS (it wasn't a real '2600'). At school, I learned Logo -- pretty sure the hardware was Commodore but I don't remember 100%. That must've been in fourth or fifth grade; they school had just a couple of computers on these big wheeled carts, and once a week they'd bring them into each classroom for a couple of hours. LOL, for other kids the happiest time in school was lunch or gym or recess or just Friday: for me it computer day. In sixth grade we got Apple II+ computers in school; my brother (three years older) got a IIe for his bar mitzvah present. I pretty much took over that one. Used it all the way through high school and jumped directly to a 386 in college. It was completely by accident that I started collecting handhelds a few years ago. ===== Evan's personal homepage: www.snarc.net *** Tell your friends about the Computer Collector Newsletter! - It's free and we'll never send spam or share your email address - Publishing every Monday(-ish), ask about writing for us - Mainframes to videogames, hardware and software, we cover it all - W: http://news.computercollector.com E: news at computercollector.com - We're approaching 700 readers: win a prize!