pic: The warranty, voided

[IMDWalrus]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

It's this glass envelope thingy, that glows in the dark and emits electrons...Oh never mind!

So...it's like a giant record player?

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Originally Posted by IMDWalrus

So...it's like a giant record player?

No, they are much smaller, and chronologically earlier than record players although they did coexist for many years. They were the electronic equivalent to tank treads on carpet, functional but not very efficient and probably produce about the same amount of heat.

[xzvrw2]

wen i first looked at the pic i thought it was a city from star wars. lol and i thought a vacuum tube was something that you clean your floors with.

[IMDWalrus]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

No, they are much smaller, and chronologically earlier than record players although they did coexist for many years. They were the electronic equivalent to tank treads on carpet, functional but not very efficient and probably produce about the same amount of heat.

That was meant to be a joke. I don't think you picked up on that.

I might be young, but I know what records are. Heck, my family still has one somewhere...

[Amanda Morrison]

Originally Posted by IMDWalrus

I might be young, but I know what records are. Heck, my family still has one somewhere...

Next, WFA winner Al Skierkiewicz will share with us the technological miracle of computer punchcards...

[jdhawg]

Originally Posted by Amanda Morrison

Next, WFA winner Al Skierkiewicz will share with us the technological miracle of computer punchcards...

These young whipper-snappers these days don't know how good they have it. Why back in my day you walked five miles from the card punch room to drop the card deck off, then waited 45 minutes for the job to get run, then checked your listing to see if you could find the card that was mispunched so you could do it all over again. UNLESS the operators dropped your deck (know as "floor sorting") then you were is real trouble.

Oh... My... Gosh..... I'm starting to sound like my Grandfather!!!!!!

[Conor Ryan]

so is this still legal for competition?

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by jdhawg

These young whipper-snappers these days don't know how good they have it. Why back in my day you walked five miles from the card punch room to drop the card deck off, then waited 45 minutes for the job to get run, then checked your listing to see if you could find the card that was mispunched so you could do it all over again. UNLESS the operators dropped your deck (know as "floor sorting") then you were is real trouble.

At the risk of dating myself, I remember when I wrote my first compiler for an IBM-360 as my junior-year project. I worked on it for a full semester, and carefully crafted it down to about 5000 lines of code - 2-1/2 cases of cards. I did the final edits, certified that it worked, and took the cases of cards back to the apartment to write the final paper on the project. Unfortunately, my apartment-mate was VERY ticked off at me (he kept yelling something about "you haven't paid your share of rent in 5 months!!!" or some such minor annoyance) and decided to get my attention. By shuffling all the cards in the cases.

What happened next was not pretty. Let's just say that it is a good thing that the statute of limitations has expired for most of the infractions...

-dave

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Originally Posted by Amanda Morrison

Next, WFA winner Al Skierkiewicz will share with us the technological miracle of computer punchcards...

I was thinking of expounding on the nature of entering an eight bit binary bootstrap program manually using toggle switches on a DEC PDP-11 to get a paper tape reader going. Have any idea how hard it is to convert decimal to binary in your head and then load it using switches? BTW that was after a memory upgrade from 2K to 4K core (real core that is, wires and donuts) in a computer that was almost a full rack high with power supply and paper tape reader. Oh God, now I am going to have nightmares again! 00010011, 10111010, 1110101, no that was 11101101, oh darn where was I again....

Fortran IV?!?, yea they couldn't get it right in their first three attempts, what make you think it will be any better now?

Ok, the bootstrap is loaded, the paper tape is running, hopefully the program will finish loading before we get back from lunch.

Nice Amanda, now you have me started...Hit the "off" button someone, Quick!

[Daria Wing]

oooooooooo, preeeeetttttyyyyyyyyyyyy. I wanna play with it.

[pfreivald]

When I was an undergrad ('97-ish), watching my dad stare in impressed, crestfallen horror as Mathematica completed his PhD thesis in about ten minutes was pretty funny.

[Xanawatt]

What does it take to get one of those IFI boards working again? Have some sitting on our old robots and was wondering if they could ever be revived.

[DonRotolo]

Assuming it 'works', just find the old software; surely someone on CD has a set of those files. (They are probably also online somewhere). If it is 'broken' I would hesitate to recommend attempting a repair, unless there were obviously damaged (and still available) components.

All the other posts: Man, you guys are old!

[Alan Anderson]

Software-wise, what you will need is the MPLAB IDE (I think you want version 6.3) with the C18 compiler and the IFI Loader program. You will also need a copy of the default C code.

Start at https://kevin.org/frc/ for lots of useful files. Kevin Watson has always been a great resource for FRC teams.

[Jay H 237]

My first year in FIRST, 1999, we had the control systems that they provided. They had to be returned after the season and rendered the robot static display only. I don't remember what type of controller it was or what they called it. Somebody must know and why they wanted them back/what became of them?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Trouble_(FIRST)