Date: Sun, 16 Feb 2020 08:42:23 +0000 From: Ottavio Caruso <ottavio2006-usenet2012@yahoo.com> To: Scott Bennett <bennett@sdf.org> Cc: steve@sohara.org, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: terminology and history (was Re: Re updating BIOS) Message-ID: <CAEJNuHyZfPriMGMa6K=5SN3jP5Wyp8J%2B86tR8E7ZPnzhxRAjJA@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <202002160656.01G6uBYm008146@sdf.org> References: <202002120724.01C7OcSW005991@sdf.org> <CAEJNuHwebNQjGTFWFaJGqnA3BVwxqVYM9Ufrr6i69iwVmTknBg@mail.gmail.com> <202002160656.01G6uBYm008146@sdf.org>
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On Sun, 16 Feb 2020 at 06:56, Scott Bennett <bennett@sdf.org> wrote: > > Ottavio Caruso <ottavio2006-usenet2012@yahoo.com> wrote: > > > > The "amateurs from the ham radio community" are (and at least were > > back in the 70s) much more skilled than you paint them. The first form > > Really? That was not my experience in the United States. Here there > appeared to be very little overlap between computer programmers and ham radio > operators. I'm not surprised that you'have jumped to this conclusion because: 1) Define "computer programmer" in 2010 and in the 70/80s. Back then, computer programmers were an elite that programmed mostly in low level languages. They were a tiny minority in any field of society and they probably were also in the ham community, who, at the time, were mostly ex-military or analogue RF engineers. 2) Like I said before, the first "workable" form or wireless data traffic was AX-25, which was invented by hams for hams, but before that, even in 50s and 60s, hams used old teletypes and protocols like rtty and baudot (still used today), so it's fair to say that their IT knowledge was far superior than the average Joey Bag-of-donuts. I grew up in Italy in the 70s. I wasn't involved with amateur radio (my father was). Hobbyist magazines were full of EPROM projects to build custom TNCs and home-made rudimentary computers based on the Z80. Very few hobbyists could afford the DOS/IBM-PC crap. My schoolmate's father bought one in 1982 for 5M Italian liras; that was basically a year's wage of an office worker. -- Ottavio Caruso
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