Your eureka moment

I guess mine was when I was working for a US TV network in Rome and noticed all the other bureaux had their personalised lead-in graphix to their satellite feeds (sunrise in Beirut, icicles in Moscow, etc.) , but we had none. So, working on a Sinclair eek, I drew the Colosseum and a little donkey walking across the screen from right to left in front of it, dropping a little turd every one second exactly, as a countdown to zero when the donkey went off-screen and the picture feed started. It was wonderful - all the colleagues loved it. Unfortunately, there was no way we could find to transfer it onto tape, so it never got used. Shortly afterwards I was working on it on the parapet of our 6th-floor balcony, when... you guessed it! So I can't even show it to you, and have only the word of my then GF, now wife of nearly 30 years, as evidence...

 

My "eureka" came when I finally figured out how to write programs in the assembly language of a Singer-Link GP4 simulator for the Boeing 707. The "CPU" on that beast was actually a rotating drum with a magnetic coating on it and it carried 8 tracks, each with its own read/write head.

You had to know how many cycles each operation took. Add and subtract took two, mutiply took four and divide took eight. You could do Boolean logic operations while you waited for the answer to show up.

Trying to figure it out by reading the program listings was near-impossible, but I finally got it!

As an example of what we were doing back then, our 747 simulator computer drove a full front panel instrument set for both pilots, a simulated Inertial Nav system, a full flight engineer's instrument panel, a radio navigation environment with all the western US DMEs, VORs, NDBs and Instrument Landing Systems, a weather environment with thunderstorms and wind-shear and an instructor's console with about 1200 airplane system malfunctions.

It was a Honeywell DDP-324 runnng at 30 frames per second (yes 30 Hz, not KHz or MHz!) and the total memory was 64K words of 32 bits each.

How far we have come!

 

I'm not sure but I'd hate to think about how far that 707 went with an HD for a CPU

 

OK, since I promised I'd stay on topic, I had another "Eureka" moment when I was trying to figure out what I could do to please my girlfriend. I had my "moment" when I did a complicated spreadsheet on my computer and had it tattooed on my back. My girlfriend said I Excelled myself.

(insert smilie with closed eyes and shaking head here)

[am I banned yet?]

 

Back in the dark ages, two weeks into computer ownership I decided to clean up the root directory of my Zenith turbo 8086 computer, and moved the startup files neatly into the DOS directory. It was running MS-DOS 4.1, and delivered the silent screen of ignorance the next time I booted. It was the first time I had fallen through the air to land with a chill thump without leaving my chair. Despite my panic, I had the presence of mind to put in a boot disc, give the three-finger salute, and watch it come back to life. Reflecting on what I had been doing I figured what to undo. The Eureka! was dual: finally figuring how and why MS-DOS went together, and successfully moving files around. The Lesson was not to move files randomly, or even purposefully, without understanding.

I still miss some of those comforting little DOS aides, like X-Tree and keyfake and park. Those were the days you needed to know something about how the machine worked, and be willing to do your own oil changes.

 

I surmise that Chris is blonde.

 

I worked for the Telephone Company years ago as a PBX Installer Repairman. I knew how to fake it if I had never seen or worked on a system I knew nothing about.
One day I was dispatched to repair a small phone system I had never seen before. I walked in and said "Hi, I'm here to fix your phone system, where is it? " Someone said "That's it your leaning on. " I thought real quick and said "Oh, that must be the new model I haven't seen before. " Those were the good old days.

 

And I bet you thought Baby Diapers hold 18 lbs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:

 

My eureka moment was getting a job where the boss asked what I knew about 8080's.
Told him I knew all about them then took the Motorolla book home (about 3 inches thick) and read it that night. Next day I found out I was now the lab expert on 8080's and 4bit commands.

For interest the actual memory in the 747 nav unit was hand sewed core memory sheets. They were assembled at Delco Electronics in Oak Creek, WI. I watched the ladies sew them for 8 hours a day and was very glad I never had that job.

 

Hmmm, used to have an old Mac that would only boot up when you thumped it to get the HD started. Not a " Eureka " moment unless you thought you'd lost a whole bunch of stuff only moments before.

 

Hi gordauch,

Nope! Old, dumb, gray and guy as it gets.

 

Hi registerthis,

How did you know!?! I was babysitting my nephew for a few days (even though my sister was extremely hesitant) and told me where everything was, contact numbers — the whole magilla.

When she came home she saw my nephews diaper almost dragging on the ground and she started yelling at me for not changing him!!!

I calmly walked to the changing table and showed her the box and pointed out that it clearly stated, "Good for up to 18#'s" and I figured he still had another few pounds to go.

How was I to know?

 

Does a "Eureka" moment count if you get help?

The reason I ask is because I remembered waaaay back to when I first signed up for this forum. The name went OK, but when I entered my password, it asked for 8 characters. So, I entered MickeyMinniePlutoHueyLouieDeweyDonaldGoofy and it wouldn't go through.

When I wrote to find out what the problem was, I was informed that the password need to be 8 characters, numbers and\or letters, not the names of 8 characters. Eureka! It went through!

 

Chris, please stop now

Seriously, it's good to have a laugh now and again. And you certainly bring that to the boards, thanks and keep going.

 

Hi wildfire,

Beware of what you wish for! I've been working with computers since the early 80's and I've had a ton of Eureka moments (usually preceded by "oops" or "oh, s***! ") although it was mainly stupidity on my part until I figured it out.

 

I just had another Eureka moment (although it was painful) about an hour ago:

I was standing on the sidewalk under the window of a computer repair place that was on the top floor of a building when I heard a crash and saw a computer come flying out the window. I wondered why it kept getting bigger and bigger. Then it hit me.

[come on "” I gotta be banished for that one]

 

Yep, you're barred

Stop now please