My college computer was PDP 11/44a 
IIRC - and bear in mind I am trying to remember back half a century!!! - we did “assembler”programming on a “twin”: 11/20 front-ended onto an 11/40.
The dept. seemed to have a thing about “twins”
The main system was a 1906A front-ended to a CDC 7600
The research system (no pleb under-grads allowed 
) was a 1905E front-ended to MU5 (“29xx”)
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There was an odd sweet smell to many electronic gadgets in the 70s/80s which I assumed was from the wrapping, maybe not, but I bought something a few years ago with a similar smell and it gave a dopamine rush due to familiarity.
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I don’t think it’s you but the fact that things which used to be pretty simple to do (but admittedly slow) would be easy to implement now in older languages/environments with fantastic speed boosts on modern processors if we could still do that.
Sadly I’ve found that to do pretty simple graphical output now requires jumping through hoops and importing libraries which are often quite opaque/complex and far from simple. Guess I’m saying I know how I want to plot/render graphics but the mechanisms and corollary routines are far from simple. Admit I’ve not explored Python enough - maybe that’s the key.
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This is where AI comes in handy.
Had a look this morning but unable to find my own Casio calculator. I think it may have been “donated” to my son. However found one that my wife used 20/30 years ago. Picture attached
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Whilst searching for the old calculator, I did find a couple of reference data books that were always by my side during the years when I was planning and overseeing oil/gas wells being drilled. Obviously they meant a lot to me as I have had no need for them for many years.
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LOL at “donated” 
Way back I coveted most of the Casio fx series in the Shoppers World catalogue and i got a “fx-100 College” for school which i still have and it works fine - I did have to bypass the power switch a long time ago so I just leave it to auto-power off now.
For classic Casio’s I have nine (at the moment 
), two classic Sharps, a modern Casio and a Sinclair Enterprise Programmable (from new from Shoppers World) 
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I remember Fortran on punched cards in 1977 (first year at Uni). I do remember it took many many attempts to get a stack of 60 punched cards to ‘run’ and waiting 3 days between sessions on the mainframe after the routine stopped due to mis punched or mis ordered cards. What fun that was !!
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It always tickles me that this thread has far more reminiscing about what people did nearly 50 years ago than what they have done in the past 24 hours. Maybe life was more interesting then. At least it makes a change from updates on people’s illnesses. What did I do yesterday? I ordered a new chair, banked some U3A cheques and bought some milk. It’s hardly thrilling.
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Valid point. I will try and keep in the here and now
I wasn’t meaning that at all, I was just amused and it’s not my place to influence anyone at all. This thread has always been odd, with simultaneous conversations running from car maintenance to medical issues. They run in parallel with no interaction at all. As I age I find myself increasing thinking about things in the past, and suddenly realise it was 50 years or more ago.
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At an age one has more past than future.
I do appreciate all the talking about 50 years ago, I have an appetite for modern history.
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Digressions tend to be short-lived and the topic moves on to the next 24 item
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Something I find odd is that I’ve avoided looking into AI in the same way I’ve eschewed the popular social media platforms. Could have dabbled with the current AI tools a few years ago but maybe I’m wary of it for the wrong reasons.
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Last time I had one there we had to step outside to ask the workmen to STFU.
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About 20 years ago I was chatting to a couple of friends and one of them mentioned that a friend of hers had a son at secondary school. He was studying the Thatcher years in modern history, as we were all in our early 40s then we were unimpressed to find that we were “history”.
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I was thinking just the other day how when I first passed my motorbike test, 50 years previously was 1921 which to me then was an archaic age that I had no connection with, musically Louis Armstrong would have been popular and the common man would be lucky to afford any way of listening to him. Now at age 71 50 years ago was 1976 and Queen Night at the Opera was number one. What does a teenager think of those 1976 times I wonder? Still archaic and unconnected?
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When I was young, men retired at 65 and women at 60. Both seemed incredibly old to me and it was impossible to imagine getting there and being a pensioner. On Tuesday I will be 65 and for some reason it’s making me really wistful. Mrs HH says it’s no big deal, which of course it isn’t, and I’ve no idea why it’s making me so strange. And this July will be our 40th wedding anniversary, another thing for old people. Mrs HH’s dad died when he was 60, her mum when she was 67, her oldest sister when she was 60. My mum died when I was just 10, though my dad lived to 94, becoming thoroughly miserable and wishing that he too was no longer around. It’s all very weird. I need to get a grip!!
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Of course the good thing is that life expectancy has increased and being able to live with conditions associated with old age has become easier. You will continue to enjoy life for somewhat longer I hope HH. Wistfulness is a condition that can not be helped but going back to those times and different opportunities taken or not would have still left you wistful.
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