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20th century computing

26 posts & 24 voices | Started 3 years ago by pantsonfire | Latest reply from cbike

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pantsonfire - Member

Was in the loft today clearing out crap ready for putting more crap up there when I came across a box with a PC in it. Wahey my old IBM 286 computer with dot matrix printer and a proper modem that you had to attach the phone to.

What a spec 1Mb of RAM, 3.5 and 5.25 inch floppy drives even a slot for some long forgotten cartridge memory thingy but best of all a 14 colour monitor that cost me about a gazillion quid.

I remeber the first time I connected to the internet and downloaded my first porn picture waiting as it built up line by line Wow I think that might turn out to be a nipple.

Ahh happy days I thought as I took it down the tip

Posted 3 years ago #
Shakey - Member

Not tempted to sell it on Ebay!

Posted 3 years ago #
NZCol - Member

Ahh the halcyon days of internet based text BBS's - i worked on one called Thanatos (?) which was manchester uni i think from memoery.
Back when t'internet were quiet we used to run a seismic survey somewhere in the north sea, connect the master console up via marisat and get the positioning info in almost real time via ISDN - yes it was fooking expensive, yes it was pointless but it was early days and we realised that using routable address space for stuff at that point had advantages That was in the days of the first compilable httpd "firewall"...it was all new then - i have a wall mounted prize from work for stating that 'streaming video will never happen' - oh well.
I have a rather lovely commodore PET at home...

Posted 3 years ago #
jon1973 - Member

did it have a hard drive or did you have to put the put the system disk in every time you wanted to use the computer?

Posted 3 years ago #
thisisnotaspoon - Member

pahhhh, frankly that is new skool!

i remember out amstrad, you didnt go out and buy games for ti, you went out and bought a 500 page spiral bound book. And spend the rest of the summer typing it in and then de-bugging the precursor to doom, which only had one map, you didnt so much move as shift form corner to corner, and had no bad guys.

Posted 3 years ago #
Flaperon - Member

We had an Amstrad 1060, with a whole 640KB of RAM *and* a 10MB hard disk that made a fantastic gurgling noise. Favourite game was Digger, but we had an Amiga in our house for games (woohoo, Dizzy!).

Posted 3 years ago #
theflatboy - Member

i remember our epic 286 with its 40mb hard drive. my dad got really cross that i'd put wolf3d on it, which basically used up 3/4 of the storage space in one go

Posted 3 years ago #
coffeeking - Member

My first was a 385 SX 25. Couldnt bin it, still have the mobo in my cupboard and the case currently houses a dual processor web server

Posted 3 years ago #
andywhit - Member

ZX80 with 1Kb RAM. Screen flickered each time you pressed a "key" on the membrane keyboard.

Posted 3 years ago #
GrahamS - Member

My first computer was a ZX81. Given to me by my dad one christmas, complete with a shoebox full of tapes.

1KB, but later I got the 16KB RAM pack - then I was really rocking!

Posted 3 years ago #
theflatboy - Member

oh yeah, but we had an acorn electron back in the day. it was really fantastic the way you could load games off tapes. which would take about 10 minutes. and then inevitably fail before the games was loaded.

but when it did load, what joys were to be had... repton, citadel, frenzy, all sorts

Posted 3 years ago #
trail_rat - Member

commodore pc1 here ...

system disk boot to dos

upgraded to a zx128

then to an amiga 1200

Posted 3 years ago #
Pickers - Member

ZX80 with 1Kb RAM

Me too. Still got it at home, boxed and immaculate with all the manuals and leads etc.
Might be worth enough to swap for a couple of inner tubes in 20 odd years time.

Posted 3 years ago #
gavinski - Member

i'll raise your zx81 and give you:

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

Posted 3 years ago #
smiffy - Member

I worked in disc drive manufacturing for six years. I started making a 20/40 MB series, and left at 23 Gig. I see Aldi have 1T drives on the impulse shelf by the till. Wow.

Posted 3 years ago #
TandemJeremy - Member

I have one of those Amstrad pcw thingys - all immaculate and boxed up with desiccant - in the attic waiting for it to achieve collectable status

Posted 3 years ago #
aP - Member

How about using an ORIC1?

Posted 3 years ago #
Drac - Moderator

ZX81 was my first too sat for hours programming it for the thing to crash or for my parents to say ok time for bed.

Posted 3 years ago #
mudshark - Member

I have a Spectrum +2, an Atari ST and a Sinclair QL in a box but no power leads; thought I might build a collection but can't be bothered really!

Posted 3 years ago #
silverpigeon - Member

I wasted days one summer trying to program 'Lunar Lander' into a ZX81 from some PC magazine.

That's time I could have spent crashing my bike down the brick pits at East Tilbury.

Ahh they were the days. Human League at No1...jumpers for goalposts....

Posted 3 years ago #
spooky_b329 - Member

First computer here was a Commodore 16, dont think it had a hard drive at all and games were loaded via a tape drive. Had a flight sim that use to take 20 minutes to load and would fail to load 9 times out of 10, spent months trying to play it and never did work out how to get off the ground!

Also had a BBC, think it had a platform game on it called chuckie egg?

Posted 3 years ago #
molgrips - Member

I have an Oric 1 somewhere.

Posted 3 years ago #
sq225917 - Member

zx80
zx81
Ti994a
Pet
Acorn Electron
C64

ah good days

Posted 3 years ago #
englishbob - Member

I started on a RML 380Z, loading the OS from a cassette drive and some ATMEL Z80 thing where you programmed the op codes in hex on a keyboard.

I now do lots of stuff with microcontrollers and smart cards. Same op codes, only smaller.

At least then you knew what the computer was doing. Nowadays with bot nets etc its anyones guess what my laptop is doing as I type this!

I can remember using my first 386 and thinking wow, this is so much faster than a 286.

Posted 3 years ago #
aP - Member

We used to use TRS80 level IIs at school, as well as Acorn Electrons.
When I started my degree we used to have an allowance of 40 minutes processor time on the PRIME machine somewhere up on the main campus.

Posted 3 years ago #
cbike - Member

amstrad 6128 followed by a powermac 6100 that worked for 15 years!!! cant say it was ever maintained much either.

My current machine is as old as the 21st century and is still going. see look- tippity tappity typey typey.

Posted 3 years ago #