Technical The internet & old cars

Danny, Do not mean to go off topic but the new avatar is creeping me out! BRENDA! did you see what Danny is doing on the computer! lol Larry

 

Hey H,

Great story for early computer usage. Those were the days…. Computers have come a long way since those first Apple and IBM PC green screen units. Technology had to do something, and they did, almost every year, to now. In the beginning, it was typing in those long lines to make something happen. That got old for most of us. Then as the computers got better, they were made for ordinary consumers. We did not want to type in long lines of code and a bunch of "googly" odd shapes.

When the computers were made for the consumer, word processing got a lot easier and now communication between people became better. From telephone connections to fast internet speeds of today, it looks and feels like night and day.

When games became popular, we got an Atari 400 and 800 computers for games and word processing. Now, we were able to type stuff and print them out on dot matrix printers. Finally, the Apple units were on the rise and they became useful for schools and people at home. The key back then was still being able to type anything and use a dictionary to spell check words, if one was not a good speller.

As computers progressed, programs became available to help those spell correctly and actually talk into the microphone so the computer could type into a screen page, spelling correctly as you spoke. That was a fun program that allowed millions of people type, spell and use correct grammar on anything they wanted to send to others, like business accounts or just friendly letters.

As the internet came around, the rush to see what was available on websites was overwhelming. Someone had to create those packs of information, jumbled as it was. It was new and exciting to see something at the touch of your finger. No more huge rows of encyclopedia books on shelves to look up something. It was on your screen. Hot rod information and old drag racing sites became easy to access. Getting the information was easy.

Copy and pasting became an easy way out, instead of using the information and rewriting it into a different format and story. (remember term papers in high school English?) But, as easy as it was, most did not utilize spell checkers or grammar correcting programs and just beat the English language to death.

Jnaki

So, as easy as it is to look up something, how valid is the information anyway? Which sites do you understand is a solid bank of real life information and not copy/paste without any clarification of photos? We all have to get better at clarification of information before we post it as “real.”

Do the research on valid sites and check/recheck your posts for misinformation. A street legal, gas coupe could have been cl***ified as an altered coupe, just because he/she left the stock street legal muffler system at home. But, if the photo does not show that, it is not good to call it an outright altered coupe vs. real altered 25% set back altered coupes.

Background information through research does lots for accuracy of information. Copying someone else’s site information and posting without quotation marks is in bad taste. If you don’t know what is in the photo, don’t guess, just because someone else made the same mistake. If the copied information from another website is used, place the quotation marks where necessary. Those aren’t your words or knowledge.

The internet has come a long way, but it also makes it so much easier to copy stuff. People have no clue as to what they are copying and posting unless more research is done first. When I first started to post early items, it was easier to type in all lowercase letters. I did not have to go back and correct anything as long as the spelling was in order. But, someone called me on it, as a past photojournalist. It was said that, in essence, “bunk,” to type in lower case and not correct English grammar, as well as shorter paragraphs.

Correct grammar and spelling, as well as using paragraphs, were things we all learned in school. That made me a better writer, typist, and researcher of information.

As far as your internet preferences, that is on you… and files/history don’t always get completely deleted.

 

Cars and computers, computers and cars... In 1971, after two attempts to leave the sport, cars once again found a way to keep me in racing.

Told the history of working for Tom Johnson and Carroll Shelby in Dallas developing/building the Vanguard Warrior 1, Vanguard Vetta Ventura and what later became known as Shelby Cobra cars. Subsequent to that left for college in New Orleans in 1967 only to run into John Mecom on the Tulane campus when he bought an NFL franchise the same year and formed the New Orleans Saints football team and turned wrenches for him there.

After college came graduate school in San Antonio. There I bumped into a guy named Phil Ray who I knew from Dallas where he previously worked for Texas Instruments during the same time I worked at Cyd Czekaj's German Automotive shop. Cyd's German Automotive was located on a street named Floyd Circle immediately east of the main TI hilltop campus and Phil Ray had his Porsches worked on there. It was convenient.

Found out that after Phil left TI Dallas he went to work for NASA in Florida where he met a guy named Gus Roche and together they formed a company in San Antonio called Computer Terminal Corporation (CTC) in 1968 and built "dumb" data-entry terminals for mainframe computers built by IBM, Digital Equipment (DEC) and others.

In 1967 Phil, Gus and a couple other guys at CTC (Vic Poor, Jon Schmidt et al) came up with the idea of incorporating various electrical functions on one piece of silicon instead of a bunch of separate components. So they sketched out an architecture and sent it for feasibility and quoting to Jack Kilby at TI (Jack Kilby won a Nobel Prize for inventing the integrated circuit) and a small company in California.

Texas Instruments was deeply involved with very profitable government contracts at the time and chose not to quote the project (though TI did perform some work).

The other small California company did accept the project, today is known as Intel, the part is the Intel 4004 and in 1971 the microprocessor age was born.

I started graduate school in San Antonio in 1971.

Hanging out at Autohaus, SASCA and other places in San Antonio I ran into Phil Ray again. He was still into Porsches and owned a few 911S cars that he and drop-dead-gorgeous hyper-intelligent techno-witch Brenda Flowers campaigned around Texas. He asked me to turn wrenches on his cars. I was hooked again.

Phil raced 911's and bought a Porsche RSK Spyder that was European Hillclimb Champion. (Story about crashing the RSK into the side of an ammunition bunker at Fort Hood right in front of the base CO is hilarious.)

Phil Ray, me and a couple others worked on developing an active suspension system in the mid-1970's we called "4-Wheel Integrated Suspension" using 4004's, wire-spring strain gauges bonded to suspension springs, Wheatstone Bridge circuits and electrical-valved shock absorbers. Processor at that time was simply too slow for the intended suspension system.

Anyway, Phil and Gus used the Intel 4004 as the basis for the CTC 2200 terminal, changed their company's name to Datapoint and invented the personal computer in 1973. First two places you could buy a personal computer (as a kit) were Southwest Technical Products in San Antonio and Altair Electronics in Albuquerque (which is where and why Albuquerque was where Bill Gates chose to introduce DOS).

And thus the personal computer age was born.

Right place, right time.

https://bugbookmuseum.blogspot.com/2014/06/vintage-computers-datapoint-2200.html

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

 

Didn’t Bill Gates get DOS from INM originality and then market it back to them?
r


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Typo: IBM


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no, he got it from Seattle Computer Products.