Posted by Bill Vermillion on 01/29/07 23:35

In article <mn.eb827d71835c65de.1980@nobody.invalid>,
Gene E. Bloch <hamburger@NOT_SPAM.invalid> wrote:
>On 1/29/2007, Bill Vermillion posted this:
>> In article <mn.eb287d711dbb26b2.1980@nobody.invalid>,
>> Gene E. Bloch <hamburger@NOT_SPAM.invalid> wrote:
>>> On 1/29/2007, Bill Vermillion posted this:
>>>
>>> <Paper Reduction Activity>
>>>
>>>> Pushing Usenet news around - primarily by UUCP over phones - except
>>>> for two large local engineering groups who had a 56 line - most of
>>>> us in the Orlando area moved to Telebit modems that gave us
>>>> 18Kbit/sec transfer rates [later about 22Kb] long before the
>>>> first 9600 bps modem was available for sale. Since we all had
>>>> registered UUCP domain names we got them at 1/2 price at $650 each.
>>>>
>>>> The next year I saw my first 9600 BPS modem. From BT [British
>>>> Telecom] . $5000 US.
>>>>
>>>> Bill
>>>
>>> Ouch.
>>>
>>> Just yesterday, reading the Sunday paper ads, I noticed a 300GB hard
>>> drive for $80, so in a fit of reminiscence I compared its $/MB to my
>>> first hard drive: 10 MB, $800.
>>
>> If we're playing un-upsmanship - my first HD was an 8MB eight-inch
>> that I got for $1500 as part of an as-is where-is closeout
>> on Radio Shack Model 16's. It came with Xenix and the kernel
>> on the 1.3.? was only about 78K long. And I decided to get the
>> full development system - that was $750. But within 6 months it
>> had all paid for itself, and I inadvertantly wound up being a
>> self-employed SA/HW/SW person - all by accident.
>>
>>> I came up with a factor 3,000,000, but then I checked my work,
>>> and realized it was *only* 300,000 (that's the problem with
>>> computing in my head). This much change in maybe 22 or 24 years.
>>
>> Just fire up 'bc' and be sure of your math. Don't forget to set
>> the scale :-)
>>
>>> The performance is improved some too, but not that much :-)
>>
>> What do you mean NOT THAT MUCH.
>>
>> I just moved to another terminal session and logged into a system
>> I'm just building up to replace an aging server. With nothing
>> extraordinary with a 150Mhz SATA 150GB drive, I just measured
>> 82MB/sec writing and 80MB reading.
>>
>> My first ESDI drive [ I misjudged how popular SCSI would become]
>> had a 1.5Mhz interface [most cards were 1MHz] so that meant
>> on a good day going down hill with the wind at my back I could
>> get a bit over 1MB transfer rate on a UFS file system. The old
>> S51 file system from AT&T - which I had on the same drive - was at
>> least 5 times slower because of the inefficieny of that FS - with
>> allocating 2 512 byte sectors at a time instead of 8K allocations.
>>
>>
>>> Gene E. Bloch (Gino)
>>> letters617blochg3251
>>> (replace the numbers by "at" and "dotcom")
>>
>> I do not miss the old days - it's too much fun now!
>>
>> Bill
>
>But without the old days, how could we reminisce? Not to mention play
>"un-upsmanship" :-)

>And we could tell our grandchildren that we walked about three
>miles to school in the snow, and it was uphill both ways, and we
>didn't even have an iPod to listen to on the way, and there was
>no TV, and ...

My father used to do that - not uphill - but on the railroad tracks
as the trains cleared the snow.

When I told my son I had to walk to school in the snow he believed
me.

And then when on vacation he saw I lived only 3 blocks away - and
these were SHORT blocks. I must have had to walk amost
a 1/3 of a mile :-)

Now at the University one night it got COLD. We didn't have
great weather forcasting then so we didn't know it would get that
cold. After playing cards until the student union closed we walked
3 blocks to a 24x7 restaurant. Gawd was it cold.

When we got there we found out just how cold it was - and as the
local police had come in for coffee we asked them if they would
drive us the 6 blocks to the dorm.

They said yes. And the next day I found I had one ear that had
gotten frostbitten in the 3 block walk to the restaurant.

36 degrees below zero. The high the next day was 19 below - but
we really bundled up walking to class.

Give me 3 miles in snow at 25 degrees any day compared to that.

Bill

>--
>Gene E. Bloch (Gino)
>letters617blochg3251
>(replace the numbers by "at" and "dotcom")
>
>


--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

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