[NSRCA-discussion] website back up

Sat Dec 4 14:10:20 AKST 2010

Interesting discussion. During my years in mid management I found most knew
what they wanted to know and were often offended when presented additional
information as if it complicated their world.
As for computer development, when I entered engineering management A 2-D CAD
seat was around $50,000 ($25k software on a $25K workstation) which was kind
of unappealing for a small company. Within a very few years the software
price and support requirements both came in line with PC's having greater
capability and a lower cost at which time I added two seats for around
$18,000. Within a few years 3-D became an affordable tool and I tried to
explain to the folks selling the stuff that they were misrepresenting the
produce selling it as a design tool. For years I designed drawing freehand
on placemats during lunch meetings. Prior to near photo quality 3-D images
prototype hardware needed to be built and presented to through marketing
folks to customers only to here "that's not what I meant". Needless to say
this pre-computer age development process was expensive and time consuming.
I found these tools to be extremely useful for creating new or revising
parts within existing assemblies and timely communication of concept. The
real benefit was in electronic filling and communication of information.
Today we seam to be restricted only by our imagination.
I'm still only a user of computer technology and I miss it greatly when it's
broke.
Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: nsrca-discussion-bounces at lists.nsrca.org
[mailto:nsrca-discussion-bounces at lists.nsrca.org]On Behalf Of Ron Van Putte
Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2010 12:35 PM
To: General pattern discussion
Subject: Re: [NSRCA-discussion] website back up

I almost wrote, "As an engineer, I'm seldom surprised by what
business types don't know."  However, I decide not to write it.

Ron VP

On Dec 4, 2010, at 2:29 PM, Phil Spelt wrote:

> Yup, used those to teach business computing in the early '80s -- I
> was amazed at what business types didn't know about computing back
> then...
>
> At 02:06 PM 12/4/2010, you wrote:
>> RS - TRS - 80   alias  Radio Shack TRASH80
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Pete Cosky
>> To: 'General pattern discussion'
>> Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2010 9:16 AM
>> Subject: Re: [NSRCA-discussion] website back up
>>
>> I went from that to an Apple IIe to an IBM clone. TONS of money
>> for very little computing power in retrospect, but it paved the
>> way for things like hackers......
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks again Marty for all you do keeping the website going.
>>
>>
>>
>> From: nsrca-discussion-bounces at lists.nsrca.org [ mailto:nsrca-
>> discussion-bounces at lists.nsrca.org] On Behalf Of Lightfoot
>> Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2010 9:07 AM
>> To: 'General pattern discussion'
>> Subject: Re: [NSRCA-discussion] website back up
>>
>>
>>
>> Glad to see that I wasn't the only sucker that bought a DEC
>> Rainbow. I couldn't afford the HD. Can you believe that we paid
>> over $3K for that anchor? Of course that smooth scroll display
>> made it worthwhile! I had a grad school classmate in '82 from IBM
>> who said that the PC would never amount to anything.
>>
>>
>>
>> Jay Marshall
>>
>> From: nsrca-discussion-bounces at lists.nsrca.org [ mailto:nsrca-
>> discussion-bounces at lists.nsrca.org] On Behalf Of Pete Cosky
>> Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2010 8:48 AM
>> To: 'General pattern discussion'
>> Subject: Re: [NSRCA-discussion] website back up
>>
>>
>>
>> I loved the Rainbow. CPM OS and dual 5 1/4 floppies in a single unit
>> height....it was THE machine IMHO back then.
>>
>>
>>
>> From: nsrca-discussion-bounces at lists.nsrca.org [ mailto:nsrca-
>> discussion-bounces at lists.nsrca.org] On Behalf Of Phil Spelt
>> Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2010 8:38 AM
>> To: General pattern discussion
>> Subject: Re: [NSRCA-discussion] website back up
>>
>>
>>
>> In 1983, I bought a 5MB hard drive for my DEC Rainbow for about
>> $500, and wondered how I would EVER fill up the 5 MB!!!  'Course,
>> we can do a LOTmore these days, such as Call Of Duty, etc, etc.
>> lol...
>>
>> At 08:22 PM 12/3/2010, you wrote:
>>
>> Yep. My 1st hard drive was 10MB, and cost $450. Storage and RAM
>> are crazy cheap these days. Consider that the software used to
>> control the Command Module on the Apollo missions ran in 60K of
>> memory. 2 blocks of ROM (24k and 32k each) and 1 block of RAM (4k).
>>
>> Doug
>>
>>
>>
>> ---- Ron Van Putte <vanputte at cox.net> wrote:
>> > A computer guy told me recently that he sold hard drives with one
>> > terrabyte of memory for over $2 million several years ago, after I
>> > told him I had just bought one for $69.99 plus shipping.
>> >
>> > Ron VP
>> >
>> > On Dec 3, 2010, at 5:27 PM, Bob Richards wrote:
>> >
>> > > Core memory, I bet!
>> > >
>> > > --- On Fri, 12/3/10, Phil Spelt <chuenkan at comcast.net> wrote:
>> > >
>> > > Speaking of "knowing the whole thing", Ron, in 1972, already,
>> when
>> > > I was a college prof in Indiana, we had a relatively new Digital
>> > > Equipment Corp. (DEC) PDP-11-20 mainframe computer in the comp
>> > > center.  A DEC guy was there service the disk drives, and I asked
>> > > him something about the memory modules.  He didn't know the
>> answer,
>> > > and when I expressed surprise, he indicated that there was no one
>> > > at DEC that knew any of their computers from end to end!!!  And
>> > > that was 1972 --think how complex things have gotten by now...
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > _______________________________________________
>> > > NSRCA-discussion mailing list
>> > > NSRCA-discussion at lists.nsrca.org
>> > > http://lists.nsrca.org/mailman/listinfo/nsrca-discussion
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > NSRCA-discussion mailing list
>> > NSRCA-discussion at lists.nsrca.org
>> > http://lists.nsrca.org/mailman/listinfo/nsrca-discussion
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> NSRCA-discussion mailing list
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>>
>> --> There are only two types of aircraft -- fighters and targets.
>>
>> Phil Spelt, Past President, Knox County Radio Control Society, Inc.
>>        URL: http://www.kcrctn.com
>> AMA--1294,  Scientific Leader Member  SPA--177, Board Member
>>       My URL: http://mywebpages.comcast.net/~chuenkan/
>>       (865) 435-1476 v  (865) 604-0541 c
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> NSRCA-discussion mailing list
>> NSRCA-discussion at lists.nsrca.org
>> http://lists.nsrca.org/mailman/listinfo/nsrca-discussion
> --> There are only two types of aircraft -- fighters and targets.
>
> Phil Spelt, Past President, Knox County Radio Control Society, Inc.
>        URL: http://www.kcrctn.com
> AMA--1294,  Scientific Leader Member  SPA--177, Board Member
>       My URL: http://mywebpages.comcast.net/~chuenkan/
>       (865) 435-1476 v  (865) 604-0541 c
>
> _______________________________________________
> NSRCA-discussion mailing list
> NSRCA-discussion at lists.nsrca.org
> http://lists.nsrca.org/mailman/listinfo/nsrca-discussion

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