Originally Posted by
Clean
Most of the chest beating on the internet wouldn't happen in face to face.
Mike Reed about 20 years ago maintained a blog called "Flame Warriors". A gifted artist, he made cartoon caricatures of various stereotypical personas who post on the Internet forums. I gather he was probably a computer systems administrator who also moderated Internet forums. One of his characters was:
From Mike Reed's Flame Warrior blog
Originally Posted by
Clean
it's been 20 years since I diagnosed Problems for a 3rd party IBM Maintenance firm for a living. My printer though, gave me enough problems to at least know where NOT to ground things.
I remember those days, but mine go back to 30+ years ago. Made my own printer cables to interface Centronics parallel bussed printer to non-standard computer connectors, ditto with RS-232 serial busses.
For home use, installed a parallel print circuit board in an Olivetti daisy wheel typewriter, to have a letter quality printer. Back in the mid 1980's, bought a 40 character dot matrix thermal printer from a surplus electronics store in Sacramento for under $100. (Then, printers were expensive.) The ready line was inverted, so wired in-line with the cable a digital inverter using a transistor and set of resistors. (If a transistor is driven to saturation, it can act as a simple logic device.) Think I used a PNP, it was so long ago. Worked like a charm on my Radio Shack Color Computer II.
Then, the home computers were the ideal digital electronic learning lab. I did also sorts of things, upgraded RAM from 16KB to 64KB by unsoldering the 16KB, sorldering in 64KB, and running jumpers to the right traces to adapt for differences with additional components (resistors, capacitors, etc.). Removed the standard basic PROM and upgraded to enhanced color basic with a new burnt in EPROM wired in.
Programming in assembly language, Motorola 6809, Intel 8088 and Zilog Z-80 at home helped me with learning and incorporating IBM 360J Assembly at work on real time data acquisition and load servo control systems.