Why no MDO at HD?

[larry in cinci]

Every time I get three sheets my wife calls me a drunk and winds up stepping on my hands as I am crawling home. 8>{

[Silvan]

I just can't even stand to go in that place anymore. As soon as you walk through the door, you're swamped with drooling sales drones who don't know a capacitor from an amphitheater. Go in to buy a couple of diodes, and they try to sell you a cellular phone. Get ready to check out, and the sales drones are suddenly too busy talking on the phone to ring you up.

Last time I was in there, I had to spend an hour buying one bottle of ferric chloride, and there were three employees and two customers in the store.

Ripoff Shark makes Home Despot's people look comptent. The rocket scientist in question at least realized that 4x8 referred to some type of wood product.

[Silvan]

That brings back memories in of itself too. I can't remember the last time a battery leaked. Do they not leak anymore? I've got batteries in stuff I know have been in there for at least six years.

Those Heathkits were fun too. I built a bunch of that stuff with Dad. I learned some fun lessons, like what happens when you solder in an electrolytic cap backwards... :)

[Silvan]

Just for the record, I'm an early 30-something (31? 32? I forget...) and I've been there. We had a lot of hand-me-down stuff. Our first color TV was this gigantic cabinet deal with a record player, a radio and a TV. Gigantic ultrasonic remote control with two buttons on it. Jingle your keys just right, and it would change channels...

We used to get replacement tubes at People's drug store. When they stopped selling tubes, we finally caved in and bought a new TV.

[Wayne K.]

[Mark Jerde]

LOL! I put together a Griefkit H-52 (IIRC) terminal back when 300 BAUD was the norm, 110 acceptable, 1200 unbelievable, and 9600 godlike. I found out what happens when a flyback goes south. ;-)

-- Mark

[Mark Jerde]

It's better now after the .com crash, but it's still unusual for me to go into any computer store and find folks who know more than I do. Durn few of them know any PDP-11 assembler, or have written TSR keyboard extenders in DOS, or have struggled trying to create an installer with MDAC that doesn't break any of Win95, 95B, 98, 98SR2, NT, ...

"I dunno. Let's check their website..."

Duh!

-- Mark ;-)

[Larry Blanchard]

What, no Univac? BTW, the PDP-6 (later reincarnated as the 10) had one of the best instruction sets around - bested only by the GE4xx series.

[Mark Jerde]

A little before my time. ;-) I know a lady about 10 years older who keeps her checkbook in hex. ;-)

-- Mark

[Allen]

Anybody that smart can probably get a "real" job.

Wife worked at HD for a while. They made a point of hiring trades people. Most of them were pretty good. Trouble was, with the pay and working conditions, most of them didn't stick around. This was a brand new store when my wife started there. Now its not so new, in more ways than one.

Allen

[Brian]

I make one but I see 10 with 3 sheets..........hehe Brian

[Lazarus Long]

The last time I was in there I had my 13 year old daughter with me. In the course of the transacation, they asked me 6 times how to spell my name plus they had to call someone to ask if they could sell me the stand alone satellite receiver I wanted.

I was calm (boiling inside) and politely answered their questions and otherwised conducted the transaction. My daughter didn't say anything whatsoever until we got outside, then she asked me why the people in that store were so stupid. No prompting from me. I'm so proud. She's very perceptive.

[allen.morgan]

Larry

When you say GE4XXX series do you mean like the GE4010? I worked on that when I first got out of college. We did the front panel single stepping and BRU to self...remember that?

Al Morgan

[Mark & Juanita]

Oh yeah, they still leak. I've had several do so in the past several years. Now, the environment was somewhat severe, hot garage, Tucson, AZ.

[Doug Winterburn]

Oh, yeah. Not any different here in Casa Grande. I keep telling myself I gotta make a list of all battery powered devices and change 'em every year and get on a same date routine - should only take about 2 hours ;-)

Car batteries can make it on average about 2 years in the desert - even the Searz Heat Beaters.

-Doug

[Mark & Juanita]

Yep, I've started changing my car batteries every 24 months whether they need it or not. The last battery I had go bad in my pick-up took out my dashboard to the tune of $300. The cost of the repair would have been more, but because the pickup was less than 3 years old, the Ford dealer worked a deal with the manufacturer such that if I had some standard routine maintenance done (transmission fluid change), I got a reasonable deal on the new dashboard.

The damage was either caused when the battery died, or because internal damage to the battery caused excessive current somewhere when attempting to jump start the vehicle after the battery failed. I decided at that point, changing batteries every couple years was definitely cheaper than taking a chance on that kind of damage being done in the future.

[p-j]

So what is MDO used for?

[Silvan]

Heh, me too! That was the project with the blown cap, actually. It was hooked up to a screaming 300-baud acoustic coupler modem.

[Silvan]

ROTFLMAO!!!!!

[Larry Blanchard]

Was that the process control system? I never worked on it. I was referring to the 415/425/435 series. That lead to the 625, which led to Multics, which led to Unix :-).

BTW, I also have the original IDS manual for the 625, the first (despite IBM's claims) data base management system.