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Maggie’s Motivational Pic Thread v2.0 - - New Rules - See Post #1

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You'll not know how "close to home" for me, this hits.


Back in College, they had a huge computing center that served (primarily) as the training machine for all IT students (but also as a huge R & D facility for the profs, etc.). The star of that center was a CDC 6400 mainframe. This, during my freshman year, But it got upgraded suddenly to a CDC - 6600 for the rest of my time there. HUGE, "number cruncher" scientific machines. They were "octal" (Base-8) IBM Who? :eek: :ROFLMAO:

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Fast forward like 8-9 years and I've just joined a new company. All IBM machines after I graduated. IBM machines are "Hexadecimal" (base-16) and better suited for "data manipulation/movement" than number crunching (scientific). (Well, truth to tell, I did get some IBM experience using the University's "Admin." computing center that did all the business work for the Univ (Payroll, Student course/grade registration, Alumni contribution processing - which, believe it or not, is the most secure/confidential work they do, on the 3rd shift, overnight so that only the one operator is there)). I did 2nd shift there and operated the machine as it did the Univ. Library's electronic catalog manager. Only a few short years later, the library got it's own IBM machine (4331).

My new company sent me to the Boston area for some training classes on a specialty CICS/COBOL facilitator product they had implemented called TELON (if you know it). It's supposed to facilitate the creation of CICS maps.

One afternoon, during my "off time," I did some sightseeing around Boston proper, and I happened to discover the "International Computer Museum." I figured, "This should prove interesting...", wondering what might be so old as to constitute "Museum worthy" status. at that point in time. "What? Like an ENIAC or something?" I paid my money and stepped inside.

Wouldn't ya know.... The very first display in the very first room I went into, was the above CDC-6600 mainframe. I couldn't believe how "old" that made me feel, even back then.

Of course, now my "feeling old" index has exploded geometrically, but... :eek::ROFLMAO:
 
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