Technological Nostalgia

[AB Editor]

I spotted this in the wilds of the internet, and it made me chuckle:



I wondered if anyone would be interested sharing their experiences with ancient electronic machinery?

Pictures encouraged, stories of your first computer welcome and moaning about how kids don't know they're born will be tolerated :)

(Note: I full understand a 33/56k modem is merely Victorian compared to some of the things which will get mentioned here!)

[Gromit]

PCI Slots. I remember them.

My first proper computer

http://www.vintagecom...le_macintosh_SE30.JPG

I did have a ZX81 before that.

[Booldawg]

I remember buying a 2400 baud modem for my Amiga to connect to the BBS. This is before the WWW came along. TBH it doesnt seem long ago I was running up and down the stair with the telephone extension lead for my 56k dial up!

Also the other day I stumbled across a game I'd written in 1993. Apparently it made its way out into the public domain and its still around on internet, got reviews and everything! I've downloaded it and played it on the Amiga emulator. Happy days!

[woofgang]

Dragon 32 with a tape recorder to load programs...any one remember the PiMan?

[rojash]

The first "serious" computer I worked on was a Commodore PET. Having gone to night classes to learn touch typing, it turned out to have a "Chiclet" keyboard. My typing skills have never recovered.

http://en.wikipedia.o..._Series-IMG_0448b.jpg

It had 4K (yes, 4K!) of RAM, and I wrote a program to help in the design and costing of crossover units fro PA speakers.

We later upgraded it to 8K at a cost of around 3-400 quid, and the chips had to be soldered directly onto the motherboard.

[vivandorron]

I had never heard of a 'Chiclet Keyboard'. Now I know:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiclet_keyboard

Ron.

[Graham-W]

My ZX Spectrum came with 16k memory which I quickly upgraded to 48k (massive).
I also bought a "Currah Speach Processor" and was delighted to make it sound like Stephen Hawking.

[MarkRae]

My first "proper" computer was a Commodore PC-10 bought in the late 80s: http://www.old-comput...mputer.asp?c=905&st=1

It had a 32Mb hard drive, EGA graphics card, 3.5 and 5.25 floppy drives and a 2Mb LIM-EMS expansion card! I got it from Tottenham Court Road and it cost nearly a grand! It had MS-DOS 3.21, Lotus Symphony and QuickBasic.

Before that, I'd had a collection of Spectrums, BBC Micros etc which were all OK in their own sweet way, but with the PC-10 it dawned on me that I could probably make a living at this. Never looked back...

[Old_Geezer]

My first computor, at least the first I recall, would have been at work and most likely a PDP11. As far as home ones are concerned, I eventually found the cash to buy an Atari 800. This was followed years later by an Amiga, when I actually flashed out for a HARD DRIVE !!!!!! And then eventually on to cheap reconditioned IBM compatible PCs. (Now-a-days I tend to build my own. No expert but luckily they tend to work first time.)

[ChuckFickens]

My first computer was a BBC model B

It had, 32K of RAM and a 2Mhz CPU:)

Also had the 6502 second processor unit for it which ran a 3Mhz!!, and a teletext decoder! plus various upgrade ROMs you could plug into it to give you things like a word processor or graphics programs. it even had a MODEM (2400 baud I think) so I could connect to compuserve (no internet back then)

As a project with my father we built a wheeled plotter for it, which was a little two wheeled trolley driven by stepper motors which you could drop a felt tip pen into the middle of and "program" it to drive about on a sheet of paper to draw things for you.

I actually still have the entire setup in the loft at my parents, I've been half tempted to Ebay it several times recently because fully working BBCs are going for good money these days... but I can't quite bring myself to sell it :)

[cazzz1975]

bbc -b's and masters are going for better money than the Risc pc, I had to give one away a few years ago through lack of sales interest.

[sunny-dave]

Pah - this is what my first computer looked like - I think it may even be me lurking by the tape drives ...

http://www.chilton-co...y/ral/orig/r10571.jpg

[cazzz1975]

I remember the wonderful ISA slots that came before PCI slots

[ChuckFickens]

The entire BBC set-up I have is even all in it's original boxes with all the manuals with it :)

[Mick-Talbot]

My posh mate had this
http://tinyurl.com/965ae


I had this

http://jodogz.blogspo...ology-old-school.html

:0(

[firewatch]

Floppy discs and betamax (sp) cassette tapes wind down windows on cars loads and im only 26!

[dr b]

It sounds like this group might enjoy reading "Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe" by George Dyson, which focuses on John von Neumann and his group at Princeton and their attempts to build one of the first computers. Their first effort had 5KB of memory and lots of vacuum tubes.

My computer science class at the University of Illinois in 1977 was the last to submit programs on punch cards - make a typo, try to find it - argh. The next year the school got "terminals" with "keyboards" - we were like the apes before the monolith in "2001."

In 1984 my cubicle at UCLA had an old punch card filing cabinet in it, with 1000s of cards. No one could remember whose they were, and I discovered that punch cards were the perfect size for notes, lists, etc, so I pretty much organized my entire dissertation on the backs of old punch cards. I had several "bricks" of cards held together with rubber bands.

I don't remember much about my first PC except that it booted off of a 5.25" floppy.

[ChuckFickens]

I remember saving up and buying the external hard drive for the old Amiga 500... it cost over £200 for a 20MB hard drive and at the time I was wondering how on earth I'd ever fill up 20MB!

[rojash]

I also remember the first hard drive we got. It was for a network of Sharp MZ80Bs, running CP/M. It cost around 3-4 grand for a 5 Megabyte drive. The network used twisted pairs and ran at (if I remember correctly) 2Kbps. Two days after we bought it, all the computer kit was stolen.

http://www.flickr.com...org/82481454/sizes/o/

[ChuckFickens]

Nice :)

the first network I was responsible for was a 10base2 (Coax) network of about 200 apple macs, that was fun, if you wanted to add one more computer you had to disconnect the entire network and a single bad crimp on one of the BNC connectors would take the entire network down.