🚀 go-pugleaf

On 16/05/2014 12:07 PM, Cryptoengineer wrote:
> | || ||| ||||| || | <|||||||||||||||||||||> wrote in
> | || ||| ||||| || | news:53754a37$0$49617$c3e8da3$fdf4f6af@news.astraweb.
> | || ||| ||||| || | com:
>
>> On 15/05/2014 1:11 PM, Cryptoengineer wrote:
>>> | || ||| ||||| || | <|||||||||||||||||||||> wrote in news:53726154$0
>>> $49691$c3e8da3$fdf4...@news.astraweb.com:
>>>
>>>> On 14/05/2014 3:02 AM, ches...@freeshell.org wrote:
>>>>> | || ||| ||||| || | <|||||||||||||||||||||> wrote:
>>>>>> On 14/05/2014 1:45 AM, ches...@freeshell.org wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> you can't get banned from usenet, but only a dozen people use it
>>>>>
>>>>> Poor Usenet!
>>>>
>>>> At least you don't need a RedFacedTwit account to use it.
>>>> A lot of ISPs , at least those around here, don't include server
>>>> access anymore so I don't think many people are even aware of it or
>>>> what a newsreader is.
>>>>
>>>> How many people even know what a DOS CLI is ?
>>>>
>>>> If it doesn't use a web GUI window it doesn't exists.
>>>>
>>>> Nobody in here but us curmudgeons :-)
>>>
>>> CLI? That newfangled thing?
>>>
>>> When I started programming, you had to know how to thread
>>> paper tape into an ASR-33 teletype. Punched cards were a
>>> move up.
>>
>> Sheer luxury, we had to cut down trees to make the paper for our tape
>> and it was uphill both ways to the forest :-)
>>
>> When the boot process involved loading the 'microcode' pinboard it was
>> quite arcane, the machine code changed . Microcontrollers still allow
>> that.
>
> It wasn't quite that bad, but we did have use the front panel switches
> to toggle in the boot loader which read the paper tape.
>
> (this was a PDP-8e, circa 1971).
Sheer luxury. Really, seriously, THAT was :-)

It just depends when you started and how near the centre of the universe 
you were..
It was the time of transition from hand assembled 256 bytes memory with 
discrete transistors to ttl chips.
Sooo many bc109s (one of the transistors), so many solder connections.
Getting an octal/hex display was a step up.
Goodness,having a step button and a hex keypad was a step up.
Address,data,deposit,Address,data,deposit,Address,data,deposit, in binary.
Get some more chips, probably $200 in todays money.
Address in hex,data in hex,deposit,step, sheer luxury.
I started into it as a teenager working on a mine in central Australia, 
saving up for uni, reading magazines and ordering the parts from the US 
by snail mail. There wasn't much else to do apart from drink and gamble, 
the pay was very good , about the only thing that was.
You had a job that had a table and chair, you get to sit down? sheer 
luxury  :-)

You could check out the pi and similar microcontrollers.

Many devices now are pretty much single chip with a few 
support/interface components have a GUI and an OS. Modems, 'smart' 
phones (for people who know they need all the help they can get :-)