A Look Back at My Times in Electronics and Computing, by Hugh T. Hoskins.
Well, as radio performers used to say about their careers -
"it all started at a little 500 watt station in Peoria".
But seriously ..
My interest in electricity was sparked about age 8 when I took apart a flashlight
and later made a mock-up with a few pieces of old tin-can to hold a battery
and a bulb and some wire to connect them all on a base of scrap wood.
Then about age 9 my dad bought me a Crystal Set kit and I was more hooked.
(As a teen he had built his own Crystal set and two-tube radio using wet batteries)
In 8-th grade our class put on a play and I got involved with stage
lighting which led to becoming StageManager at my HighSchool at age 15 and
to being hired as an Assistant Maintenance Electrician the next year.
After a lot of general maintenance stuff, got deeply involved with the
installation of two scoreboards. Eventually became Assistant to the Plant
Engineer and worked with the electrician and the warehouseman
on record keeping systems and with architectural firms designing new schools for
the district.
1958 Graduated from USC with a BS in EE.
Went to work at North American Aviation doing design of analog
circuits for radar display systems for fighter planes.
Got first exposure to computers as they were used to process the
wiring-lists for the electronic units which we were developing.
1960 Returned to USC for graduate work and got involved with two
computers on campus.
A Librascope General Purpose - LGP-30 (note-1) and
an IBM-1401 (note-3). All work in assembler language.
1962 Graduated from USC with an MS in EE.
Transferred to a group in N.A.A. which was developing special-purpose
Digital Differential Analysers (DDAs) for the HoundDog missle.
Got first hands-on experience writing instruction-code in
assembler language for a small general purpose programmable
digital computer. The machine was a GE unit (note-2).
All work in assembler language.
Developed, implemented, and operated the computer system for printing-out
the instruction cards used by the students during football game
half-time ceremonies to display the Card-Stunts for USC. (1962-1970)
This helped me propose to my wife; see at ... ../hthengmt.jpg
1964 Transferred to a group in N.A.A. which was developing
ground support checkout systems for the Saturn missle.
Responsible for the Operating System and the Engineering Model
of the Control Data Corporation CDC-924A (note-4).
All work in assembler language.
1967 Transferred to a group in N.A.A. which was responsible
for Operating Systems and Utilities for the then-new IBM System/360
machines (note-5) which were replacing the 1401s, 7010s, 7040s, and 7094s.
All work in assembler language. Learned a little FORTRAN, just for fun.
1968 When one of the guys in the department left for elsewhere,
got assigned to complete his work on the development of support
for 2260 terminals for a Generalized DataBase Management System (GDBMS)
named Information Control System (ICS) which was being jointly
developed by NAA and IBM. After the major development ended,
the joint effort was split: NAA continued to
modify and fine-tune their version, and IBM went on to deploy it
to the world -- renamed as Information Management System (IMS).
In those days, IBM gave away the software systems as long as they
were run on THEIR hardware.
Over the years the need to keep corporate data under IMS,
sold more storage devices for IBM than they ever imagined possible.
As others left the company for the proverbial greener pastures,
I stayed behind and learned more and more about IMS and eventually
gravitated to the top of the heap.
Somewhere along the line NAA was merged with Rockwell and became
North American Rockwell (NAR) and eventually Rockwell International (RI).
Continued my position as the primary architect of the RI installation
and operation of IMS. Maintained this position for many years and
thru many upgrades of hardware and software. In this position my areas were
wide and varied ..
. maintain the software system for operations group to have running nearly 22/7
. minimize outages for maint. and have backout plans in case of forward failures
. debug problems with the system
. help the operations staff to keep the system running
. help the application developers debug problems with their respective programs
. help the end terminal operators debug problems with their terminals
. maintain smooth processes for restarting and recovering from failures
. develop automation routines to ease the adjunct processes
. maintain security of the system resources
. insure various user areas did not step on each other
. make progress without burning any bridges
All of this at one time or another called for a good deal of understanding of
data formats and how to convert the data from the form in which it was available
to the form in which it could be used for some other purpose.
1980 Got my first PC at home - a RadioShack TRS-80 Model-I Level-2
(note A) and toyed with it a bit -- writing a program in BASIC to balance
my checkbook and another to print calendars of any size.
Got my kids interested in PC-ing.
When the TRS80 became passe, eventually upgraded (notes thru F).
1994 One of the RI divisions decided to take its workload out of the
RI Corporate Computer Center and place it with a small company
called Software Maintenance Specialists (SMS).
Having the requsite age and "points", I retired from RI and took a part-time
consulting position with SMS with the primary responsibility of
that division's IMS workload.
1998 Opted not to renew my annual contract with
SMS -- effectively RE-retiring.
Since then have become very closely involved with my PC, with my wife's, and
those of a very few friends. Except for BASIC have NOT learned any other languages
except those used in spreadsheets and in dBase and its Crystal Reports;
not into C or Pascal or JAVA.
Have done a lot of genealogy research and some report and chart preparation in that
effort along with Beta-testing several programs in that arena.
Have done research in finding and tracking my HighSchool classmates.
Have written some web pages in support of this effort with a text editor directly in HTML.
Always try to understand the underlying file formats of any system in order to be able
to make better use of them.
Am still struggling with the concepts of ..
.. booting multiple operating systems
.. how Windows emulates DOS
.. URLs, I.P.s, the DNSes which translate them, and INTERNIC's controlling them
.. such trashy sophomoric programs for the PC world.
.. absence of accoutability, auditability, traceability, journalling,
backup, restore, recover,
.. finding the best super-good backup program for PCs
Looking back I must give credit to that Crystal set from my dad, who always let me
tinker -- from flashlights, to radios, to hi-fi, to garage-door openers;
to the High School for my stage, electrical, and other Plant experiences;
to my teachers in those years who got the basics across VERY WELL and never said
"don't bother with that, it's useless". It all helped me to understand the real
fundamentals and foundations behind the facade of everything to come -- from the
source code, to the core dumps, to the channel-programs dealing in CCHHRs,
to the sectors, clusters, and FATs of the PC world.
-----------------
__ Notes ...
(1) Librascope General Precision LGP30-
Memory: Rotating drum. Size=4000 32-bit words. NumBase: hexidecimal.
Character representations: 0123456789fgjkqw
(this was due to the coding of low-order bits of those
particular alpha chars on the interface device)
Arithmetic: single word.
UserInterface: Frieden typewriter. Storage: Punched Paper tape. Boot: Paper Tape
(2) GE machine- Memory: sonic delay line (real touchy). NumBase: octal
U/I: crude (memory fades here). Storage: Punched Paper tape.
Addressability: Each word. Arithmetic: single word
(3) IBM 1401- Memory: Ferrite core torroids. Size=8000 8-bit Bytes.
NumBase: decimal.
Arithmetic: variable length decimal.
U/I: Printer and Control Switches.
Storage: Card reader/punch, MagTape (6+1=7 track). Boot: Card reader
(4) Control Data CDC924A - Memory: Ferrite core torroids.
Size= 16,000 24-bit words. NumBase: octal.
Arithmetic: single word
U/I: Printer and Control Switches.
Storage: Card reader/punch, MagTape (6+1=7 track), Punched Paper Tape
Boot: Paper Tape
(5) IBM 360- Memory: Ferrite core torroids; Size=500K 8-bit Bytes.
NumBase: hexidecimal. Character representations: 0123456789ABCDEF
Arithmetic: single word.
Arithmetic: 4-byte word (also half- and double-word)
U/I: Printer and Typewriter/Keyboard
Storage: Card reader/punch, MagTape (6+1=7 & 8+1=9 track)
Multi-platter hard drives of various geometries.
Boot: Dial-selectable devices
(A) Tandy Radio Shack TRS80 (Model-I, Level-2) -
Memory: SolidState; Size: 16,000 8-bit-Bytes.
NumBase: hexidecimal.
Arithmetic: 2-byte word (mainly)
U/I: Printer, CRT, and Keyboard
Storage: Audio cassette tape.
(B) IBM PC - CPU: 8088. Speed: 4.7 mhz
Memory: SolidState; Size: 64-K 8-bit-Bytes.
NumBase: hexidecimal.
Arithmetic: 2-byte word (mainly)
U/I: Printer, CRT, and Keyboard
Storage: 5.25-inch floppy disks 360-KB
Hard drive: 20-MB
(C) IBM PC (Clone)- CPU: Intel-386. Speed: 25mhz
Memory: SolidState; Size: 640,000 8-bit-Bytes.
NumBase: hexidecimal.
Arithmetic: 2-byte word (mainly)
U/I: Printer, CRT, and Keyboard
Storage: 5.25 and 3.5-inch floppy disks to 1.44-MB
Hard drive: 20-MB
(D) IBM PC (Clone)- CPU: Intel-Pent-III. Speed: 90mhz
Memory: SolidState; Size: 16-M 8-bit-Bytes.
NumBase: hexidecimal.
Arithmetic: 2-byte word (mainly)
U/I: Printer, CRT, and Keyboard
Storage: 5.25 and 3.5-inch floppy disks to 1.44-MB
Hard drive: 800-MB
(E) IBM PC (Clone)- CPU: Intel-Pent-III. Speed: 450mhz
Memory: SolidState; Size: 256-M, 8-bit-Bytes.
NumBase: hexidecimal.
Arithmetic: 2-byte word (mainly)
U/I: Printer, CRT, and Keyboard
Storage: 5.25 and 3.5-inch floppy disks to 1.44-MB
Hard drive: 20- plus 40-GB
(F) IBM PC (Clone)- CPU: Intel-Pent-IV. Speed: 1800mhz
Memory: SolidState; Size: 256-M, 8-bit-Bytes.
NumBase: hexidecimal.
Arithmetic: 2-byte word (mainly)
U/I: Printer, CRT, and Keyboard
Storage: 5.25 and 3.5-inch floppy disks to 1.44-MB
Hard drive: 60- plus 60-GB
Several upgrades to this system have followed.