CP/M died because... flying!

Ghery said:
No, I left MMC (MMA?) for Tandem in October 1983. At MMC (MMA) I used a VAX 11/780 and a Cyber 176. Please don't get me started on how user hostile the NOS operating system on the Cyber 176 was, especially as administered by Martin Marietta Data Systems.

Why did Martin Marietta change their abbreviation from MMC to MMA? They claimed it was from Martin Marietta Corporation to Martin Marietta Aerospace. Those of us who worked there were sure that the real reason was that MMC also stood for Mickey Mouse Club. :p
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That makes more sense.
 
kgruber said:
The DAY I graduated in engineering............was the day HP announced the HP-35, which changed the world.
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My first calculus teacher pulled out her HP 35 my first day of freshman calculus. I bought a Ti calculator for a lot less than she paid, and it later died due to a static electric spark about an inch long from my finger when I went to pick it up one winter morning. I now have two HP calculators.

Funny thing, my Mother In Law can only use calculators that use RPN (reverse polish notation).
 
My first scientific calculator was the TI52, somehow managed to find it for $150 reduced from $600, 1976

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And as an aside, I have been using an HP RPN calcator sine 1983, actually the same one, it just will not die.

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Ghery said:
Why did Martin Marietta change their abbreviation from MMC to MMA? They claimed it was from Martin Marietta Corporation to Martin Marietta Aerospace. Those of us who worked there were sure that the real reason was that MMC also stood for Mickey Mouse Club. :p
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I worked for Martin Marietta DENVER Aerospace (as the division was known at the time) 1981-1982. While I loved Denver, I couldn't abide Martin. I took a pay cut to go back to doing research for the Army (writing the OS for the Denelcor HEP supercomputer there and doing one of the earliest internet routers).
 
tmyers said:
My first scientific calculator was the TI52, somehow managed to find it for $150 reduced from $600, 1976

Sent from my SM-N970U using Tapatalk
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Man, I paid almost that ($135) for an SR-51A in 1976. I wanted the 52 for the mag card program storage, but couldn't swing it.
 
tmyers said:
And as an aside, I have been using an HP RPN calcator sine 1983, actually the same one, it just will not die.

Sent from my SM-N970U using Tapatalk
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I've got an HP-16C from that era that still works just fine. It's on it's 3rd set of batteries as I don't use it much any more.
 
I sold my HP-41CX and various accessories for $800 about 10 years ago and bought a HP-50g with the profits...
 
flyingron said:
I worked for Martin Marietta DENVER Aerospace (as the division was known at the time) 1981-1982. While I loved Denver, I couldn't abide Martin. I took a pay cut to go back to doing research for the Army (writing the OS for the Denelcor HEP supercomputer there and doing one of the earliest internet routers).
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We were there at the same time. I started out in DSC in October 1979 (working on MX) and then a year later moved down to the Waterton plant. After some time in what we called the "leper colony" waiting for my EBI I spent the rest of the time at SSB North. Left there in October 1983 to go back to California to work for Tandem Computers.

I would be interested in hearing why you couldn't abide Martin. I didn't find it all that bad, although the last year I was there I refused to open a PAR as I hadn't received a raise based on my last one (top scores, too), but based on the one the year prior to that. Tacky on their part.
 
I worked in ADM. If they had assigned me to a project that was interesting to me, I might have stayed. I was fortunate that I was able to actually do work while in the leper colony as my aspect of the project wasn't really classified, plus being one of the few UNIX guys in the company back then, they loaned me out to the QA department to set up source code control. While I could take being assigned to the first abysmal project, I knew where they were going to assign me next and I really didn't want to go there. Doing QA work on a UNIVAC 1100 series COBOL-based implementation wasn't my idea of what I wanted to do with my career. The company had a prevailing negative culture anyhow.
 
Joy. Sometimes they were a bit cagey about what you were going to work on next. I remember when I had an offer from Boeing (went to Tandem instead) I thought I was going to work on more classified projects, which I really wasn't interested in doing. I ran into the manager I would have been working for the following year at a symposium and he said that he wanted me to run his R&D program. Might (I emphasize - MIGHT) have made a difference. Oh well, I have no complaints about where I wound up. Tandem was an outstanding place to work.
 
Well, I left Martin to go work for the US Army. They were getting their first supercomputer (Denelcor HEP) and the place was replete with my old college buddies anyhow. Spent five years doing fun stuff at BRL and then spent a few years as a university administrator. I was then cajoled to come down and help form an image processing company that I stayed with 21 years through three acquisitions until finally Textron bought us and ran the company into the ground. They called me up and fired me over the phone while I was on vacation. Class act.
 
I was on the internet before Al Gore created it.

Didn't watch the whole thing but did they mention OS/2? It was really pretty solid and at the time quite a bit better than Windows IMO.
 
flyingron said:
Well, I left Martin to go work for the US Army. They were getting their first supercomputer (Denelcor HEP) and the place was replete with my old college buddies anyhow. Spent five years doing fun stuff at BRL and then spent a few years as a university administrator. I was then cajoled to come down and help form an image processing company that I stayed with 21 years through three acquisitions until finally Textron bought us and ran the company into the ground. They called me up and fired me over the phone while I was on vacation. Class act.
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Nice! (Sarcastic, to the max). I remember when I went to work for Tandem in October 1983 my wife gave me a copy of a book, The Silicon Valley Guy's Guide. It finished off with a cartoon of a diaper clad kid pulling parts out of a TV with the caption, "Look out Intel, here he comes!". Our son wound up working at Intel (as did I) many years later. We definitely saw the humor in that cartoon later in life.

As I noted earlier, Tandem was a great place to work. The quintessential Silicon Valley "work hard, play hard" place. I left there in March 1995 to go to Intel and still regard it as the best place I ever worked. Intel gave us the chance to move back to the PNW (which we had been trying to do for 20 years) and I retired from Intel in 2015. One of their corporate values was "great place to work" and those of us who had worked for Tandem felt that they didn't have a clue. Not a bad place, but no Tandem.
 
Ghery said:
Intel gave us the chance to move back to the PNW (which we had been trying to do for 20 years) and I retired from Intel in 2015.
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Man I knew there had to be a reason they’re having their butt handed to them by AMD. You left and the place went to hell. LOL.

What a total disaster this year has been for them. Fired both the head of the next generation division to supposedly get them below 14nm AND the head of the division tasked with going on past that.

And the marketing. Good lord. Mentioned the competitor’s product by name 14 times at a product launch and only mentioned their own product name twice and got it wrong once!

They’re floundering around badly. It’s wild.

AMD even planned the year to announce first, wait for intel to say whatever they were going to say, and then slam them with a second announcement that the earlier stuff wasn’t even their top of the line. Here’s an even better one.

And they did that entire chain of events last year too. Two years in a row. Whack. Whack. Whack.

That’s gotta hurt. The crazy lady at AMD isn’t taking any prisoners.

Dad was the component level guy. He would have known what AMD did to jump that far ahead. I’m a systems guy so I’m just chuckling that they’re back with a serious vengeance.

They aren’t just beating Intel with Ryzen 5000 and Zen 3, they’re kicking them hard while they’re down. Last year’s Threadripper lineup looks tame compared to even the top of their retail lineup now and it was a monster.

20% better performance in one year AND didn’t add a single additional watt of power consumption. That’s a jump not seen in 15 years by anyone.
 
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