maddog pulls out his old HP-35, brushes up on reverse Polish notation, and takes the measure of modern storage on old technology.
Taking Measure
People with long grey beards often talk about the systems they used to work on, how those systems had only “four kilobytes of memory,” and the wonderful things they used to be able to do with them.
Recently I came across a small (44.5-inch/ 113-cm) segment of paper tape that I used to store programs on one of the first computer systems I ever used: a PDP-8 computer from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). That system had four thousand 12-bit words of memory and no disk or magnetic tape drive. All data had to be read in and punched or printed out to an ASR-33 teletype at the blinding speed of 10 bytes (i.e., 10 printed characters) per second.
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you've found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Linux Mint Finally Receiving Support for Gestures
If you use the Linux Mint Cinnamon desktop, you'll be thrilled to know that 21.2 is getting support for gestures on touchscreen devices and touchpads.
-
An All-Snap Version of Ubuntu is In The Works
Along with the standard deb version of the open-source operating system, Canonical will release an-all snap version.
-
Mageia 9 Beta 2 Ready for Testing
The latest beta of the popular Mageia distribution now includes the latest kernel and plenty of updated applications.
-
KDE Plasma 6 Looks to Bring Basic HDR Support
The KWin piece of KDE Plasma now has HDR support and color management geared for the 6.0 release.
-
Bodhi Linux 7.0 Beta Ready for Testing
The latest iteration of the Bohdi Linux distribution is now available for those who want to experience what's in store and for testing purposes.
-
Changes Coming to Ubuntu PPA Usage
The way you manage Personal Package Archives will be changing with the release of Ubuntu 23.10.
-
AlmaLinux 9.2 Now Available for Download
AlmaLinux has been released and provides a free alternative to upstream Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
-
An Immutable Version of Fedora Is Under Consideration
For anyone who's a fan of using immutable versions of Linux, the Fedora team is currently considering adding a new spin called Fedora Onyx.
-
New Release of Br OS Includes ChatGPT Integration
Br OS 23.04 is now available and is geared specifically toward web content creation.
-
Command-Line Only Peropesis 2.1 Available Now
The latest iteration of Peropesis has been released with plenty of updates and introduces new software development tools.