July 11, 2016

Oh my aching bones and white hair

How many of you have ever even heard of TECO? Know what it is? Know how to use it?

For extra credit, what does the name mean?

UPDATE: And for extra extra credit, what command do you use to get out of it if you get into it by mistake? 

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Computers at 03:26 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
Post contains 57 words, total size 1 kb.

1 I used a TECO-based Emacs on a Twenex system back in the day, but never got below the hood.

-j

Posted by: J Greely at July 11, 2016 04:04 PM (ZlYZd)

2 I know this one!  It's an old text editor!  I was told that it was an acronym for "Text Editor and COrrector", but that appears to be something of a backronym instead.

I only know about it because in the basement of the Duck U Science Building, there was a display of old tech stuff... 8" floppy disks, vacuum tubes, a very very old hard drive indeed, about the size of a standard suitcase, and instruction manuals for a number of old languages.  TECO was one of them.

Posted by: Wonderduck at July 11, 2016 04:06 PM (Hdexn)

3 It was the first text editor I learned to use, on the PDP-8. The extra extra credit is:

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at July 11, 2016 05:00 PM (+rSRq)

4 Wonderduck, you're right about all that. It makes me even sadder to know that you only learned about it from a museum exhibit of obsolete equipment and programs. (Sob)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at July 11, 2016 05:05 PM (+rSRq)

5 While I did use Trash-80 a little bit a long time ago (Radio Shack TRS-80 personal computer, for those of a certain age.), and Apple II even more, the first computer I spent any length of time on was the Commodore 64 and later, the Commodore 128.  That was back when the disk drive was a separate, necessary, and expensive accessory - but at least the Commodore could plug right into your home TV.

Posted by: cxt217 at July 11, 2016 05:22 PM (DuUoO)

6 cxt, I had me a TRS-80 mod III with 16K of RAM.  Eventually I bought a C64 w/ disk drive from a friend for, like, $50.  1984 or thereabouts... M.U.L.E. before school!

Posted by: Wonderduck at July 11, 2016 08:48 PM (Hdexn)

7 C-64+1541 disk drive.

Then, we got a C-128D... the one with the built-in disk drive!

First commercial program: Gunship! (followed by most of the early Microprose sims, most of which I would still play today if I could).

The only mainframe text editors I ever used were elm and pico, for the early days of E-Mail at college.

Posted by: BigD at July 11, 2016 09:27 PM (VKO9N)

8 I used TECO, not a fan.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at July 12, 2016 08:18 AM (x/Yak)

9

Let me see if I can remember it...

LOAD"*",8,1

Yup, still remember it.  I kept the 1541 disk drive after I upgraded from a C64 to C128.

What was impressive was that the C64 had, by the standards of the time, a rather flexible and capable sound chip.  If the programmer was clever enough, you could get a game with impressive audio - like the games of Muse Software such as Castle Wolfenstein,  and Microprose's Kennedy Approach.

I actually found a PC version of Red Storm Rising so I could continue playing the game when I moved to PC.  Good times.

Posted by: cxt217 at July 12, 2016 12:17 PM (DuUoO)

10 I used TECO in the 1970s. In fact, the first email system I ever used, bananard, was actually a collection of TECO macros. I still have my TECO manual.
cover
title page

Posted by: mtrigoboff at September 02, 2016 09:51 AM (eBuUt)

11 Sorry for broken links. Here are the correct ones:
cover
title page

Posted by: mtrigoboff at September 02, 2016 09:57 AM (eBuUt)

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