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Let me just say

This was mine, again, 1982. Took 6 minutes to load "Defender", bliss.
Best use for a Sinclair ZX-81?
ZX81-doorstop.jpg
 
jlaird said:
My sister in laws computer, a Pent II, at 300mb and phone modem just dosen't cut it.

jlaird, wow sounds like shes very advanced, my sister in law is still using carrier pigeons,smoke signals,drum beating,and two empty soup cans attached by a string! /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif
 
aeronca, id forgotten it by name but the pict. rushed back many memories , a modern day abacus.cool! /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/thankyousign.gif
 
aeronca65t said:
...
And I bought a TI99-4a after the Timex.

...

And as an old-tyme NC (now CNC) programmer, I used a Teletype. I'm sure John has used these things too.(and some of you others as well) ....

I remember the Teletypes (Does ASR-33 ring a bell?). Many silly little things still in use come from that era, like the "BEL" (Ring the bell) command that I think is still ^G (ctrl-G) on PC's and causes a "beep" on some of the old operating systems.

Line feed/Carriage return came from them also - these are still used in Windows text files although you usually can't see them at the end of a paragraph.

The teletype print unit was called a "stunt box", even in their manuals.

Timex was a customer of ours in the seventies and I remember having one lonely Teletype in their worldwide computer network. It was hooked to a 110bps (10 characters per second!) line from corp hq to the owners house in northern Europe. Timex at that time was a privately owned company (maybe still is?)

I also remember when they came up with the Timex-Sinclair computer and saw several prototypes and prototype packaging but never actually used one of the machines. My impression was that they hoped for it to be sort of an affordable Apple II.

And sure, a lot of NC code was punched with Teletypes until the cheap tape punches arrived. Man, was editing ever a pain back then, huh?

Memories....
 
lawguy said:
When I was a kid, our first PC (previously had a TRS-80 Color Computer) was a Tandy 100 EX.

I had the same computer...56k total RAM I believe! Of course we called them trash 80s.

My 2nd was a little MAC IIe. Loved that one too....
 
My First computer (ok, it wasn't really mine, but I kept it running) was the IBM Q-7. It had over 200,000 tubes with a whopping 256k of memory (ferrite core memory that was housed in a cabinet the size of two refrigerators). The computer itself took up a room the size of a football field.
 
Isnt' it funny how all these computers bring back such memories? I remember the 1st calculator I bought for college. Paid $50 for it and it calcualted square roots! today the average 7th graders has graphing, programable TI-whatever that have more computing power than our 1st computers! Yet, I loved that TRS-80? How many of you remeber punch cards to write your programs?
 
terriphill said:
How many of you remeber punch cards to write your programs?

That was one of the things I repaired along with everything else on the Q-7 - The Computer Entry Punches!

My first "personal" computer was the TI-99A that Bill Cosby used to do ads for on TV. I think it had about 8k of memory and used cassette tapes. The display was your TV! I used it to teach myself "TI Basic" which was very similar to regular Basic. The first program I wrote myself was a stupid game called "Wompus." The second program I wrote was Black Jack!
 
I took a class in college that required us to use the puch cards to wirte those programs. I had a stack of about 400 cards, all in order and punched. Took weeks. Dropped the whole stack on the way to class to feed them into that infernal machine. God what a nightmare! /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/mad.gif Seems so simple these days, doesn't it? /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/computer.gif
 
terriphill said:
I took a class in college that required us to use the puch cards to wirte those programs. I had a stack of about 400 cards, all in order and punched. Took weeks. Dropped the whole stack on the way to class to feed them into that infernal machine. God what a nightmare! /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/mad.gif Seems so simple these days, doesn't it? /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/computer.gif

Yep, I think that happened to lots of us. I started my bachelors degree in '68 at Trenton State College (here in NJ) and they had a newly-built "Computer Center" where we'd drop off our punch cards. A Student Aid (probably getting about $1.15/hour) would "process" them through the machine.
We'd come back the next day and we'd get a report that said (basically) "It worked" or "It didn't work". No other information.
We'd go back through our 300+ cards and try to figure out *why*?
I remember thinking, "There's gotta be a better way!"

And yes, John....I recall "Line Feed-Carriage Return" and all that other NC stuff. "Editing" paper tape by cutting out the mistakes and scotch taping in a "correction".....Oh joy!

Steve: When I was done with the cards, I'd bring them home to my little brothers and they'd stick them on their bicycles to flap against the spokes......that was the only good thing about those blasted cards.
 
I thought the pinnacle had been reached when I could cob together a NAND gate circuit with solid-state componentry... now I can't even ID the discreet bits on a MoBo. /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smirk.gif

...come to think of it, why would I want to?!?

Still have one Zylog Z-8080 chip in original packaging and the two volumes of manual SOMEPLACE in th' hovel. A TI-99/4A and an Epson ~dual~ floppy 8088 as well.
When I find 'em, they're gonna get 'recycled'. /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/devilgrin.gif
 
They have an event out in Texas I hear where you can recycle all kinds of stuff using any manner of automatic weapons! /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/wink.gif
 
aeronca65t said:
Steve: When I was done with the cards, I'd bring them home to my little brothers and they'd stick them on their bicycles to flap against the spokes......that was the only good thing about those blasted cards.

I dunno, Nial. I made a gasket for the heater valve on my MGB from a punch card one race weekend at Summit Point.
 
Twosheds said:
I dunno, Nial. I made a gasket for the heater valve on my MGB from a punch card one race weekend at Summit Point.

I used them for gaskets also. Great minds etc etc.

Here's a few pics for the kids.

The first shows decks of punched cards. These contained the source code for some of the first programs I wrote. Fortunately, spelling didn't count. The "Ranums" program was a prototype for a local phone company - it generated random numbers that were converted to phone booth numbers and used for randomly checking them for damage and proper function.

pcards1.jpg


The programs were run in this computer, which was a small IBM System 360 mainframe. This machine had an air compressor built in to hold mylar logic cards against their contacts. One of the console lights read "LP" and meant "Low Pressure". I worked third shift at this time & the picture was taken at "lunch".

mod30d.jpg


This is what our diagnostics looked like. Here's a pile of "core dumps", upon which sits another old artifact, a "dial telephone".

coredumps.jpg


Forgive me if I've posted these before - I figure someone outght to see 'em.
 
John- How long have you been racing at Summit Point?
 
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:]upon which sits another old artifact, a "dial telephone".[/QUOTE]
We have two phones in our house. One is a modern cordless with the answering machine in it. The other is a wall-mounted rotary (dial-up) phone. They get equal use.
 
First computer was a Wang with an IBM motherboard and a memory of 80 meg complete with a dot matrix printer and worked through DOS.

We were impressed! Word processing program was better than a 'display writer.'

/bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/banana.gif This has nothing to do with the topic or my feeling, just like the icon SO /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/banana.gif
 
Man! And I thought our old Franklin was a dinosaur. It had no hard drive (like all the computers then)and required the big ol floppy boot disk to get it goin. But that's nutin compared to the monsters youe guys are posting.
At least ours resembled a modern computer. hehehehehehe
 
I passed up an IBM 360 being sent to pasture by CMU back in '79 because I'd no way of hauling it home. Now I kinda think it would have been worth the effort... a great 'curio' for the hovel, almost as good as a Cozzie DFV coffee table.
 
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