Age

[Steve Wilson]

I'm 49.

Started at age 15 by learning to program an Olivetti Programma 101 - 
http://www.science.uva.nl/faculteit/museum/Programma101.html for those 
who care.

Shortly there after I started learning about "Gotran" and got to run a 
couple of programs on a IBM1620 at Occidental College in Pasadena.  
Shortly there-I started learning Watfor, and got access to the IBM370 at 
USC.  You could walk in off the street with a deck and get 15 seconds of 
execution time for nothing. There were a few other high-school students 
doing the same thing I imagine.  Anyway - I took a Fortran class trough 
Glendale Community College after my Senior year in high-school and 
learned Fortran, then Cobol on a Burroughs B2500 that Glendale Unified 
had. 

Next the Junior College got a Nova 2/10 (I think..) and I became one of 
the two computer operators.  Learned Basic and ws the lab assistant for 
that.  It ran a DOS by Ball if I recall correctly.  It had a card reader 
that kept blowing up ;-) and 4 ASR-28s that people ran Basic on when it 
wasn't trying to run Fortran.

The other computer lab assistant got an Altair (had serial number 3 of 
8K Basic..) and we both drove to New Mexico for the very first personal 
computer convention in 75.

Went on to four year college and majored in EE.  Saw a Bendix G15 there 
(didn't use it), and PDP-11's running RSTS.  Did my senior project on an 
LSI-11 in Fortran. 

Went to work for Burroughs as a computer designer on the B1000 series - 
Did that for 3 years.

Later worked at Cydrome on the Cydra-5 (a mini-supercomputer ) around 85.

Worked at National semi in the 32K architecture group also for about 9 
months before went into consulting.

I would love to help resurrect a B1965 or a Cydra.

Steve Wilson