[WEB4LIB] Question for the old timers out there

[Rich Ackerman]

On Tue, 31 Aug 2004 18:13:39 -0700 (PDT), Sloan, Bernie 
<bernies at uillinois.edu> wrote:

> I'm putting together a history of the Illinois Library Computer Systems
> Organization (ILCSO), and I'd like to begin with a brief description of
> what the technical environment was like circa 1977-1978.
>
> The first word processor (WordStar) is still under development.

IBM had been building word processors since the 1960's, and other 
companies manufactured them as well. In 1976 Wang Laboratories introduced 
the Wang Word Processor, an innovative machine for its time. Maybe ILCSO 
had some? They were popular in universities.

 From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories:

"... The word processing machine—the Wang WPS—was introduced in June 1976 
and was an instant success, as was its successor, the 1977 Wang OIS 
(Office Information System).

"These products were technological breakthrough in their day. They were 
multiuser systems. Each "workstation" looked like a typical terminal of 
its day, but contained its own Z80 microprocessor and 65K of RAM (roughly 
comparable in power to a typical 1982 IBM PC). Disk storage was 
centralized in a "master" unit that was shared by the workstations, and 
connection was via high-speed dual coax. Multiple OIS "masters" could be 
networked to each other, allowing file sharing among hundreds of users. 
And the systems could be easily operated and administered by office 
personnel without special training (in the days before schools taught 
"computer literacy"). It was an astonishing achievement."

I started working there in 1978 fresh out of school, where I had learned 
assembler, APL, and PL/I programming using punch cards on an IBM System 
370/168. The 360 was already obsolete.

My first project was writing the device driver for a $30,000 laser 
printer, the LPS-8,  based on a Ricoh copier engine. It printed at 8 pages 
per minute, which was much faster than the daisy printers, chain printers, 
and matrix printers that preceded it. Their speeds tended to be measured 
in CPS (characters per second) or LPM (lines per minute).

The printer controller card that I programmed had 12K of memory with an 
Intel 8080 and we wrote code in a combination of assembly and PL/M-80. 
This was before 5.25" hard drives; the OIS drives were the size of a small 
dishwasher. Our text editor, assembler, and linker were all written 
internally.

So that's what one technical environment was like in 1978!

Best wishes,

Rich Ackerman
old timer