43. History of Computing at Wayne State

43. History of Computing at Wayne State

43. History of Computing at Wayne State
John Palmer 20:16 Thu May 18/23 31 lines

I graduated from Wayne State in 1988 with a degree in Computer
Science. I took more than the traditional 4 years as I took a
light course load and worked at the same time.

I remember touring the campus in the summer of 1981, led around by
CS professor Seymour Wolfson. He showed us the remote job station
(RJE) in the basement of the sciene library where they had a few
LA-34 printer terminals, but mostly, you submitted your jobs on
punch cards and waited for the output from the extermely
high-speed printer that was the size of a small WW-I tank. It
printed output on the 132 column green bar paper. Unlike most
computer equipment in those days, that damn thing could print
several pages a second!

Later, we got 4 HP 2621A terminals for which there was always a
line of students as those were so much better than the printer
terminals or cards.

MTS - Michigan Terminal System - brought to WSU by Dr. Frank
Westerveldt ("King Frank" - whose spirit still visits us on
Leander). '

I became an expert in the OS and how it worked and my experiments
pissed off the CSC (Computing Services Center - later renamed the
C&IT). I won't get into the tussles I had with them, except they'd
call the cops on me from time to time. Got to know a dick at the
WSU Poleeece named Len Corsetti - he's retired now and living in
Sanilac County on Lake Huron - he posts on Facebook and Twitter
(@LenCorsetti).

Anyone else have memories to share about computing at WSU?

KEYWORDS:
WAYNE STATE CSC C&IT

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