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Post by johnr on Dec 11, 2019 14:27:22 GMT -5
You got it. And you think today's computers are expensive.....LOL Our first computer, well, Dad's (for business), was a true-blue IBM PC, 86 processor with 640kb RAM, 2 5.25" floppy drives, NO hdd but we had a 2 x 10mb Bernoulli box. All told, about $4k. Oh, had a wide carriage Okidata printer. MY first system was an IBM clone with "turbo mode". :-) 1mb RAM and a 20mb hdd. 2 3.5" floppies. I could go on... :-) Lyle Ah... the good old days when you'd never fill up a 20mb disk in a million years! LOL My Commodore originally came with a cassette reader/writer to store data on. Man, was it slow! I got a 5.25 floppy drive for it at some point, but I don't remember the cost. It was a huge honking box of a thing.  |
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Post by Edd505 on Dec 11, 2019 14:46:52 GMT -5
Do you remember the Trash 80? I never had one of those. My firsts were the Commodore64 and then a Tandy 1000. I bet that Commodore cost more than a mid-line laptop today. Commodore 64 was # 2, got it for the kids & school only to find out from them they couldn't run it, they were learning IBM. You know we are all giving away our ages with this old computer stuff.
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Post by fpopjfj on Dec 11, 2019 21:52:47 GMT -5
My first computer was a "Sinclair". Anyone remember that. Had to buy either an 8K or 16 K memory. Used a tape recorder to save a program. Had to buy magazines to get the programs that took you days to type into the system. Then it would do like one trick (ex dog bark) and that was it.
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Post by nvguy on Dec 12, 2019 0:09:52 GMT -5
wife was tasked to buy computers for her office back in the day, bought a pair of those Trash 80's, revolutionized the office.The printers (dot matrix) they had were so loud, they had to be put into soundproof enclosures.
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Post by johnr on Dec 12, 2019 7:51:51 GMT -5
My first computer was a "Sinclair". Anyone remember that. Had to buy either an 8K or 16 K memory. Used a tape recorder to save a program. Had to buy magazines to get the programs that took you days to type into the system. Then it would do like one trick (ex dog bark) and that was it. Nice! The Commodore had a similar magazine. There were often big mistakes in the first programs, and you could either dig into the code to try to figure out what the issue was, or wait for the next magazine to print the corrections. It molded the way I thought for a long time. In the early spreadsheet programs, I would number my lines: 10, 20, 30, 40... People would ask why? I said, so that I could put stuff in between if necessary, naturally! |
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Post by laknox on Dec 12, 2019 10:05:40 GMT -5
Our first computer, well, Dad's (for business), was a true-blue IBM PC, 86 processor with 640kb RAM, 2 5.25" floppy drives, NO hdd but we had a 2 x 10mb Bernoulli box. All told, about $4k. Oh, had a wide carriage Okidata printer. MY first system was an IBM clone with "turbo mode". :-) 1mb RAM and a 20mb hdd. 2 3.5" floppies. I could go on... :-) Lyle Ah... the good old days when you'd never fill up a 20mb disk in a million years! LOL My Commodore originally came with a cassette reader/writer to store data on. Man, was it slow! I got a 5.25 floppy drive for it at some point, but I don't remember the cost. It was a huge honking box of a thing. Dontcha wish you'd drunk the Apple Juice back in the day and bought an Apple 1...and =kept= it intact?! Approaching $1M dollars at auction. Lyle |
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Post by laknox on Dec 12, 2019 10:06:11 GMT -5
My first computer was a "Sinclair". Anyone remember that. Had to buy either an 8K or 16 K memory. Used a tape recorder to save a program. Had to buy magazines to get the programs that took you days to type into the system. Then it would do like one trick (ex dog bark) and that was it. Nice! The Commodore had a similar magazine. There were often big mistakes in the first programs, and you could either dig into the code to try to figure out what the issue was, or wait for the next magazine to print the corrections. It molded the way I thought for a long time. In the early spreadsheet programs, I would number my lines: 10, 20, 30, 40... People would ask why? I said, so that I could put stuff in between if necessary, naturally! Hell, you did that with =any= programming language! :-) Lyle |
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Post by johnr on Dec 13, 2019 7:45:36 GMT -5
Nice! The Commodore had a similar magazine. There were often big mistakes in the first programs, and you could either dig into the code to try to figure out what the issue was, or wait for the next magazine to print the corrections. It molded the way I thought for a long time. In the early spreadsheet programs, I would number my lines: 10, 20, 30, 40... People would ask why? I said, so that I could put stuff in between if necessary, naturally! Hell, you did that with =any= programming language! :-) Lyle Yes, but line numbers became obsolete. I do still actually use that today though. In the language we use, you can set the tab order of columns manually, and I will use 10, 20, 30... so that if I forgot a column, I can go back and number it 15 to fall in where I want it. LOL |
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Post by johnr on Dec 13, 2019 7:56:10 GMT -5
Ah... the good old days when you'd never fill up a 20mb disk in a million years! LOL My Commodore originally came with a cassette reader/writer to store data on. Man, was it slow! I got a 5.25 floppy drive for it at some point, but I don't remember the cost. It was a huge honking box of a thing. Dontcha wish you'd drunk the Apple Juice back in the day and bought an Apple 1...and =kept= it intact?! Approaching $1M dollars at auction. Lyle I've never been an Apple guy. A friend of mine had the Apple IIe, it was the first Apple I saw. It was so foreign to me, but I didn't get to spend much time with it. My Commodore seemed really strange to him too. It's all in what you're comfortable with, I guess. But that $1M would be nice! I bet my Tandy 1000 would go for $5 as a nice doorstop! LOL |
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Post by Chuck on Dec 27, 2019 11:58:55 GMT -5
For personnel use I had a Sinclair, moved up to Commodore Vic 20 an then C64 which we pigged backed memory chips on to get more memory, then moved up to Trash 80's model 3 an then 4 all of which were dos machines an then went to 386's, 486's an finally the newer stuff ... I just bought a new SSD 2 TB hard drive for $125, it is so small I had to ask were the HD was when the gal handed it to me LOL, no moving parts, who would have guessed ...
Today I run a Window 7 machine (soon to be upgraded to Windows 10) of which has ten ports both RS232
an USB connected to a automated radio digital system... Another machine a windows 10 machine only running
six ports operating another radio digital system for ECOMM an a couple of laptops with multiple ports one of which I have in my truck most of the time which can be connected to the three radios in my truck ...
In my work I start out with Teletype machines an then moved up to Zenith computers with one RS232 port, they had an option to add a second port an IP people at the time couldn't figure out why anyone would
need a second RS232 port ... We then moved up to IBM machines we parted together running dos an four
ports "WOW" ... We ended up when I retired with computers running Windows XP with 10 ports
using RS232 ports connected to a combination of high frequency an VHF/UHF radios ...
It was sort of funny, the people in my section I over saw did more to teach the IP people more about
computers than they new as IP people, if the IP couldn't figure out something they would call my
section up an ask the question LOL ... I had some very, very smart kids in those days, they were really scary in how much they new an that's been close to 20 years ago ...
Safe Travels '
Chuck
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