I'm giving up...

[GreyGeek]

Wasn't getting BCM43xx compiled and working fun!

On RH5, my first distro, I had to buy a proprietary sound driver from 4FrontSound for $20 to get my sound working. When I switched to SuSE in Sept of 1998 on the same PC my sound worked great.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Wasn't getting BCM43xx compiled and working fun!

YES!! Indeed it was, in a geeky sort of way. I remember the feeling of anticipation...waiting...fingers crossed...holding my breath...watching the light on the laptop...AND THEN IT LIT UP!! Success!

While weeding out old files that I don't need to transfer to my new [primary computer] laptop, I found all those Broadcom/ndiswrapper files. Such fond memories, but, alas, time marches on!

On RH5, my first distro, I had to buy a proprietary sound driver from 4FrontSound for $20 to get my sound working. When I switched to SuSE in Sept of 1998 on the same PC my sound worked great.

Wow! I don't remember ever having to buy a driver for Linux, but my memory's not what it used to be, so don't carve that in stone. I have such great memories of 'the good old days' on Linux, when there was no such thing as seeing a product labelled 'compatible with Linux,' yet you knew certain brands could always be counted on to work out of the box. For me, those included HP desktop and laptop computers [with some tinkering with wireless on the latter], HP printers, US Robotics modems...and other stuff I can't remember. Now? I'd be SHOCKED to find anything that didn't work with Linux. But times have really changed. Linux is the most-used operating system on earth, thanks to its Android offspring, its 100% usage on the top supercomputers worldwide, its ubiquitous presence in everything from DVRs to the International Space Station! I'm so proud of Linus Torvalds for what he did for us. Grateful.

Before Linux, at home I was using Coherent, a UNIX clone, not free, but that's never been my reason for using *nix. I use it because of its power, grace, stability, security, and freedom to make my computers do what I want. And its helpful, friendly user base!

[GreyGeek]

Aside from the commercial mainframes my gradschool uni physics & numerical analysis courses used the first PC I owned was an Apple ][+, SN 1217 (IIRC) purchased at Team Electronics in Grand Island, NE in Aug of 1977. It used a audio cassette for storage. I wrote several programs, including a grade book program with data that save to a cassette at the end of one class and load the next class's data from the tape. That process took about all of the five minutes allowed between class changes. The next year I upgraded to two Disk ]['s What a difference that made in speed, and I had a combined total of nearly 500Kb of storage to boot!

The manager of that store, Don Drahota, asked me to sell Apple's on the week ends. Apple sent a guy to train me in Apple repair. My first sale was for an Apple ][+ with 64Kb RAM, two Disk ]['s a color monitor and a Centronics 749 printer. Total price; $5,000. Profit: $2,500. My share of the profit: $1,200. I was the highest paid teach in the school district at the time and I took home $750/mo. It wasn't long before the tail began wagging the dog. I resigned from teaching in the spring of 1980. In 1981 I discovered an AI device called SAVVY that plugged into Apple's and later IBM PC's and began selling it at $1,000 each. Within a year my share of the profits was about $100,000 but I never saw a dime of it. That's another story. Team Electronics was bankrupted and I began my own computer consulting and criminal forensics business.

One of my first customers was an auto parts store in Hasting, NE. They were sold a Radio Shack Tandy Unix machine that had a Forth programming language as the software dev tool. I fell in love with that language and it remains my favorite to this day. That was the first time I'd used any Unix based system but the dev tool had such total control of the system I never appreciated the Unix OS.

[DoYouKubuntu]

I've missed reading your awesome stories, GG. I feel like I'm home now.

Aside from the commercial mainframes my gradschool uni physics & numerical analysis courses used the first PC I owned was an Apple ][+, SN 1217 (IIRC) purchased at Team Electronics in Grand Island, NE in Aug of 1977. It used a audio cassette for storage. I wrote several programs, including a grade book program with data that save to a cassette at the end of one class and load the next class's data from the tape. That process took about all of the five minutes allowed between class changes. The next year I upgraded to two Disk ]['s What a difference that made in speed, and I had a combined total of nearly 500Kb of storage to boot!

Not that early, but in the early '80s, I had first a Commodore VIC-20 and then a Commodore 64. I added a tape drive for storage. They connected to the TV set--so if I was computing, we weren't watching TV. (I think we only had one TV at the time, the one in the living room... I don't know. Whatever.) That's where I first dipped my toes into the world of programming. I had NO IDEA what anything meant, or what I was actually doing, but I meticulously typed programs from the manual, saved them on tape, and watched in amazement as hot air balloons flew across my TV screen! Such fun.

The manager of that store, Don Drahota, asked me to sell Apple's on the week ends. Apple sent a guy to train me in Apple repair. My first sale was for an Apple ][+ with 64Kb RAM, two Disk ]['s a color monitor and a Centronics 749 printer. Total price; $5,000. Profit: $2,500. My share of the profit: $1,200. I was the highest paid teach in the school district at the time and I took home $750/mo. It wasn't long before the tail began wagging the dog. I resigned from teaching in the spring of 1980. In 1981 I discovered an AI device called SAVVY that plugged into Apple's and later IBM PC's and began selling it at $1,000 each.

Within a year my share of the profits was about $100,000 but I never saw a dime of it. That's another story. Team Electronics was bankrupted and I began my own computer consulting and criminal forensics business.

One of my first customers was an auto parts store in Hasting, NE. They were sold a Radio Shack Tandy Unix machine that had a Forth programming language as the software dev tool. I fell in love with that language and it remains my favorite to this day. That was the first time I'd used any Unix based system but the dev tool had such total control of the system I never appreciated the Unix OS.

I remember some of your background, and find it fascinating. That was such an amazing time in computing. You may or may not recall that my first touch of a UNIX system was also on Tandy. In my case, it was a Tandy 68000(?) running Tandy Xenix; I was only a data entry operator then at the furniture store chain [where I worked while in college], and the Tandy wasn't really being used. We were using Decision Data...something or other...9610? keypunch machines, with 96-column cards, for data entry; they were fed into IBM System/3 mainframes. Long story, but I ended up switching career paths [I was about to start medical school] and becoming the programmer and system administrator at that company, using SCO Xenix on an ALR 386/25.

It had a 230MB hard drive! and 4MB of RAM!! [Upgraded from its shipped 1MB.] We had multiple modems, connected by multiplexers, so the other store locations could access the server. I had a Wyse 60 terminal in my office at home, and a dedicated phone line, so I could connect 24/7. I loved it! My absolute favorite job and work time period of my life.

[TWPonKubuntu]

@GreyGeek, thanks for the link to the LinuxBabe articles. Useful and educational.

[GreyGeek]

@TWPonKubuntu
"Tandy 68000(?) running Tandy Xenix"

That's the name of the system and OS that car parts store used. I couldn't remember it when I made that post above. Thanks for jogging my memory. However, my memory is in such bad shape I doubt I'll remember it.

[TWPonKubuntu]

I can relate to the age related memory loss... What did you say your name was again? I hear they have these marvelous devices which will archive just about anything, I'll have to get one of those someday...

[DoYouKubuntu]

Oh, gosh, don't get me started on aging and age-related memory loss!

Honestly, things I KNOW I know, I don't feel comfortable any more saying that I know them. Like the "Tandy 68000(?)" thing--I KNEW that was what it was, but I couldn't convince myself to write it with authority. Self-doubt is eating me up. But it's safer than saying "carve this in stone, I KNOW blah blah blah!"...and then you find out you typed the wrong word, or you remembered the name wrong, or...etc.

GG, I'm glad I could jog your memory. And--in case you forget it--it's always here in this thread to remind you as needed! That's what I do: I look up old threads to see what X, Y, or Z was called/solved/mentioned/needed/whatever. Works great!

[GreyGeek]

I usually forget my memory joggers as well, and my computer is full of them.
In times past I used to know the names, At No., AtWt and electron structure of all 92 elements, and the density, electronegativity, melting point and boiling points of quite a few. Now, I cannot cite the names of the first 12 in order. Forget the rest of their info. Ditto for Physics, Calculus, Differential Equations, Anatomy&Physiology and Microbiology. And I taught that stuff for years. About the only thing I can do right now is use matplotlib, pandas and python in Anaconda to create plots of Covid data, and only because I started working on it a week ago. If I quit working on it what I've learned will evaporate in a week or two. A friend of my wife just turned 100. You can ask her to recall historical events she remembered and she'll rattle them off. Her mind is as sharp as a razor.

Forgetting has one advantage: you'll forget that you forgot what you can no longer remember.

[TWPonKubuntu]

It does have "some" benefits...