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bigtimber | 4 years ago | on: Why Some Old Computers Are Interesting

There were 4 of the then state-of-the-art, fastest in the world, CDC-7600 and CDC-6600 computers installed at Lawrence Livermore Lab (LLL, now LLNL, Lawrence Livermore National Lab) when I worked there during the summer of 1972.

bigtimber | 7 years ago | on: NIST Digital Library of Mathematical Functions

I can't claim to have it on my bookshelf anymore, but DID have the original hardcopy on my bookshelf for many years back in the 70's and early 80's when I was programming some low-level math libraries and needed to refer to some approximation techniques (e.g., Chebyshev for logarithms).

EDIT: oops, just realized that you were referring to a later version of the classic. I was referring to Abramowitz and Stegun's Handbook of Mathematical Functions with formulas, graphs, and mathematical tables (1964).

bigtimber | 7 years ago | on: Ask HN: Older textbooks/papers you consider classics still worth studying today?

Previous posts have nicely covered almost all of the textbooks and papers I would have mentioned myself, including K&R's _C Programming_, Brooks' _Mythical Man-Month_, Feynman's Lectures, etc. The only glaring omission was any mention of the classic (1965) FFT paper by Cooley and Tukey: "An algorithm for the machine calculation of complex Fourier series." _Mathematics of Computation_, 19(90), 297–297. doi:10.1090/s0025-5718-1965-0178586-1 (https://www.eit.lth.se/fileadmin/eit/courses/eit085f/Cooley_...) I might also have added the _CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics_ that seems to have been on every working scientists's and engineer's bookshelf (including mine) during the mid-to-late 20th century. Still in print, nearing the 100th edition. Also, some of my old favorite textbooks that I used at University were not mentioned, including Thomas' _Calculus and Analytical Geometry_. I still have my red cloth covered Addison-Wesley 3rd edition, no longer in print, but a much later edition might still be in print.

bigtimber | 7 years ago | on: Ask HN: Are any of you IEEE members?

IEEE member since 1995; joined because my company paid for it (also joined the IEEE Computer Society, ACM and even APS, American Physical Society, at that time for the same reason.) Continued my IEEE membership at my own expense after retiring because I didn't want to lose my @ieee.org alias that I had used for many years, also wanted to continue to have access to publications and articles of interest. With that said, I would not recommend starting an IEEE membership at your own expense unless you can afford it and want to establish yourself in that community. I think they still require a sponsor for membership.

bigtimber | 7 years ago | on: A book list for OS kernel developers and device driver writers (2006)

Great snapshot for the turn of millenium. Thanks for posting and triggering the trip down memory lane. Especially nostalgic for me personally as I was in the midst of coding early Windows and OS/2 kernel mode device drivers for scientific instruments, not to mention having written my own multi-tasking RTOS for the 186, at the peak of my career at that time. I remember most of these books, and had dog-eared copies of a few of them (particularly Baker's Device Driver book.) The only other book on Operating Systems that I see missing from this list, and probably would have included at the time, would be Donovan's.
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