Some early brain damage... Me and these two other guys worked at a place where we could get hand-me-down PC stuff for almost nothing. We were titled “electricians” but we did our share of geekey stuff to support our division.
It was all obsolete but completely “True Blue” IBM. We’d get 5150 PCs, 5151 expansion chassis with their goofy ¾-inch umbilical cords, 5160 XTs and 5170 ATs. Many had 3270 emulation cards that seemed to be sort of an early form of blazing pre-ethernet, giving coveted access to the almighty Oracle base through pricey 4-wire data circuits. Early PC serial/parallel ports were termed “aux” and “prn” before comx and lptx. ATs had an idiotic 1.2MB bios configuration disk.
Most common add-on board had a hardware clock and 384KB of that mysterious “above 640” memory. There were lots of 20-40MB hdds and hideous failure-plagued 10MB removable media; riding in notched frames of the ATs in an "optional" hatcheted ½-height drive bay.
This was all pre-mouse…with those beautiful 100?-key “Selectric Touch” keyboards jealously guarded… IMO they still have not been even closely copied—much less outpaced—in feel and reliability.
Used Qmodem and Telix terminal emulation software along with WordStar and Lotus v2.x. Remember LIST, Xtree and Phil Katz?
One of us was this crazy guy who would write dos executables in assembly language so we could do remote equipment polling and control on water-distribution pumping and 115/12kV substations at a 5000-acre site. The place had its assortment of asphalt and dirt roads. The electrical-system polling had a ~5-mile daisy-chained RS-423 leased 4-wire data line.
The crazy guy’s code was very compact and permitted power-failure restart to save us a few trips from after-hours phone calls. It all ran 24/7/365; 3 shifts with few complaints.
Those PCs have since made chock blocks. Original prices on the stuff must have been stellar.
[This message has been edited by Bjarney (edited 06-30-2002).]
