3 Comments

Great article, really enjoyed it!

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Jun 23, 2021Liked by Mad Ned

In the 2000's I worked with a fellow who was a CompSci major in the early 70's, cutting his teeth on PDP8's and PDP11's. He always had fascinating tales and they really inspired me. Everyone worked much closer to the hardware (both physically and logically) but what surprised me is that despite how much things changed, they also remained similar. The lessons learned in the 80's and 90's (some of them now my own lessons from cutting *my* teeth on rebuilding old XT's) have definite overlap. Troubleshooting comes to mind. No matter how the technology has changed, a proper troubleshooting method is golden, regardless of the technology it was learned on.

And of course you've said the same in a different context- that of companies that come, and for whatever reason, go. There are lessons learned that can apply in so many ways. Certainly the company with the humble Lemon Tree has outlasted the Hubristic Manhole Cover Corp.

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Also long forgotten in the Apollo story is, long after HP shut them down, they briefly brought the name back on a line of cheap inkjet printers (I have one collecting dust in the basement).

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