I challenge you to GEEK FU!

[Old Ironsights]

Stand and Deliver! Show your Geek Creds!



In 1988 I was attached to USAREUR, V Corps.

I was a Specialist (13B/J4 - detached) running a Battalion S3 and using a VAX WAN running 8.5" single sided Floppies.

This was unacceptable - especially in our Fulda Hide.

So I started using something I brought with me from my kolege edumakation time...



Any guesses?

I was making and altering Training Schedules and other Documents/Memos on the fly... from an M577 TOC Tent Extension, using nothing but our normal 10KW power.

It rather intrigued the V Corps Brass... so they started showing up at my TOC to look at my gear (the printer, a STAR Nx1000 dot-matrix, long dead, but carried in an identical (modified to allow paper feed) briefcase, is not shown)



It DID annoy them greatly that the hardware they saw was NOT owned by the Army - though I took great pains to make sure the S2 had 100% control of my Disks... I took them out and gave them to him every COB. Not too hard, BECAUSE.

It has no HDD. Only two, 1.44mb 3.5" DD Floppies.



Still, it still works.

I only had one modem black-boxed by Cheyenne Mountian (Word of advice... don't have a wire-dog cut you in Direct to the NORAD system while @ Ft. Carson... it gets... interesting.) but the Tempest level isolation in the unit (Tempest wasn't invented yet... but Zenith was meeting the specs... probably wrote them) saved the rest of the unit.

So...

Geek Fu:

I STILL OWN my FUNCTIONAL, PRIVATELY PURCHASED (never owned by the .gov), 8088/NEC-V20/CGA-LCD laptop that was used during the late 80s in a Military Roll, that demonstrated the value of Portable Computing in a Field Environment to Combat Brass. Before I left the Service (within 3 years) the US Army had procured Zenith Laptops (with 20mb Winchester HDDs) for Field Use... a "coincidence" I find hardly coincidental given the number of Stars I was obliged to put up with.

Anyway, Zethus (look him up... I name all my Laptops), if beyond geriatric, is still kicking. (Unlike my GRiD & HP Sewing Machine(s)...)

Whatcha Got Geek Boys?

[AJMD429]

How about a HP-41 'calculator' from 1981, that was first (I think) to use assembly-language type programming with branching, loops, conditionals, etc., and you could type your programs in using alpha-numeric keys and commands and labels.

It was very expandable, as the article above indicates, but the really COOL thing was that someone found tons of 'undocumented' functions (including alphabetic sorting capabilities, etc.) you could create by using the eight-bit 'flag' registers which could be shifted any number of bits (so 00110101 could be shifted left 3 bits to be 10101001). Once you knew the right binary-code for the undocumented function, you could do some memory-swapping from 'program' to 'data' and using these 'shifted' codes, create program commands not in the official HP user-manuals.

The 'User Community' called this 'Synthetic Programming', and I had quite a ball with it.

You could also interface many hardware items, like magnetic strip readers, bar-code readers (another way to do the 'Synthetic Programming' was to create 'shifted' bar-codes to enter program steps). People made interfaces to control test equipment and thermostats, etc., as well.

Of course so much of this became obsolete with the small computers, just like the 'handitalkie' Ham radios could do all sorts of cool stuff using repeaters and packet transmission, that are now simple things any teenie-bopper can do on their cell-phone without knowing all the Ham Radio stuff.


(Wikipedia Photo)

[Old Ironsights]

HP-41 'calculator' from 1980, that was first (I think) to use assembly-language type programming with branching, loops, conditionals, etc.

Well, if you want to get pedantic... I still have my Deci-LIon/Log-Log Duplex Trig slide rule(s) (Including the "Pocket" version...) and Log(rythmic Tables) Book... and other stuff (TRS80 8K Pocket Computer etc)

But... not exacts where I was going.

[AJMD429]

HP-41 'calculator' from 1980, that was first (I think) to use assembly-language type programming with branching, loops, conditionals, etc.

Well, if you want to get pedantic... I still have my Deci-LIon/Log-Log Duplex Trig slide rule(s) (Including the "Pocket" version...) and Log(rythmic Tables) Book... and other stuff (TRS80 8K Pocket Computer etc)

But... not exacts where I was going.

Somewhere I have a stack of 'Fortran Cards' - the hole-punched ones you fed into Purdue's 1960's gymnasium-sized computer...

[Old Ironsights]

HP-41 'calculator' from 1980, that was first (I think) to use assembly-language type programming with branching, loops, conditionals, etc.

Well, if you want to get pedantic... I still have my Deci-LIon/Log-Log Duplex Trig slide rule(s) (Including the "Pocket" version...) and Log(rythmic Tables) Book... and other stuff (TRS80 8K Pocket Computer etc)

But... not exacts where I was going.

Somewhere I have a stack of 'Fortran Cards' - the hole-punched ones you fed into Purdue's 1960's gymnasium-sized computer...

Better... do you remember what they were supposed to do?

(My TRS-80 Pocket Computer PC-II (bought mine in 1982):

) The computer still works, the pen plotter is long defunct.)

I always wanted one of these:



But ended up with a Timex Sinclair, then the Zenith, first.

[Rusty]

I have an abacus.

[Mescalero]

PC-6
Still holds all my math functions.

[Mescalero]

PC-6
Still holds all my math functions.

[Grizz]

no real creds here but before most of y'all were born took a class in nyc in the chrysler building on programming ibm 360 with cobol and punch cards. don't have the 360 in a briefcase though. nor any punch cards.

at the time I was working as second assistant to a trader in a bucket shop on wall street. no computing going on there. it was all done in the heads of the head traders.

[GonnePhishin]

Does a pencil and paper count?

[1894c]

all I can say, and I mean ALL I can say is...WOW! ... :)

[gamekeeper]

As long as I can search, find and buy on line I have no need to delve further into technology..... Or do I....

[Griff]

Does a pencil and paper count?

Operated that card punch machine in the service, while "laptops" still referred to where guys preferred girls to sit!

[Old Ironsights]

3 Posts (one Pocket), 2 K&Es (One Pocket 4181-1 and a Mannheim), and a Sterling Mannheim. (My Log Book (Logarithmic Tables) is buried in a moving box.)

And just to throw in some Shooting Geek: a 1000yd Split Image (analog) Range Finder (I also have a 400 yd version)