Hey - did you know if you click on the title of a thread it will take you to the first unread post since you last visited that thread?
but were afraid to ask: 
STOP!! Never post your email address in open forums. Bots can "harvest" your email! If you must share your email use a Private Message or use the 
smilie in place of the real @
Pretty Please - add it to our Events forum(s) and add to the calendar! >> 
angelfj1
Yoda
Offline
-
Hey Guest!
British Car Forum has been supporting enthusiasts for over 25 years by providing a great place to share our love for British cars. You can support our efforts by upgrading your membership for less than the dues of most car clubs. There are some perks with a member upgrade!**Upgrade Now**
(PS: Upgraded members don't see this banner, nor will you see the Google ads that appear on the site.)
flexible computers?
- Thread starter angelfj1
- Start date
Share this page
Having spent most of my professional life in semiconductors (manufacturing / failure analysis...), I can say that that is a fairly big step, but unlikely to be useful for building computers, way to slow.
We will be way more likely to see this kind of technology reducing the cost of manufacturing LCDs or other fairly slow applications.
We will be way more likely to see this kind of technology reducing the cost of manufacturing LCDs or other fairly slow applications.
Getting rid of hard drives is going to be a real big step into the future, and we are getting much closer. The performance of the new solid state drives is really impressive. Right now the problem is still cost. However, there really is a very strong push going on to reduce costs for the type of memory used in these drives. The storage density is still doubling almost every year for the memory chips used to make solid state drives, and I would not be surprised if they become standard on high end laptops fairly soon.
As for getting rid of the keyboard, that is much more difficult after all we need a good alternative. Speech may work for some applications, but in an office environment, it could get annoying real quickly. Touch pads are great but more of an additional input method rather than a replacement.
As for getting rid of the keyboard, that is much more difficult after all we need a good alternative. Speech may work for some applications, but in an office environment, it could get annoying real quickly. Touch pads are great but more of an additional input method rather than a replacement.
Online
Back in the day when I ran a dial-up BBS (yes, I've always been a geek), a 1 Gig Hard Drive was hugh and would have cost as much as a car to buy Today you can get 8-16 Gig Thumb Drives smaller than a pack of gum! This was the maintenance console on the IBM Q-7 computer I was a maintenance man on:
If that looks familiar, it's because Hollywood bought a bunch of the stuff when we the Air Force finally upgraded our Air Defense system.
This was one of the "hard drives" on the Q-7. It was really a massive high-speed drum that could hold a whopping 4k of data. It was really just used to buffer input data. There were 24 of these "drums" in the Q-7 system:
If that looks familiar, it's because Hollywood bought a bunch of the stuff when we the Air Force finally upgraded our Air Defense system.
This was one of the "hard drives" on the Q-7. It was really a massive high-speed drum that could hold a whopping 4k of data. It was really just used to buffer input data. There were 24 of these "drums" in the Q-7 system:
Offline
Wow Basil - that is quite some history. I'd bet everyone had to wear white face masks and the operation required mucho air conditioning?
Here's an interesting one. One of Babbage's decimal digit calculating engines from the 1830s. Babbage was appalled at the errors in astronomical and navigational tables, all done by hand. And errors lead to shipwrecks and lost cargos.
"Another age must be the judge." Charles Babbage, 1837
And Babbage's "programming" procedures were first written down by Ada Byron, born in 1819, Countess of Lovelace, daughter of *the* Lord Byron.
Nothing really new under the sun, eh?
Here's an interesting one. One of Babbage's decimal digit calculating engines from the 1830s. Babbage was appalled at the errors in astronomical and navigational tables, all done by hand. And errors lead to shipwrecks and lost cargos.
"Another age must be the judge." Charles Babbage, 1837
And Babbage's "programming" procedures were first written down by Ada Byron, born in 1819, Countess of Lovelace, daughter of *the* Lord Byron.
Nothing really new under the sun, eh?
Offline
My mom's college physics professor at Ursinus College was John Mauchly, the co-inventor of ENIAC. She said she never understood much of what he taught, but she does remember him doing one physics lecture where he roller skated on top of the table in the lecture hall. A few years later he skated too far and broke his leg.
Offline
Amazing just how much progress has been made in such a short time. At least it seems like a short time. (Grin). The first computer I had that had a hard drive in it, was a whopping big 160 meg. When windows 3.1 came out a couple months later, I had to compress the drive to get windows in it. When 95 came out on floppy disks, (First run), I had to install a giant 600 meg HD to run it. Wow, we should have no complaints about what were using today.
anthony7777
Yoda
Offline
gregw, i know a "chip" is not in itself a computer but my new adopted cat came with a locator "chip" pre-installed, and hes very "flexible! 
tomshobby
Yoda
Offline
When my brother was taking his machinist apprenticeship the shop he was in had 2 cnc machines, twice as many as Chrysler Corp. had at the time.
In 1964 I was a student at the UW in Madison, WI. I worked part time at the Space Astronomy Lab. I made custom circuit boards from scratch that were used in NASA tracking stations. I also did some programming for a project that was attempting to study the longevity of a telescope to be launched into space. Took awhile for the project to become reality and the telescope is now nearing the end of it's useful life. Some might find this interesting, it was initially going to be mounted on a platform that was stabilized by gyroscopes. The movement was to be by mechanical means. Because of the vacuum of space the mechanical parts could not be lubricated and hence the effort to determine the life expectancy of the mechanism.
In 1964 I was a student at the UW in Madison, WI. I worked part time at the Space Astronomy Lab. I made custom circuit boards from scratch that were used in NASA tracking stations. I also did some programming for a project that was attempting to study the longevity of a telescope to be launched into space. Took awhile for the project to become reality and the telescope is now nearing the end of it's useful life. Some might find this interesting, it was initially going to be mounted on a platform that was stabilized by gyroscopes. The movement was to be by mechanical means. Because of the vacuum of space the mechanical parts could not be lubricated and hence the effort to determine the life expectancy of the mechanism.
Offline
My first computer was a 128K Mac. When I bought the memory upgrade to go to 512K, I installed it in the office. The last step was to cut a wire so I knew this blew the warranty, and to make things worse, I did not have a wire cutter there. It was a bit of a risk sawing that wire with a dull pocket knife, but my Mac moved on into the first of my many computer upgrades since 1984.
Roger
Luke Skywalker
Offline
Well, I started on a NCR 315 with 10k Main Memory, and auxiliary storage was reel-to-reel tape.
We upgraded and installed CRAM (Card Random Access Memory). The last letter should have been P (Peripheral) for all the use it was. I remember the NCR guys saying disks would never catch on.
We upgraded and installed CRAM (Card Random Access Memory). The last letter should have been P (Peripheral) for all the use it was. I remember the NCR guys saying disks would never catch on.
judow
Darth Vader - R.I.P
Offline
:banana: Geez, my first home computer was a Wang, 16 megs with an IBM mother board. I worked out of dos and who even heard of a menu??? Also had minor involvement with computers at Thom McAn's headquarters in Massachusetts. They were kept in a 'clean room' and fed by key-punched cards and if memory serves me correctly were about the size of 3-5 refrigerators placed on top of each other and there were many rows of these. They also had computer programers, probably trained by Aida Lovelace. Well now you all know how really old I am. Yes I remember the manual typewriters, thought the Selectric by IBM was just the greatest and then graduated to a 'display writer.' Who'd a thunk it - technology today - ain't it grand!!! :banana: