Down Memory Lane

Rogatory

SGF, Supreme Grumble Framer
Joined
May 8, 2003
Posts
1,077
Loc
Lubbock, Texas
This should probably go into Warped but I thought it would be more appropriate here.

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Great ad. Those things got cheaper, faster, better and more lightweight....unlike me over the last 17 years. What a boat anchor! (Hey, I'm referring to the Tandy system.)
 
My first computer was an Apple ][ plus bought in 1982.

Man, was it cool!. It came with 32 <u>Kilobytes</u> of memory (but I popped the hood and upped it to 48 K. I was so proud of myself.

It had no hard drive, but I had 2 {Wow! *** count them – two ***} floppy drives, each with 512 <u>K</u> of storage capacity. I was in heaven!

I still miss that, in a way, ‘cause you had to write every useful program yourself. It was about that time that Vulcan, the first commercial spreadsheet, was introduced. I was blown away!

I could only have dreamed of a Tandy 5000 (I mean, with 2 Megs of storage, who wouldn’t drool over that?), but it was way out of my price league, and Tandy started out as a maker and distributor of leather goods but branched out into Radio Shack. That made me suspicious of their commitment to computers for the long haul.

Them was the good ole days!
 
Wow what a steal, and it didn't even a hard disk!

If one were to extrapolate the price of today's good PC compared to this one (say, 2.3 GigaHerz CPU, 2 GB of RAM memory, 512 MB of video memory and 500 Gigabytes of hard disk space - not to mention other goodies like DVD, surround sound and such - this PC would cost about $10-20 million!
 
I recently donated a whole wack of used computer gear I had hanging around the house from my programming days. There was enough to fill my station wagon and included such goodies as a very old Dell laptop with a dead screen, a 386, a 486 with a tape drive, a scanner that cost me about $5000, too many printers to count and bags full of cords, mice, zip drives, etc, etc.

Standing there looking at it all, I realized I had spent well over $60,000 on all this stuff at some point and now it was probably worth less than a $100 bucks total.

It's a mug's game I think.

Now we get to do it all over again with digital cameras:)
 
But for $10-20 mil I wonder if the new models would have the legendary "tactile feel of its newly-designed keyboard"?
 
Ken,
I have a mouse I bought in the 80s that cost $170. (the price had come down from around $350) I still have the mouse at home and just cant bring myself to toss it.

I wonder if I could find someone to frame it :rolleyes:
 
Originally posted by Rogatory:
Ken,
I have a mouse I bought in the 80s that cost $170. (the price had come down from around $350) I still have the mouse at home and just cant bring myself to toss it.

I wonder if I could find someone to frame it :rolleyes:
I know what you mean. I remember paying $400 to increase my RAM from 4 to 8MB!

My "fasten your seatbelt" 286 with monochrome monitor and that all important "Turbo" button, had an amazing 20 MB of hard drive space. 99% of my images I print today are well over 20 MB! Yikkes!
 
My first computer was a Commodore Vic 20, 20K of memory and a tape drive!! What a powerhouse!!

Then I went bigtime and bought a Commodore 64 with 2, count 'em, 2 5 1/4" floppy disk drives, 1541's I think!! We wrote our own programs using Basic and came up with some really cool stuff for such a limited amount of operating space.

Next came a 128, then a C-2000 and then the rocket ship of computers, a 286mhz steamroller.

The rest has turned into a purchasing blur as new and faster computers hit the market. I became a computer junkie, buying everything that had a new number attached to it!

But I still remember my old Commodore days and the summer workshops we would attend in Northern IL at one of the college campuses. We would stay up all weekend trading off Basic programs and hacking into stuff to see how it operated. I learned a bunch from all these pioneers in the computer field and probably would be making well into the 6 figure range if I stayed with that group.

But nooooooooooooooo! I had to become a FRAMER!!

Such is life. I still wouldn't trade it for what I have now.

(Well, not without an ironclad contract and guarantee of lifelong benefits and a huge retirement settlement along with a summer home on the Gulf and ........ oh, let me think about this for a moment ............
shrug.gif


Framerguy
 
A Timex, probably cost $150, then on to the C-64, stood still for a few years. I'm sure glad things come with all the programing and there are still those who like to do it, so the rest of us can enjoy it.
 
My first computer, actually not mine, but the one I used at school, back in '67 was an IBM 360 mainframe. I did machine design and roll defection calculations on it. Tape drives and floppies did you say - I lined up at midnight to get on a keypunch and carried an attachee case with about 2000 punchcards in it. If I remember correctly, an 80 gig hard drive which was actually a bank of smaller drives, cost many millions - I bought one last month for about 100 bucks.

But the Rolex watch my Dad gave me for grad in '69 cost 150.00 and after wearing it for 37 years it's worth about 1000.00 and still keeps time just as well.
 
In service until summer 1983:
CDC1700 mainframe. 32K words by 32bits Core memory. Not the first integrated circuit, all transistors and HUGE air conditioning. Backups were on punchcards. Tape backups were on 1" paper teletype tape. It did have multiplatter disk drives. One online controlling the Conoco oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. One online for accounting and engineering. Remote printers were fast 110 baud teletype printers.

In school we had a roomfull of keypunch machines that punched ROUND holes.

My first personal computer RadioShack TRS-80 with 4K ram, and all the storage you could put on an audio cassette.

My first laptop (1985 vintage AND still functional), TRS-100. External cassette tape drive and external 3.5" 1S1D floppy.

Then graduated to a Commodore.
 
A Timex, probably cost $150
The Timex Sinclair. I bought mine from Looks Drug Store and plugged it into a B&W TV (which cost, I think, another $150.) At some point, I must've gotten a thermal printer for it, 'cause I used it to print statements for my commercial customers.

If they didn't pay within 30 days, the statement just self-destructed.
 
just got wireless keyboard/mouse combo last night ---$40 something---crazy cheap!
 
Anyone remember those great graphics computers, the Amiga? I remember using one once in a community video class on creating titles. These machines inspired fierce loyalty among their users.
Of course, the name is Spanish for "lady friend".
:cool: Rick
 
First Computer 8088, 8kilobits... loaded with a game called "Animal". About $400, you build-it from Heath Kit.

First hard-drive $580, 10meg and went into my AT.

The next year Microsoft came out with a completely new version of Word 3.0 . . . which required 14megs of harddrive.
 
This was my first PC,

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Introduced on July 31st, 1980 for $399.00

Motorola MC6809E 8-bit CPU running at .89MHz

4K RAM

8K ROM - Microsoft Color Basic v1.0

53 Key Keyboard

32 Column Display Ability (32 x 16 with 4 Colors / 256 x 192 with 2 Colors / 128 x 96 at 8 Colors / 128 x 192 with 4 Colors)

8 Colors (selectable from 2 preset 4 color palettes)

RGB Modulator (to connect to color TV)

RS-232 Interface (Serial Port)

1500 Baud Cassette Interface

Two (2) Joystick Connectors
 
David, I hate to be the one to break it to you but your first computer was a postal scale - kind of a pricey one, at that.
 
David, that was also my first computer - back in 1980. Back in the cassette storage days and acoustic modems at 150baud. I think I was about 13, and saved up for it by cutting lawns.

170k single sided floppy drives came out several years later and my first one was $600-$800. (third party dual drive units) My first hard drive was a slow 5 megabyte and cost over $800. From there I briefly jumped to 10MB, a lot of 20mb Seagate ST-225's (20mb they overheated like crazy), and some ST-230s (30mb RLL, unreliable), and about 10 sizes in between to my current of over 500GB (500000mb)

For modems, I started out with a 150baud acoustic coupler thing that you laid your phone handset in. Then on to a 300 baud manual answer modem 1B, then a 300 auto answer, then the first Hayes 300 smartmodem - the grandfather to all modern (but now obsolete) modems. Then a Hayes 1200 $699 (1984), a Hayes 2400 for $549 (1985), Hayes 9600 (1987), US Robotics 14.4, 18.8, 26.4, 28.8(~1994), 33.6, 56k (1996), etc. Most of these are still in the garage. Hayes went under in 1999, killed by ADSL, Cablemodems, and increased competition. I had dinner with Dennis Hayes and his brother once. Really smart guys! Dialup modems are pretty much obsolete now, after 10 years without a speed increase and all the newer technologies. DSL is as low as $12.95/month, so most people have converted.

From there - a coco2, model III, Tandy 1000, and then on to clones ever since. I prefer clones at home for my own pc's (because theyre upgradable and have more space inside the case for extra items), and Dell's throwaways for business.

Ron is right - it DOES look like a postal scale. hah

Man, Im such a geek...
 
I had a VIC-20 with the cassette, ah modern technology.

Found this site that has all kinds of old computers, I wanted the Tandy Pocket Computer, that would have been cool


http://oldcomputers.net/
 
David:

That first computer of yours is almost identical to my first computerized chess machine. I bought it in 1980 and it was kicking my butt most of the time.

One day, I decided to really concentrate (it was getting embarrassing...) and took my sweet time and finally check-mated that SOB!

It took that PC like 32 hours for its next move and then it made an illegal move!!

I couldn't believe my eyes, a cheating PC!!
 
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Collossus was the world's first programmable electronic computer designed by a team from the post office research station at Dollis Hill led by Tommy Flowers. In typical english engineering fashion he used bits close to hand to come up with a very powerful machine for breaking the Lorentz cipher machine using parts commonly found in a telephone exchange of the times. Incredible story about function vs form. At the end of the war they were ordered to destroy all machines, blueprints etc. etc. and Tommy didn't get any public recognition for inventing and building the first programmable electronic computer until the latter part of the century. The replica Collosus is being built using using pretty much the same old style telephone exchange spares. After the Bletchley story broke in the '70s and Bletchley gained more focus in the '90s, Tommy and team started getting the recognition they deserved.
 
CoCoers! That little bugger was a lot of fun. Mine had a 300 baud modem, did my first bulletin board chatting in 1983. Also actually self taught enough Basic programming on that thing to pass my school courses. Did you guys also get their Rainbow magazine where they would print these huge programs for you to type in? You would learn something from some of the Basic ones, but some were page after page of POKE 34,23,22,3E,84,blah blah
 
My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81. The basic computer came with 1K of memory that could be expanded externally with an additional 16K. There was no monitor as such; you plugged it into a TV. The keypad was a "touch sensitive membrane" AKA a real pain in the a$$. It was programmable in Basic, which was light relief after a hard day's grind working as an IBM 360/370 COBOL programmer.

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