[Xastir] serial port error with serial GPS

[Gerry Creager N5JXS]

When I was in junior high, my dad was sent to a systems analyst class 
for 6 months at IBM in Dallas (we lived in Ft. Worth, he worked for the 
US Gov't at Bell Helicopter, as an auditor).  He never quite got the 
idea behind programming, and most of the work was in FORTRAN (with a 
little COBOL) so I started at that point.  He'd run my programs on the 
IBM 1401 and bring home the results.  He got pretty good at analysis, 
but never could string his thoughts together as working code.  You might 
say his passing the training was the result of a good team effort.

I used the High School's Model 39 TTY to gain more access to the 
Spectra-70 than I should have had.  Learned BASIC there because they 
didn't make programming languages available to the HS students...

At TAMU, we had a 360/30 when I started, but by my sophomore year we'd 
upgraded to a 360/65.  For most of the time I was there, the standard 
was the IBM 029 keypunch and a line printer, but we also had Selectrics 
for the APL folks.  At some point we started seeing Lear-Seigler 
ADM3's... and then ADM-3a's.  We used them in a semiinteractive mode to 
run WILBUR.  I got thrown out of a Numerical Analysis class for, among 
other things, teaching my group how to run WILBUR and IEBPRINTPUNCH so 
we could turn in the requisite print-out and deck.

Did I mention the Clandestine Programming Contest?  Modelled after the 
intercollegiate contest, our goal was to take down the mainframe for the 
longest period of time (that is, the hardest), with the least number of 
cards, submitted at a normal user cardreader.  My deck had 6 cards; 
after being hired for a 12 month stint to study and improve HASP, I kept 
the deck in a plastic box on my desk as a reminder to our Director that 
he was not safe.  To complete the story, there was a group of 
undergraduates on campus working for various departments.  The Data 
Processing Center Director took exception to us working in the computing 
centers supposedly reserved for faculty/staff/grad-students.  After all, 
we were slimey undergrads!  He directed his staff to intercept our jobs 
in the queue, decrement our work accounts for the total requested time 
charge, and report no output.  Our complaints met a silent wall.  So, we 
took the step to organize the Contest.  All, save one of us, was hired 
away from our departments; the hold-out got a bigger offer from the 
department he worked for.  I did HASP/COP work while virtually all of us 
did one form of systems security or another.  I even got a preliminary 
look at ACF and RAC prior to them seeing the light of day.

gerry


Jerry Chamberlin wrote:
> Funny where one bit wil get you.
> 
> On Sun, 29 Feb 2004, Curt Mills wrote:
> 
> 
>>On Sun, 29 Feb 2004, Jerry Chamberlin wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Yes I have one, and a Special Cobol coding form..
>>>I also have a IBM 1442 Printer manual.
>>>My first program ran on a IBM 1620.
>>>Then the school got a 360 Mod 30.....
>>>I helped upgrade the a 360 Mod 20 to 16K core memory. Yes K, but K words so
>>>multiply by 8.
>>>
>>>I think I am starting to feel OLD
>>
>>Yea, but these are fun sorts of threads, even if off topic (no
>>version of Xastir would run on the old stuff we're talking about).
>>
>>First programming class was using punched cards and a line printer,
>>Fortran.  I never saw the computer, and didn't even know which
>>building it was in.
>>
>>The ham club at college (W7YH, 2 years older than the ARRL) had an
>>ASR33? and a punched tape reader/writer, also a Robot 70 SSTV
>>monitor and an audio reel-to-reel for recording/playing back the
>>SSTV signals.  Had a blast with all that, but having more fun with
>>Linux/Unix and connecting to radios.
>>
>>-- 
>>Curt, WE7U.				archer at eskimo dot com
>>http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
>>  Lotto:  A tax on people who are bad at math. - unknown
>>Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates. - WE7U.
>>The world DOES revolve around me:  I picked the coordinate system!"
>>
> 
> 
> The Net Lab year 2000 and beyond Internet Education is Science
> http://www.netlab.org
> WA0JRJ - Jerry
> used to be ICQ 6408731
> used to be AIM PappyJerry
> 
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-- 
Gerry Creager -- gerry.creager at tamu.edu
Network Engineering -- AATLT, Texas A&M University	
Cell: 979.229.5301 Office: 979.458.4020 FAX: 979.847.8578
Page: 979.228.0173
Office: 903A Eller Bldg, TAMU, College Station, TX 77843