Saw a YouTube video of a guy running a 1980s CNC and it hit me how much the control panels have changed

I was watching this restoration channel last night, and the guy was firing up an old Bridgeport with a BOSS control. The screen was like a green monochrome monitor, and he had to punch in codes on a keypad that looked like a calculator. Made me think about how I learned on a Haas with a full color screen and a USB port. I wouldnt trade my modern machine for the world, but there was something kinda cool about how basic it all was back then. How many of you guys started on the old school stuff?

3 comments

3 Comments

stellaperry28d ago

Whoa, hard disagree man. Those old controls are a nightmare. I'll take modern any day of the week. The green screens, the floppy disks, the constant key punching. It was slow and easy to mess up. New machines just let me get the job done without fighting the machine first.

robins8328d ago

You make it sound like it was torture. It wasn't that bad.

skyler_jackson2727d ago

Right on, Stella. The whole "it wasn't that bad" crowd forgets the 45 minutes of staring at a loading screen just to open a spreadsheet. Or the joy of a disk drive eating your only copy of a report. It wasn't torture, sure, but it was a constant little battle you had to win before you could even start your real work.