<HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.3243" name=GENERATOR></HEAD> <BODY style="MARGIN: 4px 4px 1px; FONT: 10pt Tahoma"> <DIV style="COLOR: #000000">I did get my hands on Fortran on punched card early at the college (time shared mainframe somewhere), thank God it was only a semester.</DIV> <DIV style="COLOR: #000000">Then i got to use a real computer, a PDP-8 with Octal words, a single row of dip switches and the load key at the end.</DIV> <DIV style="COLOR: #000000">Still remember, 32 words to load the bootstrap loader forthe paper tape reader, the paper tape was punched out by the teletype.</DIV> <DIV style="COLOR: #000000">The professor hooked up two D/A convertors (it looked hand made) on the PDP-8 to shoot on a CRT tube (oscilloscope) and we had to create a program to write our first name on the CRT.</DIV> <DIV style="COLOR: #000000">I was lucky, my first name is Guy, only 3 lettres to program, poor Alexander!</DIV> <DIV style="COLOR: #000000"> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV style="COLOR: #000000">Guy Lessard<BR>Professeur CÉGEP de l'Outaouais<BR>Gatineau, Québec<BR>Canada</DIV></BODY></HTML>