[Beowulf] A press release

[Gerry Creager]

Robert G. Brown wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Jul 2008, Tony Travis wrote:
> 
>> Chris Samuel wrote:
>>> [...]
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Yorkshiremen_sketch
>>>
>>> I remember when I could bring the complete kernel sources
>>> home on a single 3.5" floppy disk.  Compressed, mind you,
>>> not this new fangled gzip!  Then came 0.9.15, 1.8MB compressed..
>>
>> Hello, Chris.
>>
>> 3.5" floppy - you were lucky!
>>
>> I 'ad t' run th'entire Minix on half a broken low-density 5.25" 
>> floppy, and father would beat me wi a stick for wastin' precious disk 
>> space...
>>
>> ...and he'd complain that there's nowt wrong wi' th'old 8" floppies!
>>
>> Eee, by gum them were probably th'happiest days of mi life...
>>
>> [I'm from Lancashire, not Yorkshire, BTW]
>>
>>     Tony.
> 
> OK, in a minute you'll have me reminiscing about booting from paper tape
> and havin' to drill me own 'oles wit' me teeth...
> 
> ;-)

Glad you smiled with that.  Seems I find myself teaching an OS class all 
of a sudden this summer.  I recounted my experience with an old HP 
system where the boot-loader was toggled in on front panel switches and 
the OS was loaded with paper tape.  The kids (whose language experience 
ranges from Java to PHP, with C# thrown in for good measure) looked at 
me like I was reciting either fiction or lore.
-- 
Gerry Creager -- gerry.creager at tamu.edu
Texas Mesonet -- AATLT, Texas A&M University	
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