MLMUG Member of the Month, by Gail
An Occasional Look at the Person Behind the Member

By Gail Montgomery,
MLMUG Social Secretary

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Wow...2006 is here already, and our Member-of-the-Month is Jim Weiher. In an email, Jim told me that, "Ever since joining the MLMUG, I have been impressed by the wealth of talent, energy and expertise among the membership. When I was invited to become a Member of the Month my first reaction was to decline. I relented after hearing: "The members would really like to know a little about you." I'm glad he changed his mind...aren't you?

— Gail Montgomery


Dr. James F. Weiher
I've outlived many different computers and wonder whether the Mac or I will leave this world first. In the meantime...

I love my Mac.

How James F. "Jim" Weiher came to join DuPont's Central Research Department is too long a story to describe here. Briefly, this aging small town Iowa boy went north to Carleton College in Minnesota, south to Iowa State University, west to Los Alamos, east to the Max Planck Institute in Mainz, Germany, west to the Nuclear Physics Institute in Amsterdam, Holland, back east to Mainz and the Johannes Gutenberg Universität, west to the Institute of Atomic Energy Research, Ames, IA and east to Wilmington. Today my relentless pursuit is to find time for my interest in computers after profession, family, home, and garden have been satisfied.

Few know that it was Santa Claus who determined my profession. As a small boy I asked Santa one year for a Physics Lab, detailed down to the smallest piece of equipment. Nothing showed up. The next year I asked Santa for a Chem Lab, again detailed down to the smallest piece of equipment. I got every piece. At that moment I knew where my future was. As a mentor said many years ago: "Research scientists are like squirrels. You can't tell them what to do. You put the nuts where you want them to go."

After retiring from DuPont after 25 years and acting as an independent consultant for another decade, the last 10 years I have been with the University of Delaware's Academy of Lifelong Learning teaching German and more recently helping to introduce seniors to the Mac Computer. About 18 months ago I discovered the MLMUG through the "List" when I was puzzled by a tough computer problem.

Most of my adult life I've been associated with computers but consider myself a computer jack-of-all-trades, master of none. I've outlived many different computers and wonder whether the Mac or I will leave this world first. In the meantime I love my Mac.

In the 50's I used an old IBM 650 for chemical kinetics calculations at Iowa State. That was an interesting time because then at ISU, plans for a computer, code-named Cyclone, were underway and the world's first electronic computer, the ABC (Atanasoff Berry Computer), had been developed (1937) by physics professor John Atanasoff and his graduate assistant Clifford Berry, predating both the American ENIAC and Konrad Zuse's German Z. In those days memory technology was still evolving, e.g. Atanasoff used strips of paper tape which were zapped by a spark and Zuse used movie film which was actually punched. Neither exactly rewritable!

The first computer I used in Wilmington was Dupont's Univac 1107 with access to a high speed rotating magnetic drum—a massive capacity of 4k. Wow! After the Univac 1108 I started using the Digital Equipment PDP-10 with its magnificent 36 bit word, learning to program it by studying a page in which all the commands in its instruction set were listed. What a discovery to see that text was packed into that word as 5 7-bit ASCII codes with the 36th bit padded out! Then came a PDP-11 and the VAX.

While using the DEC10 at work, I got interested in home brewing and decided to build my own personal computer, driving up to Frazer to the early computer store and shows in Philly to pick up components and reading Byte from cover to cover. I still have a 1 MHz 6800, some early 6502s, a 1 MHz 68000, a pile of useless memory chips and a 2K PROM erasable by ultraviolet light. Motorola was developing the 6800 to compete with Intel's 8080, but there was a big battle going on at Motorola. The marketing department and profit centers wanted to enter the market fast; the engineers maintained that the design was incomplete. Marketing won and the engineers left to found little old MOS Technology, Inc., which later became Commodore Semiconductor Group, in Norristown wasn't it? They came out with the 6502 for $25 when the 8080 was $150. Guess which Apple used in the Apple and Commodore in the Pet and their '64? Great fun programming the 6502, but TEDIOUS! Who knows what might have happened to MOS Technologies if Commodore had not bought them out!

By the time Apple introduced the Mac with its 68000 processor I had decided it was time to give up home brewing and machine language programming. The first Macs were no comparison to the sound and color graphics powerhouse of Commodore's Amiga, but bad and inconsistent marketing led the Commodore's demise letting Apple surge on through with it's Mac II—an 80MB hard drive—Wow! In those days the Intel world could not yet handle such massive amounts of storage. That was my first Mac, a wonderful machine, fast and powerful for its day. Then came my IIci and IIfx— 40MHz cpu, as Apple quipped, that's f****** fast. For my first laptop I bought the PB160, and later the last 68000 machine, the PB190. For my desktop I stuck with IIci for years (the IIfx had died), until after Apple moved from the 68000 to the newly designed PowerPC processor—a big development and design well superior to anything Intel had to that date. I got my first G3, the Blue & White G3, then my white iBook G3, and the MDD G4. On to a 17" PowerBook, soon. Thanks, Santa!

When I think of those microprocessor changes 6502->68000->PowerPC, I am confident that Apple can make the transition to Intel architecture, but still regret that it had to come to this. Once again price, availability and marketing have won out over science, technology and elegance. But the future of the Mac is good. Some so called computer "scientists" have been trying to kill the Mac for years without much success—just as they did with my other love, Ken Iverson's programming language, APL. Oh well, such is the psychology of change:

Change has considerable psychological impact on the human mind. To the fearful, change is threatening because it means that things may get worse. To the hopeful, change is encouraging because things may get better. To the confident, change is inspiring because the challenge exists to make thing better.

King Whitney, Jr.

— James F. Weiher


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© 2005 by James F. Weiher & MLMUG
Posted 12/17/05
Updated 12/18/05