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Childhood Computing

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Re: Childhood Computing

#101

Post by asdff »

GuB-42 wrote: post #39

> These are expensive machines Impressive how that part changed. Today, many computers are cheaper than the desk they are sitting on. Many companies pay over $2000 for office furniture, and that's not even fancy. A $1000 laptop sits on top of it. Furniture made by an actual cabinet maker will easily get to $5000+. About the price of a maxed out gaming rig, or an enterprise level workstation.

Seems like computers have become a sort of ongoing expense though. They are cheaper at the get, but no one is getting a new desk every 3 years like they might a new laptop. People are probably burning through laptops for one reason or another way more than they burn through desks. Company might not ever replace that desk.

The computers companies ditch and you can get on ebay are no slouches either. Recent gen i5 i7 mini pcs some with 16gb ram already. These are no slouch cpus. No m series macs but all these companies are doing are replacing it with a newer i5 or i7 mini pc, and the worker is often what, opening excel and outlook and teams, same as always.

Re: Childhood Computing

#102

Post by contingencies »

mfld wrote: post #62

Does anyone remember the art of optimising MSDOS startup to have enough free memory for games? And inspecting gorillas.bas? For me, this probably contributed to an interest to learn more and experiment. In fact, I'd like to encourage my son to a similar creative exploration, but don't how this is going to happen when pulled into the current generation of games and videos.

Indeed: config.sys autoexec.bat, EMS, HIGHMEM, and all those terrible early sound blaster drivers, mouse drivers, network drivers... I think the one I found hardest to get running was Quarantine. But it was definitely one of the best games. So imaginative for the era. And Australian! With music from some later famous bands! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwO8XWbB1Pk&list=PLA5hK1g6CN... https://www.playdosgames.com/play/quarantine

Re: Childhood Computing

#103

Post by lugu »

I installed Gnome on the home computer for the kids. I just realized how disempowering the Gnome really is. I remember, as a kid, navigating all menus to understand how it works. With Gnome, my kids barely can set the background to an image, can't even have a solid color background. I will probably move to DMS or KDE.

Re: Childhood Computing

#106

Post by joarv0249nw »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #35
qsera wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure. Computers where pretty homogenous back then as well. Every time I find myself infront of a computer, I would do "cd games", and there would be games... I think it started becoming less interesting as it grew more powerful and with it came more capable displays and GUI interface, and before you know it, computers are indistinguishable from a damn television. At least for me as computers started showing more…

That's fair. There's probably also an aspect of "The computer used to be a place you would go, now it's a rectangle that comes everywhere with you" It's definitely less magical when it is everywhere and in everythin You're not alone in missing the magic though. I miss it too

I think part of the magic was that I felt I could get to understand how the system works on a deeper level. I wonder if it is now too hard to get to that level of understanding. One would spend most of the time just scratching the almost impenetrable surface of todays systems

Re: Childhood Computing

#107

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

My start was a Heathkit programmable calculator, in the mid-1970s.

My first computer was a VIC-20, in 1982, or 1983. I got it while I was still in tech school.

I used HP computers, at my day job, in the 1980s, to write ASM, Pascal, and BASIC programs, for controlling GPIB-based test equipment. I was an EE, and the coding was an “adjunct.”

My first real personal computer, was a Mac Plus, in 1986 (I was 24). That was the one that started me really getting into coding.

Re: Childhood Computing

#108

Post by killerstorm »

I start with BASIC on ZX Spectrum and C64, then QBASIC on MS-DOS, Turbo Pascal, etc.

I feel like it's more friendly and chill way to get into computing than what kids get these days -- too many options, leaky abstractions, etc.

And it's not hard to go from BASIC to assembly to understand how computer work on lower level - BASIC commands only do a little bit of computing at a time, so you get used to it. While Python and JS line of code can do a lot...

Re: Childhood Computing

#109

Post by theragra »

Part about smell hit me strong. As a child of uni professor, I had some access to university computer lab. The smell in professor room was very plastic, dusty, a touch of burnt rubber. This smell meant a world to me. Access to something absolutely magical: not only cool games, but the world of adults who knew how to operate these machines.

I remember how at 12 or 13 year old, my father had given me a printout of Turbo Pascal program that calculated square root equation, and told me to print and run it.

That was a beginning of my programming career.

Re: Childhood Computing

#110

Post by WillAdams »

sebastiennight wrote: post #83
WillAdams wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for that! I am going to make a link to your comment from the forum post in question: https://community.carbide3d.com/t/knapp-joint-with-cnc/19723 (scroll all the way to the bottom) and will hopefully be able to translate that into Open(Python)SCAD code so as to make a generalized solution for my current project: https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview

Hey you made my day, I can now say that I contributed to a CAD project. Had never heard of a "knapp joint" before! OK so your bottom circles are identical, so the y-position of the center of the top circle is easy as pie. What does your code need to do?

My pleasure! The Knapp joint is an interesting historical dead-end in woodworking joinery --- it's interesting to see it come back.

I will work up a module like to:

         def Full_Blind_Box_Joint(self, bx, by, orientation, side, width, thickness, largeVdiameter, smallDiameter, normalormirror = "Default", squaretool = 102, smallV = 390, largeV = 301):
from:

https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview/blob/main/gcodepre...

(just pushed up that file, but not any other file)

The idea is that a user will be able to specify a joint dimension and position, then generate a set of DXF files, which when imported will cut out the design in question once toolpaths are assigned, no need to go through all the manual drawing.

The afore-mentioned joint, Full_Blind_Box_Joint is used in:

https://cutrocket.com/p/63781eaf9822f

and variations of it in other box designs at: https://cutrocket.com/u/WillAdams

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