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Kids React to Old Computers

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auntblabby
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01 Jun 2014, 11:41 am

TallyMan wrote:
JoelFan wrote:
I remember using the Apple ii e when I was in....3rd 4th grade the small green monochrome screen and those over sized floppies you'd have to take out and flip every so often but hey nothing beat reader rabbit and oregon trail Thankfully we have evolved from such primitive times lol


I wrote some software for the Apple II in the dim distant past. It was for the accounting department to reconcile invoices paid against invoices outstanding. It had a lot of data to process and my boss had written the previous version of the software and the computer had to be left untouched for around 24 hours to process all the data! I rewrote the software from scratch and used a better approach to processing the data and reduced the 24 hours down to around 30 minutes. :P

24 hours? did the computer ever crash during that time and you had to start over?



TallyMan
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01 Jun 2014, 12:28 pm

auntblabby wrote:
TallyMan wrote:
JoelFan wrote:
I remember using the Apple ii e when I was in....3rd 4th grade the small green monochrome screen and those over sized floppies you'd have to take out and flip every so often but hey nothing beat reader rabbit and oregon trail Thankfully we have evolved from such primitive times lol


I wrote some software for the Apple II in the dim distant past. It was for the accounting department to reconcile invoices paid against invoices outstanding. It had a lot of data to process and my boss had written the previous version of the software and the computer had to be left untouched for around 24 hours to process all the data! I rewrote the software from scratch and used a better approach to processing the data and reduced the 24 hours down to around 30 minutes. :P

24 hours? did the computer ever crash during that time and you had to start over?


Yes it did once and the accounts people were annoyed as they'd left it running over the weekend expecting it to be finished by Monday morning. This was what prompted me to look at the existing software and write an entirely new version. My boss had mixed feelings about my version being so much faster than his version. :lol: I can still remember the logic to this day.


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greengeek
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02 Jun 2014, 1:04 pm

Eccles_the_Mighty wrote:
<sigh>

PR#6 was the command to turn the Apple from 40 columns to 80 columns, mainly because the video card was in slot number six. I also remember punched cards and paper tape.


I think the PR# Commands selected the slot that the card that was in, as most cards would would work in slot 0-7 on the II/II+ or 1-7 on the IIe and up.


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