Newbie wanting to say hello

[maheanuu]

and, tell you a little about myself.

I am a retired Navy Chief and make my home in French Polynesia, I am marred to a lovely Tahitian lady, have a son and a daughter and two grand children. I retired out of the Navy in the mid 70's and was a Field engineer for Sperry Univac. I returned to Tahiti after 5 years with Sperry and have pretty much lived here ever since. I have been involved in electronics and digital electronics and Computers since the 50's. I am now in my 70's and still keepin on, keepin on. I try to keep up, but finding that isn't as easy as it was way back when. Also. age doesn't have anything to do with that <grin>. I now live in a land where just a few years ago no one had a computer. I brought in the first PC's to the Outer Islands that were privately owned. The French Atomic Commission had the only computers at the time in Papeete and being (at that time) an American I was sort out in the cold trying to keep up with technology.
I brought in the first Sinclair Doorstops, the PCs still had not entered the business community or the private homes. I worked with my Sinclair's usng Sinclair Basic and writing programs which had to be saved to audio tape for future use. Having only 1 K of memory and no hard discs and using a television screen as a monitor didn't seem to be too terrible all things considering. It sure beat setting up with punch pins and running a boot loader from paper tape.

I guess that I'm a dinosaur, and that may very well be true, but I am a proud old Dino, I have managed to see us go from old vacuum tube multivibrators to equipments that would have taken a large room and now you can hold it and several others like it in the palm of one hand. I know, it isn't magic, but back in the 50's we were still dreaming of things that hadn't even started on the drawing boards then..

I would like to say thanks to everyone who still has that fire of inquisitiveness and wants to know how things work and what makes them do the neat things they do. You are now the keepers of the flame, you are the ones to teach all of the young people out there who want to follow in your foot steps. Teach well, and listen well. Thank each and everyone of you for your determination and drive..

Bravo Zulu!

Just this old Chief's 2 ¢

Oh, I do have a problem, I partitioned a hard drive early the other morning and it wasn't the drive that I had set up for partitioning. Now I need to recover a complet OS and all the files... Where would one post on this?
It was in Vista 64 NTFS but more about all this when I learn where I should make that post

[kendall]

I would suggest in General Computer Support.

And...


Welcome aboard sailor!

[Anupam]

Hi, and welcome to the forum . Good to know so much about you, and about the old days, when computers were just starting to get developed. Technology is growing fast.

As for your query, please post it in "General Computer Support".

[MidnightCowboy]

Welcome Chief from an old and not so sensible cowboy!

I hope you enjoy your time with us.

I too took an early retirement from the delights of "civilized" Europe to live in Brazil so I can identify with a lot of what you say.

[danjmilos]

HI Chief,

I'm going to feel like a youngster around you at 57. Just do not go see 2012 cause Tahiti will not be around.

Dan

[George]

Hey Chief,

I was reading your little essay about you with interest. Love it. Welcome here.

Wasn't Sperry Univac turned into Unisys later? Not sure about that. But I had a great time programming on Unisys OS 1100 and reading octal dumps....

Anyways. Again, great to have you here.

[BukkWilldd1]

I'm a newbie poster as well, but I'd like to say welcome Chief! Sounds like you have a lot to give this forum and look forward to reading your posts. I love those old vacuum tubes, too. They're not too good for computers any more, but still work great in guitar amplifiers.

[chris.p]

Hey Maheanuu,

I zapped a drive once, and needed to get the data off. I tried about 10 apps, all failed except Easus data recovery wizard. So that'd be my first one to try out now. However it was desperately, incredibly slow. I'm talking 24 hours or something. But it worked, the others didn't.

Mind you that was an old version, maybe the new one is quicker.

ps -- don't use that wiped drive at all, don't even look at it until you run the data recovery on it. Using the drive in the slightest will wipe the data totally.

[revboy]

Hi there maheanuu ( I suppose that name has a special meaning in Tahitian ) I am relatively new here but I enjoyed reading your original post, when some referred to you as "Chief" it sort of sounded good, like a term of endearment and respect,

best regards,

revboy.