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Anybody still working with a green-bar tractor feed printer?
I tried explaining a tractor feed printer to my college aged son and got a weird twisted look of confusion in response, like I was speaking an alien language.
I remember turning in writing papers in college (non green-bar of course) where the professor/TA would deduct a point (for each edge) if they had to tear the feed edges off of the student's report.
Ah, the good ol' days. 
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I was a CS student between '86 and '88. I remember having 2 required documents for most assignments:
0: handwritten or typed pseudo-code
1: a green-bar printout containing code and results
The green-bar had an ascii-art cover with my name and terminal #. I remember having a special notebook with 80 columns...then I quit school and worked a trade job for 10 years. When I got back into it (programming) in the late '90s things had changed dramatically...I remember the feeling I had when I realized that the computer lab was a thing of the past.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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Up until a few months ago, O'Reilly Auto Parts still used them to print customer receipts. They are currently transitioning to newer technology (e.g., thermal).
For those businesses that rely on impact printing (multi-part carbon forms), manufacturers are still making them.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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In a way. Back in the 80's I spent a lot of time working in the computer center at our local Air Force base. The 2nd floor of the building was one huge room, over an acre in size. It was filled with mainframes, super-mini's (VAXen, mostly), the washing-machine style hard drives, and of course line printers. This was back in the day when nobody thought about hearing protection. The noise was incredible.
As a result I have chronic tinnitus (ringing in the ears)  . I have a hard time maintaining a conversation if there's any background noise. I don't listen to classical music nearly as much as I used to, as the strings tend to sound weak and muffled (loss of frequency range).
Software Zen: delete this;
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I was in the USAF, 78-82 Mainframe Operator - 82-86 Computer Programmer. I also have tinnitus although it might be caused by all the hard rock concerts I went to.
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I saw/heard a dot matrix printer last time I flew out of Changi, printing out the passenger list at the boarding gate.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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Not working with one, but I still have one if anybody wants to buy it! You'll need a parallel port... (Panasonic KX-P1180 printer, and yes you can still get the ribbons for it)
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Don't tempt me!
(Actually it might need to be serial.)
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I'm not, but I had been considering getting one for my OpenVMS systems.
(I won't.)
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I'm not gonna lie, I had to google that 
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Any one still has a working Apple II(c,e) computer. I have two but they both are not functioning any more. Not sure I ready to believe delay in solid state.
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I almost managed to read that. Care to rework that second sentence?
There's hardly any purpose in hanging on to dead hardware, especially something that old.
I was hit by nostalgia a few months back, and had been looking at local ebay equivalents to reacquaint myself with a Commodore 64 (which I grew up with). Fortunately some company managed to put together a minified version (think Nintendo's own NES-mini and SNES-mini from last year) which can use the same disk images as emulators (well, it is, itself, an emulator).
I've tinkered with all the C64 emulators before, but having this in the "right" form factor, with a functional joystick and all, managed to capture my interest over the holidays for far longer than emulators ever have.
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I have one.
First thing to check is the power supply, on tech this vintage the electrolytic filter capacitors are the first things to go: they will either open circuit or short out, neither is good for the electrons in there.
If the power supply passes the test then things get a bit more interesting - more symptoms on "not functioning" will be needed 
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We have a command line app we run to import data from "foreign" databases. Each foreign database provides its own web service. We import the data in one of four databases, depending on what environment we're in, but we can redirect the imported data into and of the four databases by a command line switch.
We use the database to determine how the app runs via a table of configuration settings. There are also arbitrary command line switches that let you change some (but not all) of the values, however not all of the command line switches are handled through the appconfig object (even though they might override a value retrieved from the database.
I'm almost done with a re-write of that section of code that:
0) Pulls config settings from the database (as before), but only for the specified program type (foreign database source)
1) Allows ANY of those values to be overridden, because I use reflection to get the appconfig object's property names, as well as a generic SetValue method.
2) Produces a program type-specific help screen (if the command line args are something like "/progtype /?"), or an app help screen that describes all possible arguments (again, using reflection for the property names and their default database values
It's pretty impressive, if I do say so myself.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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Except it was supposed to be a Flappy Bird clone, John - your boss.
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Sounds good.
I write a lot of command-line utilities, some including some stuff similar to that.
However, I _never_ use appconfig. Some do use a custom XML file designed for them.
Your point 2 reminds me of VOS.
I haven't advanced my command line parser to that point though. Even many features of OpenVMS haven't been added yet.
One of the more recent features I added to the parser is the ability to set environment variables to hold commonly-used switches.
For instance, my TFSutil expects a /URL switch (which rarely changes), so
set TFSutil/URL=theURLoftheteamTFSproject
and the command line parser treats it as if it was included on the command line. Slick as snot.
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And of course you wrote all this in Qlikview.
Runs away in a zig zag pattern, hoping he misses.
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It's always cool when you get a chance to work on something and feel like you've done a clever job of it.
I got to do that last year for the first time in ages. We were making an "evaluation kit" to show off some new hardware to potential partners, and I was charged with producing the app to run the thing. I could have cannibalized an existing app, but it would have been a chainsaw job and would have looked like it. Instead I rolled up a new app from scratch. Not only did the new app look good, I got it done before the hardware was ready, which almost never happens.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Assuming a new medical breakthrough allowed you to live as long as you like, barring accidents and murders, how long would be long enough?
What problems, apart from having to deal with Y10K issues (still probably in COBOL) do you see coming up?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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That depends. Does this treatment halt, or reverse, physical and mental decline? Or do we get to look forward to 900 years of senility, arthritis, and getting up ten times a night to pee?
(Although I supposed getting up ten times a night is better than not getting up.  )
Also, how much does it cost? If you're still paying off the cost of treatment as a quincentenarian, then it doesn't sound like a good deal. Even worse if you have to regularly repeat the treatment.
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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Meh, if I live that long, I would've figured out how to replace parts of my body with synthetics anyway, save the brain off course.
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Richard Deeming wrote: Although I supposed getting up ten times a night is better than not getting up
10 times? After 3, I'd be looking into leaving a garden hose nearby.
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On a slight deviation:
Not that long ago I considered if I could be twenty or thirty, again, as in a boon of youth. Without my Mrs. to be with me, continuing to grow old together, I wasn't so sure I'd take it.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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