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Sound Reinforcement - Forums for Live Sound Professionals - Your Displayed Name Must Be Your Real Full Name To Post In The Live Sound Forums => The Basement => Topic started by: Dave Stevens on April 30, 2014, 01:11:25 PM

Title: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Dave Stevens on April 30, 2014, 01:11:25 PM
20 years ago this month a perl script on a shared server at halcyon.com at the Seattle NAP in the Westin Hotel in downtown Seattle first hosted the live-audio board.

Happy Birthday LAB.  In Internet years you are pre historic.  Kind of like Fowler or Mac...
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: John Roberts {JR} on April 30, 2014, 01:21:07 PM
Newbie... :-)

JR
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Tom Young on April 30, 2014, 01:58:50 PM
20 years ago this month a perl script on a shared server at halcyon.com at the Seattle NAP in the Westin Hotel in downtown Seattle first hosted the live-audio board.....Happy Birthday LAB.  In Internet years you are pre historic.  Kind of like Fowler or Mac...

Congratulations, Dave and Doug !

And THANKS !!!!!!

Hope you're well, Dave.
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Tommy Peel on April 30, 2014, 02:24:14 PM
Hmmm... 20 years ago I was 4yrs old and had probably never used a computer. :-) Thanks to all the great people who made this forum happen and stay running. Hopefully my generation can keep it going another 20 years.
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Tim McCulloch on April 30, 2014, 03:30:04 PM
20 years ago this month a perl script on a shared server at halcyon.com at the Seattle NAP in the Westin Hotel in downtown Seattle first hosted the live-audio board.

Happy Birthday LAB.  In Internet years you are pre historic.  Kind of like Fowler or Mac...

Yepper, Happy Birthday CLASSIC LAB.  Next year we'll buy you a drink!

Thanks for kicking this off, Dave.
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Doug Fowler on April 30, 2014, 04:18:59 PM
20 years ago this month a perl script on a shared server at halcyon.com at the Seattle NAP in the Westin Hotel in downtown Seattle first hosted the live-audio board.

Happy Birthday LAB.  In Internet years you are pre historic.  Kind of like Fowler or Mac...

The hell you say.... ;-)
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Mac Kerr on April 30, 2014, 08:28:36 PM
20 years ago this month a perl script on a shared server at halcyon.com at the Seattle NAP in the Westin Hotel in downtown Seattle first hosted the live-audio board.

Happy Birthday LAB.  In Internet years you are pre historic.  Kind of like Fowler or Mac...

I resemble that remark. I missed the first 8 years, so maybe I'm a newbie.

Thanks for the start Dave.

Mac
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Ivan Beaver on April 30, 2014, 08:53:51 PM
Thanks for providing a great forum.

A great place to share ideas-pass on knowledge-dispell myths-learn and generally a great way to pass the time :)
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Justice C. Bigler on May 01, 2014, 01:50:25 AM
No purple dancing dinosaur?
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Tim McCulloch on May 01, 2014, 02:35:52 AM
No purple dancing dinosaur?

It was a hippo.
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Riley Casey on May 02, 2014, 04:50:27 PM
The geezer thread?  Glad to see you're still out there being obstreperous Dave.
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: John Halliburton on May 02, 2014, 11:20:49 PM
Dave,

Thanks for this, it's been a pretty fine ride.

Best regards,

John
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Stefan Maerz on May 08, 2014, 03:12:57 PM
Didn't realize you guys had been around so long. I've learned *so many* things from the people here.
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Doug Fowler on May 08, 2014, 04:01:37 PM
Didn't realize you guys had been around so long. I've learned *so many* things from the people here.

The "core group" of LABsters found each other on CompuServe, on the LSMAG forum which was started by Anthony McLean when he was Live Sound! editor.  This would be around 1994.  But it was a pay service, Dave put the script up in Seattle, and pretty soon everyone had migrated.

The first post was by Monty Lee Wilkes: "Check one two is this thing on?".
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Jonathan Johnson on May 09, 2014, 01:20:31 AM
Hmmm... 20 years ago I was 4yrs old and had probably never used a computer. :-)

I got my first email address -- and first accessed the Internet -- the year you were born. (1990, unless that's inaccurate due to rounding errors.)
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Tommy Peel on May 09, 2014, 02:10:06 AM

I got my first email address -- and first accessed the Internet -- the year you were born. (1990, unless that's inaccurate due to rounding errors.)

I was born in '89, so you're pretty close. :-) I didn't get online until the late 90's and we were still on dial up at home until '09 or '10. My smartphone has twice as much storage as our first internet connected computer, has a much faster processor, and has more than twice the memory.


Sent from my cousin's iPhone using Tapatalk while I fix my N4
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: John Roberts {JR} on May 09, 2014, 09:06:56 AM
My first computer back in the '70s was a kit (Heathkit version of DEC LSI 11/2) I had to built most of it and it still cost about $6500. I fully loaded it with 28k x16b memory. I had to write all the software myself to make it do anything. My first modem had rubber cups where you sit the phone on it to communicate back and forth. before the phone company relaxed interface standards.

I ran a small mail order business with that computer and even wrote one crude filter design program. Kids today have it a little easier.

JR


Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Ray Aberle on May 09, 2014, 01:09:24 PM
My first computer back in the '70s was a kit (Heathkit version of DEC LSI 11/2) I had to built most of it and it still cost about $6500. I fully loaded it with 28k x16b memory. I had to write all the software myself to make it do anything. My first modem had rubber cups where you sit the phone on it to communicate back and forth. before the phone company relaxed interface standards.

I ran a small mail order business with that computer and even wrote one crude filter design program. Kids today have it a little easier.

JR

(I was born in '79)

Our first computer at home was when my dad quit from HP- he bought an HP 9816 for 50% off-- and it was still something like $3750. 2 3.5" FDD, everything ran off of those, none of these sissy "windows" or "mice." Dot-matrix printer. I remember writing a report on the ostrich in the third grade ('88) and having him help me put the coding into the Pascal text program to bold the title for me. My brother actually learned to program in Pascal as well. We had a Star Trek game on there-- again, all textish based (old ASCII styled "images"). Rotary wheel on the keyboard you could use to "aim" the phaser/photon torpedoes to try and hit the Klingons.

There was an HP-designed spreadsheetish kindof program, and I remember my dad preparing tax returns with it.

First Mac Powerbook 520 in October '94, sophomore in high school. Only kid at school who brought a laptop to school! My dad was working for a bellevue, WA-based ISP at the time, so I had email early on. And a website, which I used for a run for Senior Class Treasurer. I kept changing home pages on school computer lab computers to go to my campaign page. :D Yay for all-HTML with the blink tag. Haha.

-Ray
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Stephen Swaffer on May 09, 2014, 01:13:29 PM
 Kids today have it a little easier.


But not necessarily better.  I bet you understood the workings better than a fair number of engineering grads do today. 
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Doug Fowler on May 09, 2014, 01:43:25 PM
My first computer back in the '70s was a kit (Heathkit version of DEC LSI 11/2) I had to built most of it and it still cost about $6500. I fully loaded it with 28k x16b memory. I had to write all the software myself to make it do anything. My first modem had rubber cups where you sit the phone on it to communicate back and forth. before the phone company relaxed interface standards.

I ran a small mail order business with that computer and even wrote one crude filter design program. Kids today have it a little easier.

JR

I was writing assembly language programs for VIC-20 in about 1983, in school.  We were able to eventually use it to dialup the school mainframe to do homewok at home, with one of those rubber acoustic coupler things.  300 baud, whoopee!!!

We used a lot of rubber bands in those days.....
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Ray Aberle on May 09, 2014, 02:51:28 PM
I was writing assembly language programs for VIC-20 in about 1983, in school.  We were able to eventually use it to dialup the school mainframe to do homewok at home, with one of those rubber acoustic coupler things.  300 baud, whoopee!!!

We used a lot of rubber bands in those days.....

But did they hide the password on that fold away shelf, like where Matthew Broderick found it in WarGames (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/)?

-Ray
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Stephen Swaffer on May 09, 2014, 05:58:28 PM
I was writing assembly language programs for VIC-20 in about 1983, in school.

College or high school?  In  '83 as a HS junior I scratch built a cassette interface so I could use a standard cassette recorder to store programs and an 8K memory expansion for my VIC-20.  Didn't have the cash for "store bought", but a friends dad was an engineer and got me some surplus chips to use.
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Doug Fowler on May 09, 2014, 06:08:50 PM
College or high school?  In  '83 as a HS junior I scratch built a cassette interface so I could use a standard cassette recorder to store programs and an 8K memory expansion for my VIC-20.  Didn't have the cash for "store bought", but a friends dad was an engineer and got me some surplus chips to use.

College.  We also of course wrote Assembler for the big iron. I think the OS at the time was VM/370.

//STEP01    EXEC PGM=IEFBR14
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Mac Kerr on May 09, 2014, 07:22:08 PM
College.  We also of course wrote Assembler for the big iron. I think the OS at the time was VM/370.

//STEP01    EXEC PGM=IEFBR14

I never got to assembler, in college I was bumbling along in Fortran 4 on a 360. Submitting our programs on decks of punchcards. In '83 I had been running a small studio for a few years, and had a few more to go before I left to be a freelancer. Being a self employed soundman left plenty of time for the Interwebs once they came along.

Mac
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Doug Fowler on May 09, 2014, 07:25:35 PM
I never got to assembler, in college I was bumbling along in Fortran 4 on a 360. Submitting our programs on decks of punchcards. In '83 I had been running a small studio for a few years, and had a few more to go before I left to be a freelancer. Being a self employed soundman left plenty of time for the Interwebs once they came along.

Mac

So you obviously get the rubber band reference....
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Jay Barracato on May 10, 2014, 12:44:46 AM
First programming was in 80 using FORTRAN and some PASCAL. A couple of years later the high school had some IBM PC's and we started using basic. I also had a maxed out commodore 64 at home at that time. A couple of years later in engineering at college we were mostly working on pc's.

I also just missed the slide rule years as I hit my first chemistry class right as the TI-35 was getting established.

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Tapatalk

Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Riley Casey on May 10, 2014, 09:02:37 AM
I missed all that useful knowledge. Touched my first computer in 1988.  Went into a computer store where the salesman was busy with a customer.  Looked at the two demo machines powered up on the shelf, figured out the mouse and the folder icons and the document icons on the Apple Mac Plus in about five minutes.  Had no luck doing anything with the blinking green bar on the black screen on the PC.  When the salesman finally did come over I said " I'll take the Apple since  the IBM seems to be broken". ;D
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Bob Leonard on May 10, 2014, 05:07:16 PM
My intro was 81-82 after completing a specialized mount for an infrared camera to be mounted on a high altitude balloon. Designed and built it with mobility through the X/Y and Z axis using stepper motor capable of moving the 110lb camera plus mount. After completion the doctor in charge of the project decided I should be involved in the ground control so I got my feet wet on a PDP-1, then an HP1, and finally a Commodore PET.

I was hooked at that point and eventually took the PET home. About a year later I ran into a guy who owned a very nice startup, and he offered my the same benefits plus a 10K raise and a new computer twice per year. Green screens, floppies and eventually a 10mb Seagate HDD. Another part of the same project was a very precise high current ultra low speed motor used for turning the payload attached to the balloon 1 degree at a time.

Now declassified the payload weighed in at just over 10,000lbs. The balloon used to lift that load was 280 feet long inflated and launched using a crane. The goal was to trace Russian aircraft signatures, which was a complete success. 

Here's some old pics of the project components;
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Rob Spence on May 10, 2014, 06:44:28 PM
College or high school?  In  '83 as a HS junior I scratch built a cassette interface so I could use a standard cassette recorder to store programs and an 8K memory expansion for my VIC-20.  Didn't have the cash for "store bought", but a friends dad was an engineer and got me some surplus chips to use.

Ok, I guess I gotta show my age.

I wrote an assembly language program for the PDP-8e back in 1972 to read and write data to cassettes. I was destructively testing several brands of cassette decks :-)

I had email in 1978 though it was only a company network (with only 256 network addresses) since the Internet as we know it didn't exist yet.

I formed my first sound company in 1968 to do 4h fairs with Atlas horns.



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: David Bedrack on May 11, 2014, 06:45:30 AM
20 years ago this month a perl script on a shared server at halcyon.com at the Seattle NAP in the Westin Hotel in downtown Seattle first hosted the live-audio board.

Happy Birthday LAB.  In Internet years you are pre historic.  Kind of like Fowler or Mac...

20 years already? Hmm.. I joined somewhere back in 98 or something.....How old we are now? Close to retirement, eh?

Dear Dave, those about 4-5  happy years I spent with the good fellows in the Old LAB were my best years in the audio biz, education wise. Now I am deeper in my day job with little time for "speakers" .But, hey.. I remember about any thread in the LAB and the heated discussions until early in the morning, where blood would spill and heads would roll on the floor, all around proper grounding ,mic positioning or EQ of large halls

Be blessed.

All the best

David

Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: andy craig on May 31, 2014, 01:37:36 AM
...EQ of large halls


Techniques to flatten the room? The D9EQ?

Most excellent.

Andy.
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Jonathan Johnson on June 01, 2014, 01:10:15 AM
Techniques to flatten the room? The D9EQ?

I don't know about a D9EQ, but this D9T would probably be effective at flattening the room:

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6d/CatD9T.jpg/640px-CatD9T.jpg)

Source: Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CatD9T.jpg)
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Mac Kerr on June 01, 2014, 01:23:23 AM
I don't know about a D9EQ, but this D9T would probably be effective at flattening the room:

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6d/CatD9T.jpg/640px-CatD9T.jpg)

Source: Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CatD9T.jpg)

That is the D9EQ. It is the only way to tune the room. ©Bink Knowles

Mac
Title: Re: Happy 20th Birthday live-audio board...
Post by: Stefan Maerz on June 01, 2014, 03:46:18 AM
I don't know about a D9EQ, but this D9T would probably be effective at flattening the room:

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6d/CatD9T.jpg/640px-CatD9T.jpg)

Source: Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CatD9T.jpg)
The drag pick might leave a little bit of a notch filter.