RIP

[R.D. Silverman]

Klaus Roth, Fields Medalist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Roth

[chalsall]

Few, if any of you, will know of Roosevelt King, the Secretary General of the Barbados Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (BANGO).

But he was a good friend of mine, and a fellow consumer advocate here in Bim.

He complained to his daughter that he was having difficulty breathing; she took him to the doctor. He then went back to his office to send several emails, and was found dead at his desk.

He was a tireless advocate for the disadvantaged. He died while doing what he loved (much too early).

He will be missed by many....

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by chalsall

Roosevelt King

Rest in peace!

[xilman]

Gene Amdahl

[kladner]

Originally Posted by xilman

Gene Amdahl

My Dad worked with 360s at the Exxon Data Processing Center in Houston. I remember the installation as huge, with core memory, disk packs, and tape drives all over the place. My sister had a summer job there hanging tapes.

EDIT: There were also, for the times, outrageously fast line-at-a time ganged impact printers. I can't be sure, now, what the lines-per-minute was, but in the hundreds, I think. As I remember, each column on the page was served by an entire character set on a fast-revolving chain loop. The desired characters lined up, and the line got hammered all at once.

I could be a bit fuzzy on some of the details.

[sdbardwick]

Originally Posted by kladner

My Dad worked with 360s at the Exxon Data Processing Center in Houston. I remember the installation as huge, with core memory, disk packs, and tape drives all over the place. My sister had a summer job there hanging tapes.

EDIT: There were also, for the times, outrageously fast line-at-a time ganged impact printers. I can't be sure, now, what the lines-per-minute was, but in the hundreds, I think. As I remember, each column on the page was served by an entire character set on a fast-revolving chain loop. The desired characters lined up, and the line got hammered all at once.

I could be a bit fuzzy on some of the details.

Good old line printers

[kladner]

I see that I was indeed confused about the mechanism of printing-

Chain printers (also known as train printers) placed the type on moving bars (a horizontally-moving chain). As with the drum printer, as the correct character passed by each column, a hammer was fired from behind the paper. Compared to drum printers, chain printers had the advantage that the type chain could usually be changed by the operator. A further advantage was that vertical registration of characters in a line was much improved over drum printers, which needed extremely precise hammer timing to achieve a reasonably straight line of print. By selecting chains that had a smaller character set (for example, just numbers and a few punctuation marks), the printer could print much faster than if the chain contained the entire upper- and lower-case alphabet, numbers, and all special symbols. This was because, with many more instances of the numbers appearing in the chain, the time spent waiting for the correct character to "pass by" was greatly reduced. Common letters and symbols would appear more often on the chain, according to the frequency analysis of the likely input. It was also possible to play primitive tunes on these printers by timing the nonsense of the printout to the sequence on the chain, a rather primitive piano. IBM was probably the best-known chain printer manufacturer and the IBM 1403 is probably the most famous example of a chain printer.

Charlie "Kirk" Kirkwood (10/10/1913-10/24/2009) wrote a program that caused the IBM 1403 line printer in Martin Hall to play Tiger Rag. The audio was recorded from that printer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1403

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by kladner

Charlie "Kirk" Kirkwood (10/10/1913-10/24/2009) wrote a program that caused the IBM 1403 line printer in Martin Hall to play Tiger Rag. The audio was recorded from that printer.

Wonderful! I thought I listened to almost everything related to "music from printers, scanners, coils, etc", but that, well, I didn't hear that before. Thanks for sharing.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by LaurV

Wonderful! I thought I listened to almost everything related to "music from printers, scanners, coils, etc", but that, well, I didn't hear that before. Thanks for sharing.

There are some great floppy drive concerts out there, too.

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by kladner

There are some great floppy drive concerts out there, too.

Yeah, we know that, but that is "special designed" hardware, i.e. the guy placed the microphones, audio amplifiers, etc in the box.
There are many like that "8 flopies" or "6 flopies" music on youtube, but always there is a "hidden" track which does not (visible) sync with any of the (visible) heads, or it is clearly (audible) added (mixed in, like a beat, etc) to the sound. We don't especially like those. But thanks for sharing it anyhow. Tribute to the good guys who honor this RIP thread. Rest in peace all of them.

[firejuggler]

Jonah Lomu
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah_Lomu
great rugby player.