Continuous Reboots Plague Windows XP SP3 Users

I used to write system diagnostics using punch cards and paper tape. No
keyboards in those days. The younger generation has a hard time
comprehending this. Kinda' like B&W TV with rabbit ears.
Load, Deposit, Examine, Run.
"Tony Harding" <ToHard@nowhere.org> wrote in message
news:482d1f02$0$15184$607ed4bc@cv.net...
> journey wrote:
>> On Wed, 14 May 2008 21:12:58 GMT, Bill Ghrist <notmyname@notmyisp.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>> A real blast from the past.
>>>>
>>>> I'm curious now, how many people on the NG have ever seen punched
>>>> cards?
>>> I have a stack of them on my desk. I use them occasionally for
>>> bookmarks, and have also cut up some to make flash cards for tutoring.
>>>
>>> If I searched around a bit, I could also find my old box of punched tape
>>> splices (of course I haven't actually used them in maybe thirty years).
>>
>> In 1985 I took the last semester of PL/I that used cards. I remember
>> walking around the computer lab seeing students with huge stacks of
>> cards to read in.
>>
>> Prior to that I was lucky in that next to my high school there was a
>> vocational school and I was allowed to take some computer classes
>> there. They had all of the hardware to sort the cards.
>>
>> So I got to see the tail end of card usage.
>>
>> Oh, before that at my Dad's engineering company they used cards so
>> when I went in there on Saturdays I saw them used in a production
>> environment.
>>
>> My mother made a hideous Christmas wreath using punch cards sprayed
>> with gold paint.
>
> LOL, very creative, but OY!

"Tony Harding" <ToHard@nowhere.org> wrote in message
news:482d1ebb$0$15184$607ed4bc@cv.net...
> Timothy Drouillard wrote:
>> Some of my earlier programming classes were done using punched cards. It
>> was a pain to get used to the old manual typewriters then try to use the
>> punch card machines which were electric. You'd end up banging the heck
>> out of the keys, till you learned to hit them softer. Of course then when
>> you went back to the manual typewriter, it'd take a bit to realize that
>> you weren't typing anything because you weren't hitting the keys hard
>> enough.
>>
>> Nothing worse than not numbering your cards to save time, but then end up
>> with a large stack of cards in a shoebox that you promptly managed to
>> drop on the floor.
>
> Oy, you're a true veteran of punched cards, Tim!
>
>> We had one card punch machine in our electronics lab that had been
>> rebuilt a few times to the point where the portion that stamped the
>> writing across the top of the card had the wrong letters on the right
>> keys.
>>
>> The cards still worked fine (the holes were in the right places), but the
>> printed characters across the top were pure gibberish. Of course that
>> came in real handy when someone wanted to borrow your cards to see how
>> you had written your program. Hmmmmm. now that I think about it, maybe it
>> was an early form of copy protection?
>
> "It's not a bug, it's a feature" - LOL, a foreshadowing of Microsoft?
>
> I fell into a time warp a couple of days ago while doing some serious
> spring cleaning, I found a bunch of backups from 1992 on 5.25" diskettes.

BTDT
In fact, rather than throw them out, at least I thought it thru enough to
grab one of my old 5 1/4 & 3 1/2 floppy combo drives out of an old Gateway
PC into the same box as the floppies (yep, included the cable as well),
'Just In Case'

Some of those floppies included the original Zork games as well as the old
Commander Keen games!

Gotta save those!!!

"Crazy Coyote" <CrazyCoyote2@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:B_idnUM1H9s67LDVnZ2dnUVZ_jKdnZ2d@comcast.com. ..
>I used to write system diagnostics using punch cards and paper tape. No
>keyboards in those days. The younger generation has a hard time
>comprehending this. Kinda' like B&W TV with rabbit ears.
> Load, Deposit, Examine, Run.

Can you say...PDP8?

Loading a program using the High Speed Paper Tape reader, and getting about
a third of the way through when the paper tape would quit re-folding itself
neatly on the output side resulting in a huge pile of tape all over the
floor that you had to pick back up and re-fold?

Nobody told me you could just hit the Halt button then Resume/Run.

Ah yes, playing 'Adventure' on a line printer.

Not quite the graphics of Crysis.


> "Tony Harding" <ToHard@nowhere.org> wrote in message
> news:482d1f02$0$15184$607ed4bc@cv.net...
>> journey wrote:
>>> On Wed, 14 May 2008 21:12:58 GMT, Bill Ghrist <notmyname@notmyisp.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>> A real blast from the past.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm curious now, how many people on the NG have ever seen punched
>>>>> cards?
>>>> I have a stack of them on my desk. I use them occasionally for
>>>> bookmarks, and have also cut up some to make flash cards for tutoring.
>>>>
>>>> If I searched around a bit, I could also find my old box of punched
>>>> tape splices (of course I haven't actually used them in maybe thirty
>>>> years).
>>>
>>> In 1985 I took the last semester of PL/I that used cards. I remember
>>> walking around the computer lab seeing students with huge stacks of
>>> cards to read in.
>>>
>>> Prior to that I was lucky in that next to my high school there was a
>>> vocational school and I was allowed to take some computer classes
>>> there. They had all of the hardware to sort the cards.
>>>
>>> So I got to see the tail end of card usage.
>>>
>>> Oh, before that at my Dad's engineering company they used cards so
>>> when I went in there on Saturdays I saw them used in a production
>>> environment.
>>>
>>> My mother made a hideous Christmas wreath using punch cards sprayed
>>> with gold paint.
>>
>> LOL, very creative, but OY!
>
>

PDP/8, that's where I started. PDP 11/70 was even more fun. Binary/octal
console!
Huge monstrosities. I think a meg of memory was around $5,000 or more.

On an other note: Everyone blames Microsoft and surely they deserve some
blame but all this technology has to come together at a given time. OEM
designers and manufactures, peripheral manufactures, driver coding, firmware
coders. applications coders and an amazing other number of entities. As
software changes so does the hardware and as the hardware changes so does
the software and so on.
Only us old timers can appreciate the effort.

"Timothy Drouillard" <timdrouillard@comcast.net> wrote in message
newstudnccHjOmGL7DVnZ2dnUVZ_jqdnZ2d@giganews.com ...
>
> "Crazy Coyote" <CrazyCoyote2@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:B_idnUM1H9s67LDVnZ2dnUVZ_jKdnZ2d@comcast.com. ..
>>I used to write system diagnostics using punch cards and paper tape. No
>>keyboards in those days. The younger generation has a hard time
>>comprehending this. Kinda' like B&W TV with rabbit ears.
>> Load, Deposit, Examine, Run.
>
> Can you say...PDP8?
>
> Loading a program using the High Speed Paper Tape reader, and getting
> about a third of the way through when the paper tape would quit re-folding
> itself neatly on the output side resulting in a huge pile of tape all over
> the floor that you had to pick back up and re-fold?
>
> Nobody told me you could just hit the Halt button then Resume/Run.
>
> Ah yes, playing 'Adventure' on a line printer.
>
> Not quite the graphics of Crysis.
>
>
>> "Tony Harding" <ToHard@nowhere.org> wrote in message
>> news:482d1f02$0$15184$607ed4bc@cv.net...
>>> journey wrote:
>>>> On Wed, 14 May 2008 21:12:58 GMT, Bill Ghrist <notmyname@notmyisp.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> A real blast from the past.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm curious now, how many people on the NG have ever seen punched
>>>>>> cards?
>>>>> I have a stack of them on my desk. I use them occasionally for
>>>>> bookmarks, and have also cut up some to make flash cards for tutoring.
>>>>>
>>>>> If I searched around a bit, I could also find my old box of punched
>>>>> tape splices (of course I haven't actually used them in maybe thirty
>>>>> years).
>>>>
>>>> In 1985 I took the last semester of PL/I that used cards. I remember
>>>> walking around the computer lab seeing students with huge stacks of
>>>> cards to read in.
>>>>
>>>> Prior to that I was lucky in that next to my high school there was a
>>>> vocational school and I was allowed to take some computer classes
>>>> there. They had all of the hardware to sort the cards.
>>>>
>>>> So I got to see the tail end of card usage.
>>>>
>>>> Oh, before that at my Dad's engineering company they used cards so
>>>> when I went in there on Saturdays I saw them used in a production
>>>> environment.
>>>>
>>>> My mother made a hideous Christmas wreath using punch cards sprayed
>>>> with gold paint.
>>>
>>> LOL, very creative, but OY!
>>
>>
>

Hi!

> Wow, does that ever date you!

Not like you'd think! :-)

It's only been about 25 years that I've been here on this Earth. But I have
followed computing history and well remember the 5.25" floppies that had
this same warning printed on them.

> I'm curious now, how many people on the NG have ever seen punched cards?

I have seen both those and a reader, though not in operation. I've also seen
some examples of magnetic core memory from computers of the past.

William

On Sat, 17 May 2008 00:14:23 GMT, "William R. Walsh"
<newsgroups1@idontwantjunqueemail.walshcomptech.co m> wrote:

>Hi!
>
>> Wow, does that ever date you!
>
>Not like you'd think! :-)
>
>It's only been about 25 years that I've been here on this Earth. But I have
>followed computing history and well remember the 5.25" floppies that had
>this same warning printed on them.
>
>> I'm curious now, how many people on the NG have ever seen punched cards?
>
>I have seen both those and a reader, though not in operation. I've also seen
>some examples of magnetic core memory from computers of the past.
>
>William

Ah, a nostalgia thread. I'll choose one topic. I began programming
on the Commodore PET PC, which had a built-in cassette tape drive. I
loved programming, and the "wow" game at the time was a text-based
"Star Trek" game in which you could go to different sectors and shoot
the Klingons.

On the Apple II, there was a good text-based Midway game. I'd love to
have a good modern Midway game. It's my favorite WWII battle of
carriers.

I'll see your PDP8 and raise you a Burroughs 220, Univac 1107, and a GE 225 just
for good measure. And, there once was an IBM 1401 in my life. I've seen a lot
of aardvark-like computers. Or were they platypuses? Punched cards, paper
tape and 2 1/4" wide mag tapes! ... Ben Myers

On Fri, 16 May 2008 12:10:51 -0400, "Timothy Drouillard"
<timdrouillard@comcast.net> wrote:

>
>"Crazy Coyote" <CrazyCoyote2@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>news:B_idnUM1H9s67LDVnZ2dnUVZ_jKdnZ2d@comcast.com ...
>>I used to write system diagnostics using punch cards and paper tape. No
>>keyboards in those days. The younger generation has a hard time
>>comprehending this. Kinda' like B&W TV with rabbit ears.
>> Load, Deposit, Examine, Run.
>
>Can you say...PDP8?
>
>Loading a program using the High Speed Paper Tape reader, and getting about
>a third of the way through when the paper tape would quit re-folding itself
>neatly on the output side resulting in a huge pile of tape all over the
>floor that you had to pick back up and re-fold?
>
>Nobody told me you could just hit the Halt button then Resume/Run.
>
>Ah yes, playing 'Adventure' on a line printer.
>
>Not quite the graphics of Crysis.
>
>
>> "Tony Harding" <ToHard@nowhere.org> wrote in message
>> news:482d1f02$0$15184$607ed4bc@cv.net...
>>> journey wrote:
>>>> On Wed, 14 May 2008 21:12:58 GMT, Bill Ghrist <notmyname@notmyisp.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> A real blast from the past.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm curious now, how many people on the NG have ever seen punched
>>>>>> cards?
>>>>> I have a stack of them on my desk. I use them occasionally for
>>>>> bookmarks, and have also cut up some to make flash cards for tutoring.
>>>>>
>>>>> If I searched around a bit, I could also find my old box of punched
>>>>> tape splices (of course I haven't actually used them in maybe thirty
>>>>> years).
>>>>
>>>> In 1985 I took the last semester of PL/I that used cards. I remember
>>>> walking around the computer lab seeing students with huge stacks of
>>>> cards to read in.
>>>>
>>>> Prior to that I was lucky in that next to my high school there was a
>>>> vocational school and I was allowed to take some computer classes
>>>> there. They had all of the hardware to sort the cards.
>>>>
>>>> So I got to see the tail end of card usage.
>>>>
>>>> Oh, before that at my Dad's engineering company they used cards so
>>>> when I went in there on Saturdays I saw them used in a production
>>>> environment.
>>>>
>>>> My mother made a hideous Christmas wreath using punch cards sprayed
>>>> with gold paint.
>>>
>>> LOL, very creative, but OY!
>>
>>

Well, I don't have any computers with AMD CPUs here in my stable and none among
my clients. Should we therefore all run out and install SP3 right away? Heck,
no.

I have come to expect as much from Microsoft. Or as little from Microsoft. With
Microsoft service packs, it does not pay to be an early adopter. Sometimes ya
wins and everything works just fine. Sometimes ya loses and pays the price
spending the time rebuilding the software or reinstalling from scratch. The
odds favor waiting. My time is too valuable to be an unwitting beta tester for
Microsoft's alpha releases masquerading as finished products. Why I'd rather
spend my time trashing Microsoft, 'cause they deserve it... Ben Myers

On Sun, 11 May 2008 01:08:06 -0500, journey <journey@merr.com> wrote:

>""What are you doing this weekend? How about watching your PC
>continually reboot? That's what some aggravated Windows XP users have
>been doing Friday after installing the XP service pack 3 (SP3)."
>
>Rest of article here:
>http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2302371,00.asp

Mag tape (how many capstan pucks did you cause to spin off at high speed and
crash through the door?), and core memory, I've used, but I only go back far
enough to remember the main computer the college had was a IBM 360 with 64k
ram.
Mere mortals were never allowed to 'see' the 360. No... we had to take our
precious offerings of punched cards, ad give them to someone who knew
someone who had a friend that knew the guy that had access to the person
that could feed the cards to the mythical beast.

We would have to wait a day or two to receive the results of our futile
efforts at programming the beast. Usually only to find out we had managed to
put the line printer is some sort of continuous loop that just spit out
reams of green bar paper with only one or two random characters per page.

OK Ben, you win the old **** trophy....

May your path be forever lit by vacuum tubes.......

"Ben Myers" <ben_myers_spam_me_not@charter.net> wrote in message
newscus24pu4if10ksja36vpo51pgo1nls7fc@4ax.com...
> I'll see your PDP8 and raise you a Burroughs 220, Univac 1107, and a GE
> 225 just
> for good measure. And, there once was an IBM 1401 in my life. I've seen
> a lot
> of aardvark-like computers. Or were they platypuses? Punched cards,
> paper
> tape and 2 1/4" wide mag tapes! ... Ben Myers
>
> On Fri, 16 May 2008 12:10:51 -0400, "Timothy Drouillard"
> <timdrouillard@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>>
>>"Crazy Coyote" <CrazyCoyote2@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>>news:B_idnUM1H9s67LDVnZ2dnUVZ_jKdnZ2d@comcast.co m...
>>>I used to write system diagnostics using punch cards and paper tape. No
>>>keyboards in those days. The younger generation has a hard time
>>>comprehending this. Kinda' like B&W TV with rabbit ears.
>>> Load, Deposit, Examine, Run.
>>
>>Can you say...PDP8?
>>
>>Loading a program using the High Speed Paper Tape reader, and getting
>>about
>>a third of the way through when the paper tape would quit re-folding
>>itself
>>neatly on the output side resulting in a huge pile of tape all over the
>>floor that you had to pick back up and re-fold?
>>
>>Nobody told me you could just hit the Halt button then Resume/Run.
>>
>>Ah yes, playing 'Adventure' on a line printer.
>>
>>Not quite the graphics of Crysis.
>>
>>
>>> "Tony Harding" <ToHard@nowhere.org> wrote in message
>>> news:482d1f02$0$15184$607ed4bc@cv.net...
>>>> journey wrote:
>>>>> On Wed, 14 May 2008 21:12:58 GMT, Bill Ghrist <notmyname@notmyisp.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>> A real blast from the past.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I'm curious now, how many people on the NG have ever seen punched
>>>>>>> cards?
>>>>>> I have a stack of them on my desk. I use them occasionally for
>>>>>> bookmarks, and have also cut up some to make flash cards for
>>>>>> tutoring.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If I searched around a bit, I could also find my old box of punched
>>>>>> tape splices (of course I haven't actually used them in maybe thirty
>>>>>> years).
>>>>>
>>>>> In 1985 I took the last semester of PL/I that used cards. I remember
>>>>> walking around the computer lab seeing students with huge stacks of
>>>>> cards to read in.
>>>>>
>>>>> Prior to that I was lucky in that next to my high school there was a
>>>>> vocational school and I was allowed to take some computer classes
>>>>> there. They had all of the hardware to sort the cards.
>>>>>
>>>>> So I got to see the tail end of card usage.
>>>>>
>>>>> Oh, before that at my Dad's engineering company they used cards so
>>>>> when I went in there on Saturdays I saw them used in a production
>>>>> environment.
>>>>>
>>>>> My mother made a hideous Christmas wreath using punch cards sprayed
>>>>> with gold paint.
>>>>
>>>> LOL, very creative, but OY!
>>>
>>>

Ben Myers wrote:
> I'll see your PDP8 and raise you a Burroughs 220, Univac 1107, and a GE 225 just
> for good measure. And, there once was an IBM 1401 in my life. I've seen a lot
> of aardvark-like computers. Or were they platypuses? Punched cards, paper
> tape and 2 1/4" wide mag tapes! ... Ben Myers

How about drum memory? First computer I ever saw was an IBM 650, which
was core free (I was still in high school, BTW).

This was the time when there was serious discussion of analog vs.
digital as the future of computing.