You may be a Geek if...

[Nickle]

There was at least 2, possibly as many as 5 in USAREUR. One was at Frankfurt, 5th Corps (17th DPD, where I was), 7th Corps's was at Nelligen, near Sttutgart, I think 21st Support Command had one, and I'm fairly sure 7th Army HQ had one. There also may have been one in Berlin.

 

[C-pher]

I played the original wolfenstein 3d on my 486. Later when the original doom was released it brought my 486 to it's knees. I was just a young buck then...

BTW, c-pher, how did you get hooked up with that beta - testing!!! Only thing I've ever beta tested was Revit Structural, CAD software from AutoDesk. Not nearly as much fun.

I was part of Playstation Underground....and from being there...I got picked as a beta tester. I'm guessing that they tracked my stats for SOCOM II on-line as well as my Clan. But I think that signing up for the PS Underground helped. They have sent me hats, and free demos, etc. It's pretty cool.

 

[Nickle]

I almost missed the post about boat anchors. The UNIVAC or the IBM? I'm thinking both. Seems like we had a UNIVAC indoors. I'm just glad all I did was provide power, help fix the A/C units and chase parts and A/C units.

 

[dwarven1]

There was at least 2, possibly as many as 5 in USAREUR. One was at Frankfurt, 5th Corps (17th DPD, where I was), 7th Corps's was at Nelligen, near Sttutgart, I think 21st Support Command had one, and I'm fairly sure 7th Army HQ had one. There also may have been one in Berlin.

Hey, Nickel, when were you in Frankfurt? I have a friend who was stationed in Germany supporting those beasts in the early 80's. I seem to remember him bitching about having to drive tractor trailors with computers in them.

Ross

 

[Moderator]

You know what IBM stands for.

 

[Wildweasel]

The Univac ran off of 488V if I remember right and high freq. It was originally a navel targeting computer that was revamped as our main system.
(about all I can still say about it online. )They had a mobile version of our system that was scrapped that they sent to us a spares.
all the Tachs in the motors in the tape drives where broke. (they hit a bump in the road! ) There where 2 versions of my subsystem in the world.
(Both in germany. )

You are a geek when you understand half what we are talking about.!

 

[MrsWildweasel]

The UYK-7's. I only made sure we had the parts for the guys to fix everything that broke. Then there was the time I was getting duece and a half parts,and helicopter parts,cause our resident idiot that took over NCOIC of the shop couldn't pull his head out and get our parts,but that's a whole nother story.

 

[dwarven1]

I've been MOVED!
Inferior But Marketable.
Itty Bitty Machine Corp

and I'm sure that there are others.

 

[Nickle]

I was in that unit from 1975 to 1977. While your friend was hauling those vans, I was working keeping the Warsaw Pact's aircraft on their side of the border, I was in an Air Defense unit (IHAWK) in Schweinfurt (1979 to 1983).

 

[MrsWildweasel]

And if you know where the other field station was.....

 

[dwarven1]

Ferret & I were in high school when you were playing with computers. Oh, well... just wondering.

Ross

 

[Nickle]

You know what IBM stands for.

Actually I do, it was my mother-in-law's initials, believe it or not.

Irmgard B. Marler (she obviously wasn't US born).

 

[MrsWildweasel]

Both those field stations are no more. [cry]

 

[dwarven1]

I was in that unit from 1975 to 1977. While your friend was hauling those vans, I was working keeping the Warsaw Pact's aircraft on their side of the border, I was in an Air Defense unit (IHAWK) in Schweinfurt (1979 to 1983).

From Ferret: In Germany, I was with the 2nd Armored Division (Fwd), HQ Company, Division Data Center from '81 through '82, can't recall exactly when...The nearest town was called Garlstedt.

 

[dwarven1]

From Ferret: Ah. I was briefly TDY to Tzweibrucken, was he there?

 

[Nickle]

I may have passed through, but only briefly. I was a ways from both areas.

 

[M1911]

You have more than 1 HP calculator and flat can't use a calculator that doesn't use RPN. More importantly, you don't understand why anyone would WANT to use a calculator that isn't RPN.

 

[M1911]

Or, if you've ever used an IBM PS2 (esp Model 50 or 70).

PS2? That's new-fangled cr*p. First PC I used was dual floppy. My first PC was an 8086 with a 10 (or was it 20?)M hard drive. My current camera has a 1G hard drive...

First thing I programmed was an HP65 calculator. Second was a 370 computer using punch cards. First micro computer was an HP 9845 that used micro cassette tapes as primary storage. Display was 35 character LED -- you could scroll right to see the rest of the line. It used a single line editor and you coded in Basic.

 

[M1911]

Actually, you know you're a geek when...

something breaks in your computer, so you go down the basement and canibalize one of the unused hulks you've got laying around.

 

[dwarven1]

You have more than 1 HP calculator and flat can't use a calculator that doesn't use RPN. More importantly, you don't understand why anyone would WANT to use a calculator that isn't RPN.

You know you're married to a geek (or an engineer) when you make the mistake of loaning her an HP calculator... then the manual so she can learn how to use it... and wind up having to buy her one of her own so you can get yours back.

BTDT.

Ross

 

[KMaurer]

If the linux box you're typing on right now was assembled from pieces of three other computers composting in your basement.

If you have two copies of VisiCalc, one still in the unopened shrinkwrap, and keep them on the shelf next to your 5-1/4" system floppies for DOS 1.1.

If you take visiting friends and family members on tours of the Computer Museum and remember when the SAGE system was classified up the yin-yang.

If you remember when you and your co-workers used JOSS on the job.

If you were on ARPANET when there were fewer than a dozen nodes.

If Wang tried to sell your company card-programable pocket calculators.

TRS-80

Ken

 

[C-pher]

If you used to play on BBS boards and think that it was cool that you could download a picture or small file overnight...on a 300 baud modem.

If you watched War Games, and then WENT to the BBSs thinking that you might get lucky and do that....

 

[Nickle]

If you can remember when Atari actually made computers, but the only storage was a tape drive.

 

[dwarven1]

TRS-80

If you not only remember them, but remember working on one with the "expansion module" that gave you a whole 64K of memory... and allowed you to use a disk drive! (a 5 1/4" floppy, that is!) (all the others in the lab were 16K models and had the cassette drives. )

 

[MrsWildweasel]

Our first computer actually was an Atari. [lol]

 

[Nickle]

So was mine, that's why I mentioned it. IIRC, it was better than the competition at the time.

 

[dwarven1]

IIRC, our first one was a Timex Sinclair 1000. I seem to recall that Dad also picked up a TI 99/4a, too. When he died, one of the projects he left unfinished was trying to build a breadboard C/PM system.

And rebuilding an Chickering player piano (Ampico B, I think).

Ross

 

[MrsWildweasel]

We bought ours while we were in Berlin,and if I remember rightly there was not much to chose from for us over there. I know we ended buying some misc. things for it on the german economy,since it was actually cheaper than the PX.

 

[dwarven1]

We bought ours while we were in Berlin,and if I remember rightly there was not much to chose from for us over there. I know we ended buying some misc. things for it on the german economy,since it was actually cheaper than the PX.

Uh... you bought your what over in Germany?

Sue, can you use the quote button occasionally so we know what you're talking about? (not meaning to nitpick, but with a post like the one I'm quoting, we really have no idea what you're talking about.)

 

[C-pher]

Our first PC was the IBM PCjr, and it was out as the same time as the 6400's and the like. And I still think that it was better than the Atari's.

But I did get a kick out of being able to use my old TDKs to save data on when I was playing at my buddies...