What Do You Collect?

[Thenomain]

@Miss-Demeanor

I dunno. I have it from very good authority of making it up just now that @Chime doesn't wear underwear.

[surreality]

@Chime ...and those shoes need burning, quite possibly.

Which reminds me I have way, way too many shoes. I will just call them a collection, I think. There is no way I could wear them all before I die as it is.

Bonus irony: I am barefoot 99% of my life. The remaining 90% of the time I wear the same slip on, battered-to-hell Sketchers; they have been doused in ocean water over a period of 4+ years, soaked in dye and various chemicals... and by some unholy fucking composition doubtless thanks to DuPont's sekrit labs they will not die. These are some undead shoes. They don't even look like they've been through the hell they have, it's a little scary.

But for, like... the remaining 0.1% of my life, I have the most dazzlingly eclectic collection of pumps and boots and WTF-bait sandals of every possible description. That I never wear. So I guess they're a collection... by default.

[Tyche]

@Chime said in What Do You Collect?:

Most of the ITS machines (and other PDP-10's) were already TCP-aware; indeed many of them formed critical infrastructure of the early Internet. Grant you, the native net stuff was CHAOSnet, which is mostly useless these days, and all the internet connectivity was through an IMP.

IBM was very late in using TCP/IP since they had their own network architecture, SNA/VTAM. Even today many shops are running SNA/IP for local terminals. I don't recall being in a shop that used TCP until well into the mid 90's.

And while IBM did have a C compiler, it was a pain in the ass. Most publicly available C code was in ASCII, so you had to run it through a translator to EBCDIC. And then you had to make extensive use of trigraphs for all the missing braces and other punctuation that didn't exist in EBCDIC. IBM C does have one nice feature though, a native fixed decimal type!

Awkwardly, ITS was a largely pre-security OS. It supports memory protection and arbitrary users, but while you :LOGIN, the default infrastructure has no concept of password. Any random thing that connects can login as whatever it wants and do whatever it wants, including circumventing memory protection. Sure things were audited to line printers, but it was a kinder, gentler internet back then.

IBM OS's had minimal security. If you had a login you could do anything, except to disk files that were protected by the global system password. And there was no real encryption of passwords. Of course IBM sold a security product called RACF that was rock solid and did use encryption. You had to explicitly white list everything that a particular user or sub-system needed.

Anyway, the IBM stuff is especially interesting to me because of the 3270 terminal stuff-- those were brilliant, and I imagine MUD type games could do amazing stuff to take advantage of the form-like features there. ...not that many people here would play such a thing, sigh.

There was series of terminals... 3170G?, 3192G, 3274G which had incredible graphics for the early 1980's. It had text layer and graphics layer that were merged together. The programming of the graphics layer was very similar to SVG.

[Insomnia]

Nerd Block is evil. Mainly because I am a horror whore. And a Gamer. And love Sci-Fi.

[Miss Demeanor]

@Thenomain Yeah, but look at those stockings. Those are 50's stockings. They might as well be sock stockings, as thick as they are. 1950-1970... if you wore stockings, it didn't matter what your skintone was, your legs are TAN.

[Chime]

@Miss-Demeanor said in What Do You Collect?:

I dunno, that looks like velour. That shit was pretty warm.

Maybe. And those machines put out a lot of heat, too-- but that is pretty clearly a raised floor area. I remember being younger and so excited about being in a datacenter and poking at all the neat old hardware. Cold and drafty often suits me quite nicely, but then I'm usually in jeans and flannel-- and those send quite a different message to most people compared to what she's wearing. The noise of datacenters though-- ugh. I usually get a headache within 2-3 hours.

@Thenomain said in What Do You Collect?:

I dunno. I have it from very good authority of making it up just now that @Chime doesn't wear underwear.

o_o ... Well, not in the shower, I guess?

@surreality said in What Do You Collect?:

@Chime ...and those shoes need burning, quite possibly.

Well, yes. I'm barefoot at home (well, socks, because socks are <3), and have a pair of low-top Merrell hiking shoes for most out-of-the-house stuff. If I need something tougher, well, Doc Martens. I do have some more "presentable" shoes, but most they're pretty low and flat. I do soooometimes where heels or platforms, but generally only when being silly/clubbing/etc. I admit, knee-high boots are rarely practical but they are a lot of fun. @Misadventure has seen and given me an eyeroll, heh.

@Tyche said in What Do You Collect?:

And while IBM did have a C compiler, it was a pain in the ass. Most publicly available C code was in ASCII, so you had to run it through a translator to EBCDIC. And then you had to make extensive use of trigraphs for all the missing braces and other punctuation that didn't exist in EBCDIC. IBM C does have one nice feature though, a native fixed decimal type!

Trigraphs, augh. Yeah, EBCDIC is kinda a mess. I still deal with C code with EBCDIC #pragmas and so forth in it.

Fixed decimal, hm? I've worked with a lot of processors that still had BCD operations in the CPU, though that's becoming increasingly rare, and is usually one of the first things they strip when they can. (e.g. RICOH 2A03 is a MOS 6502 with no BCD mode, and sound+dma in its place...) I can see a lot of uses for arbitrary precision decimal. Fixed tho? Reminds me of those early Apple Integer Basic "financial programs" that couldn't calculate higher than $327.67...

There was series of terminals... 3170G?, 3192G, 3274G which had incredible graphics for the early 1980's. It had text layer and graphics layer that were merged together. The programming of the graphics layer was very similar to SVG.

Tektronix had some amazing graphical terminals too, but sadly I've been mostly stuck on text beasts or X11.

Take a peek at https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font if you want to see a faithful modern take on the 3270 font though... very nice.

[Thenomain]

@Chime said in What Do You Collect?:

Take a peek at https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font if you want to see a faithful modern take on the 3270 font though... very nice.

Oh yes, and I collect fonts.

[WTFE]

Sorry @Chime, @Tyche, but I win: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WaYYNUCWMY

THAT is the machine to reminisce over if you want to be a dinosaur hipster.

In general, though, I agree with both of you:

I like that old time front panel.

[Coin]

Punk rock covers.

[Chime]

@WTFE said in What Do You Collect?:

Sorry @Chime, @Tyche, but I win: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WaYYNUCWMY

Niiice. Love how you can hear the drum spinning up and spinning down. The big Ka-CHUNK of the relays is pretty cool too.

In general, though, I agree with both of you:

I like that old time front panel.

Yep, that's a PDP-10! ...Looks like a KI10 front panel. Great machine. Sadly most of the emulators only cover the smaller KS10s as they are easier to emulate. (no need for a PDP-11 front end computer, etc)

Remember, that's just the panel; the "computer" is in multiple racks of equipment near by.

[WTFE]

I am well aware that this is just the panel. A photo of the entire computer would lose the clear view of the blinkenlights though.

[WTFE]

(And yes, that's a KI10 panel. Good eye!)

[Auspice]

So I kept skipping this thread because 'I don't collect anything'

... but as I'm packing to move, I came across my box with 70+ decks of cards and then remembered the others strewn about.

Oops.

So, yeah. I collect playing cards.

[Arkandel]

@Auspice I have 3-4 albums worth of Magic: the Gathering cards from Revised to ... whatever came after Ice Age. They used to be my pride and joy but I haven't even looked at them for years - I'm told to sell them but a) they probably wouldn't fetch as much as people thought they would 'one day', and b) what a betrayal that would be to younger-me.

[Auspice]

@Arkandel said in What Do You Collect?:

@Auspice I have 3-4 albums worth of Magic: the Gathering cards from Revised to ... whatever came after Ice Age. They used to be my pride and joy but I haven't even looked at them for years - I'm told to sell them but a) they probably wouldn't fetch as much as people thought they would 'one day', and b) what a betrayal that would be to younger-me.

I used to play Magic. As a teen and then again about 7 years ago. Someone stole most of my collection, tho.

I do play Netrunner now. But the decks mentioned above? Just standard playing cards. My current favorite is my Firefly one.

[Insomnia]

@apu Saw this and thought of you...

[surreality]

@Insomnia ...I seriously may need a Betty White monitor mascot, oh my lawd.

[Insomnia]

@surreality Right? I have a feeling those are going to be worse than Aimbos for price gouging online though.

[surreality]

@Insomnia Exactly why I doubt I'll ever get a hold of one.

[TiredEwok]

@Insomnia said in What Do You Collect?:

@apu Saw this and thought of you...

Haha. I need to get those, if I can. Golden Girls kind of hold a special place in my heart, seeing as how it was one of the shows my nana and I watched together religiously, and it'd be nice to have those as little reminder of those times.