In regards to Audiophile Digital kit: How important is the price of a device to you?

[bluesman]

It may have been published in a book in 1964, but the term GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out) was used by people in the computer industry long before that.

 

The interesting thing about the early days of the computer "industry" is that there was very little garbage - the quality of both hardware design and software engineering was uniformly high, at least in the part of that world I visited. I started out in comp sci in 1965 at Brandeis, where we had an open shop IBM 1620 but were allowed to run our programs at MIT (where they installed the first system 30 and developed it while using it). As a result, we met and socialized with the people of Bolt Baranek - and that brought us into the world of serious computer people (although I and my friends were not nearly so serious about it ourselves).

 

I never heard anyone express the fundamental concept of GIGO in those days because there was no capacity for garbage. Every device and every minute of access was spoken for by serious people, and efficiency in programming was as critical as efficiency in data creation and storage. 5K was a lot of capacity, and if you wasted it you weren't invited back to the party. Having learned to value storage, speed and power, systems designers in my age group are still better at conserving resources than those who grew up with massive cheap storage and blazing processors.

[Allan F]

I started out in comp sci in 1965 at Brandeis, where we had an open shop IBM 1620 but were allowed to run our programs at MIT (where they installed the first system 30 and developed it while using it)...

 

I never heard anyone express the fundamental concept of GIGO in those days because there was no capacity for garbage...

When I worked for IBM in the 60's, GIGO was generally used in reference to commercial systems. For scientific work. e.g. on the 1620, the equivalent term was SCOG (Scientific Computation Of Garbage). The 1620 was also known as CADET, for Can't Add, Doesn't Even Try, because it used addition tables in memory instead of addition circuitry.

[gmgraves]

The term GIGO was actually introduced in a 1964 book called The Impact of Computers on Accounting. The concept was probably an insider joke based on the two accounting terms LIFO (“Last In, First Out”) and FIFO (“First In, First Out”), which are cost accounting methods for inventory management.

 

 

Interesting. "FIFO" is also a computer logic term for a type of data function, and is also the name for a semiconductor circuit. At it's simplest, a FIFO consists of a serial input and output and a clock input. Serial data comes-in at random timing and leaves the circuit in the same order it entered but now, synchronized with the clock input, each bit is precisely timed and has the same width and interval from bit-to-bit. Digital disc drives have a circuit similar to this between the laser pickup and the signal processing, downstream.

[bluesman]

When I worked for IBM in the 60's, GIGO was generally used in reference to commercial systems. For scientific work. e.g. on the 1620, the equivalent term was SCOG (Scientific Computation Of Garbage). The 1620 was also known as CADET, for Can't Add, Doesn't Even Try, because it used addition tables in memory instead of addition circuitry.

Here's to the infinite do loop!

[Allan F]

Here's to the infinite do loop!

Done do dat!