My first computer ran windows 3.1 and the little twerps these days can still run circles around me.
6
Old? I got yer “old” right HERE!
I’ve programmed plug boards.
The first mainframe I worked with had 24K core memory.
8-inch floppies were the norm.
My first home computer ran CPM.
14
I had a TRS-80. Good times.
6
UNK & ANON,
Get on utube, There are guys interfacing
the old computers(Tandy TRS-80 and many others}
into modern computers and the internet.Cool stuff.
9
Commodore 64 was the first actual experience, but first operating system for home was Norton Commander with that blue screen! Toggle left screen to the right screen.
Never new straight up DOS.
I remember my oldest bro, comp sci engineer and USAF pilot had a Texas Instruments hand held calculator that you could insert very thin long, an inch, card ‘program’ into the side.
9
I have a 2 foot Burroughs B-500 disk (25kb) laying around somewhere.
7
My first computer was an AT clone in 1987. About $1,500, 2 floppy drives, no hard drive, monochrome monitor. Bought one a few months ago for about the same price: 360 laptop so it folds into a tablet, 4k screen, 10th-gen i7 chip, 1 TB static memory. Ain’t technology great?
12
I owned one of those Compaq Portable Computers. The key board fastened onto the front of the monstrosity. I bet that thing weighed 30 pounds. And the screen was about the size of a recipe card. That was high tech back then.
Oh, my. One of my first computer classes at DePaul University in Chicago was using punched cards. Illinois Bell used to send them to be returned with payment. If it wasn’t for this lock down, I’d have my gray touched up tomorrow. Sigh and LOL!
9
My roommate had a Kaypro portable that looked like a sewing machine when closed up.
I struggled mightily to write and print a resume on it. But I got the job that launched a long and lucrative career.
9
That’s nothin’.
I’m still using an abacus, Thankyou.
17
First personal computer I ever witnessed in operation was a Kaypro. That thing was so big it could have moonlighted as a sledgehammer.
7
I also took FORTRAN in college with punch cards. Don’t forget the sequence number on the punchcards!
11
Slide rule in high school and college.
Manual typewriter.
13
Yeah, that’s some old technology there. Sure am glad I upgraded to the Bernoulli Box.
In a similar episode, a teenage family member came to visit and was feeling condescendingly cool enough to want to share some current music with us that she thought we might like. So she whipped out a tiny gizmo and went to the stereo, stopped, looked puzzled and asked where the portal to plug it in was. Ummm, hun, that stereo doesn’t have one of those; it’s older than… well: You. Times two.
12
I was at a USAF course where RAdm Grace Hopper was a guest lecturer at a class.
Little old gal almost 80 year old chain smoker.
Pioneer in DOD computers.
Interesting old gal.
6
pianamusic- Damn right!
*flicks bead*
10
I seem to remember a Challenger 2P when I was a little kid. Only because it was blue.
Built my first computer in 1978. Had to solder most of it together. Ran assembler and Fortran. User interface was a DEC LA-36 printing terminal – eventually got a Perkin-Elmer CRT – woo hoo! Programmed my own 2-D aerodynamic flow solutions on it while a college student.
Yeah. Old.
6
Make sure you have the record player on at night.
8
My first computer was made of wood.
20
Anonymous
APRIL 17, 2020 AT 2:55 PM
“I had a TRS-80. Good times.”
…I had the cassette folio for a checkbook balancing program. Sometimes, I would just unplug the special silver Realistic tape deck and listen to what data sounded like.
And then sit down for HOURS of it going “mmmm. Mmmm. MmmMMMMmmm. Mmm.”
“…Install Next Tape”
“MmmmmmMMMMMmmmmmmm. Mmm. MmmmMM.”
…it DID teach me how to program in BASIC, though, variarions of which I still use to make money TODAY, so it was $500 fat, 1980’s dollars well spent, even if it DID start with
(Yes, kids, we were MUCH more easily amused by computers then…)
10
^ Todaze equivalent is…
HELLO WORLD!
Get with the program, Super!
4
I was in the army in 1977 waiting for AIT to start. In September of that year I was at Ft. Belvoir, VA, raking leaves when an officer asked for volunteers to attend school. Didn’t want to rake leaves anymore, so I volunteered. Was on the internet (arpanet at the time) using touch screens and connected to the University of Illinois. Was text chatting with professors there. Got me hooked and I’ve been a network engineer since.
13
Boxes of punch cards lead to reams of green & white printer paper, damn College Bookstore made a fortune off COBOL class.
Now a cell phone has more computing power than the Apollo Capsule, that’s why I feel old.
9
In the last half of the 70’s LSU had one mainframe for all 25000 students. It had 64k main memory
6
BFH
APRIL 17, 2020 AT 3:55 PM
“My first computer was made of wood.”
….MY first computer was one of THESE babies. Picked it up cheap and barely used at a garage sale, rubber bands and all, can’t IMAGINE why they were willing to part with it…
…like I said, easily amused, but my dad WAS a programner on one of those room-sized ones with vacuum-sealed reel-to-reel tapes and punchcard inputs, so I did have some encouragement…
6
Jimmy
APRIL 17, 2020 AT 4:01 PM
“^ Todaze equivalent is…
HELLO WORLD!
Get with the program, Super!”
…but you could change it up even MORE by adding a simple SPACE!
well, just don’t show the kid your 5 1/4″ floppy drive
9
Got to play around with a DEC Mainframe in HS, don’t remember the model, but it had removable 10mb platters the size of most laptops these days.
Then went right to the TRS-80.
Desdinova
APRIL 17, 2020 AT 4:07 PM
“I was in the army in 1977 waiting for AIT to start. In September of that year I was at Ft. Belvoir, VA, raking leaves when an officer asked for volunteers to attend school. Didn’t want to rake leaves anymore, so I volunteered….”
…seems to be how these things happen…my dad was another accountant at a life insurance place, and was apparently standing around with a smart look on his face when someone said, “Hey, we need to send someone to train on these new computers, wanna go?” And he did, going out 30 years later as their Senior Programming Engineer.
…many years later, I’m standing around my new factory with a smart look on my face when someone says, “Hey, we need to send someone to train on these new robots, wanna go?”
And I did.
…now, 25 years later…
7
BFH APRIL 17, 2020 AT 3:55 PM
My first computer was made of wood.
An abacus?
4
@BFH – yeah actually mine too, a wooden scale, some how connected through my hand to my brain…
HB pencil in your case? OR was it a Derwent??
I favored a rapidiograph pen on vellum with a T Square and triangle…for the final product.
Will have to forward to ya for a ‘final crit’ one of these days…
5
Dolt
APRIL 17, 2020 AT 4:33 PM
“…Wang computer…”
…given how much of the Internet was developed for and occupied by porn, I’m a little surprised that THIS brand didn’t do better…
4
I have never paid as much for a computer as I did for the 486sx I bought in early 90’s. It was two house payments worth.
Technically, my first computer was an 8088 you had to program and I can’t remember what it was called. I won it in a drawing but never did anything with it. Can’t count the occasional use of an abacus for whatever reason in my childhood. It certainly wasn’t a tool for me.
4
Hammurabi wrote the first known code and his computer was made of stone….
6
Back in my… I say… back in my day… all the computers could still make a sammich.
5
“My first computer was made of wood.”
Slide Rule? I still have one. Not that I can remember how to use it.
7
I don’t even know how to turn on a computer….
5
I remember sliding my Wang between a pair of IBM 38s.
10
Cisco Kid, I went back to school (after being laid off) in 1996 for a computer degree. Guess what we had to take? A COBOL class! Actually, that was one of the easiest classes in that program. When I got to C++, I knew programming wasn’t for me.
Guess what I eneded up doing? Webmaster. But that didn’t include any real programming languages, just markup languages. I could write a line or more, test it, and if it worked, continue. Guess I just like immediate gratification!
Little Morphin’ Annie
APRIL 17, 2020 AT 3:37 PM
“…a teenage family member came to visit and was feeling condescendingly cool enough to want to share some current music with us that she thought we might like. So she whipped out a tiny gizmo and went to the stereo, stopped, looked puzzled and asked where the portal to plug it in was. Ummm, hun, that stereo doesn’t have one of those; it’s older than… well: You. Times two.”
…I had something like this when I called tech support for a 1989 industrial SCADA/HMI computer 10 years too late. The person I talked to was probably 8 when it was made, and he wanted to know the software version.
I asked where that information might be on the drive, since we inherited the system from a bankrupt competitor and they had thoughtlessly tossed out the manuals and boxes.
He said, “OK, go up to the icon in the corner…”
I stopped him there and said I couldn’t do that.
He said, “Sure you can, just take your mouse and scroll…”
…again I stopped him and said I couldn’t do that.
He was getting a little aggravated at this point, asked “why not?”
…which was when I told him that there was no mouse, and it was running on a DOS operating system we had only recently upgraded to DOS 6, and so did not have icons or ways to scroll to them, given that navigation was done with arrow and TAB keys.
He was speechless for a moment, and said, accidentally I assume, “Well, I’m going to have to get one of our OLD guys to help you” by which I’m SURE he meant “Senior”, and put me on hold until the aforementioned old guy came on the landline (yes, landline) and actually was able to solve my problem.
But I’m sure his younger colleauge was shaking his head the whole time…
4
Timex-Sinclair.
Wired a real keyboard to it, tapped the video to run off a monitor, instead of a TV.
Mounted it in a wooden box.
Wrote a inventory database for the cable company that stored data on a GE cassette player/recorder.
Yeah, I had a slide rule back then.
6
1401
3
Jimmy
APRIL 17, 2020 AT 4:01 PM
“^ Todaze equivalent is…
HELLO WORLD!
Get with the program, Super!”
…well, my Trash-80 only had 4k (that’s KILO, not MEGA) of memory, so one more word would probably have locked it up forever…
4
USAF crypto 1967 – I’m trained on IBM 2540 reader punches, went to IBM ED center, first time, in Chicago in 1978, I’ve worked on IBM drum storage, and core storage, and many water cooled main frame models. Ive had timex sinclairs and still have a commodore 64 with schematic, a VIC 20, and a early Apple up in the attic along with a IBM XT. And its all fading away in the dust like me.
4
Computer? What’s a computer?
6
I still enjoy my laserdisc collection.
5
Chuckie
APRIL 17, 2020 AT 7:29 PM
“I still enjoy my laserdisc collection.”
Laserdisc? I had RCA Capacitance Electronic Discs, YO…
“I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment’s gone
All my dreams pass before my eyes, a curiosity
Dust in the wind
All they are is dust in the wind
Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
Oh, ho, ho
Now, don’t hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away
And all your money won’t another minute buy
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind”
-Kansas, “Dust in the Wind”
3
@SNS- I had a CED player as well. Had to thin out the herd with my audio/video components and gave it to a buddy of mine. I thought the format was really cool.
3
Chuckie
APRIL 17, 2020 AT 8:14 PM
“… I thought the format was really cool.”
…yeah, but it used a contact needle just like a record player, and good luck finding one of THOSE now…
3
I was a “pro” computer operator by the time the pictured hard-cased microdisk was created. Used the bigger true floppy disks for a long time, though.
Since I’m not tech oriented my only reference to computer experience “firsts” is using MS-DOS and creating WordStar files as an Administrative Assistant in 1987. The computer was a IBM Personal Computer XT, then our office upgraded to IBM PS/2 Windows. Good times.
3
Remember text editing before there was word processing? I can’t remember any of the characters used, now. And the earliest spreadsheets were a lot of fun.
I still have my 1977 TI-30(?) from my time in the Air Force. I probably kept the original box and paperwork, too. I bet it would fire right up, too, if I plugged it in. Probably still made in Texas, you know? TEXAS Instruments?
3
I have loving memories of our Commodore 64 and BCs Quest.
3
my stepmom was the supervisor of the keypunch operators at the UofMD back in the ’60’s & early ’70’s … I actually learned to type because of that … fascinated me that machines could read the punch cards & perform operations due to the hole punches in the correct locations
I enrolled in the UofMD w/ a Computer Sciences major … & promptly dropped out
in the late ’70’s we had some Trash 80’s at work … a most frustrating experience … I gravitated more to the FORTRAN & COBOL languages of the mainframes … “Magua understand, very well”
in my work I was more into time-capture of Quindar time pulse for measurements of volume, viscosity, level & on/off commands & status (I/O) relay over telephonic, & later, microwave
my first ‘home application’ experience was when I purchased an Apple console from Sears … it took me 12 hours of programming to produce a ‘lightening bolt’ effect … I promptly gave it to my 10 year old son. then I purchased a Commodore 64, complete w/ a dual tape drive … that I promptly gave to my then 12 year old son who programmed it to play fart noises & the theme to ‘Beverly Hills Cop’
purchased a ‘real’ computer in about ’84’ (?) when I purchased the components to hammer together a 40k hard drive (40k! no one will ever need more!) w/ a 5 1/4″ ‘A’ drive & a 286 processor … strictly DOS platform, w/ an orange screen monitor! … did word processing, spreadsheets & even played a few games … brickdown, etc.
Bill Gates stole Steve Jobs best ideas … & the rest is history
3
Actually, I invented the method of counting on both hands AND both feet!
I … let’s see … the Late Pleistocene? … or the Early Neolithic? … can’t really recall … Helen Thomas was with me … but her feet looked like monkey hands …
2
You know your getting old when you’ve lived long enough to “remember” the wrong timeline. I became computer “savvy” in 1984 as a Admin. Asst.
I started using microdisks as an Illustrator, creating artwork-illustrations, posters, displays slides etc. at UNC-Sch. of Dentistry, in 1987. Time flies.
My first computer ran windows 3.1 and the little twerps these days can still run circles around me.
Old? I got yer “old” right HERE!
I’ve programmed plug boards.
The first mainframe I worked with had 24K core memory.
8-inch floppies were the norm.
My first home computer ran CPM.
I had a TRS-80. Good times.
UNK & ANON,
Get on utube, There are guys interfacing
the old computers(Tandy TRS-80 and many others}
into modern computers and the internet.Cool stuff.
Commodore 64 was the first actual experience, but first operating system for home was Norton Commander with that blue screen! Toggle left screen to the right screen.
Never new straight up DOS.
I remember my oldest bro, comp sci engineer and USAF pilot had a Texas Instruments hand held calculator that you could insert very thin long, an inch, card ‘program’ into the side.
I have a 2 foot Burroughs B-500 disk (25kb) laying around somewhere.
My first computer was an AT clone in 1987. About $1,500, 2 floppy drives, no hard drive, monochrome monitor. Bought one a few months ago for about the same price: 360 laptop so it folds into a tablet, 4k screen, 10th-gen i7 chip, 1 TB static memory. Ain’t technology great?
I owned one of those Compaq Portable Computers. The key board fastened onto the front of the monstrosity. I bet that thing weighed 30 pounds. And the screen was about the size of a recipe card. That was high tech back then.
http://oldcomputers.net/compaqi.html
Oh, my. One of my first computer classes at DePaul University in Chicago was using punched cards. Illinois Bell used to send them to be returned with payment. If it wasn’t for this lock down, I’d have my gray touched up tomorrow. Sigh and LOL!
My roommate had a Kaypro portable that looked like a sewing machine when closed up.
I struggled mightily to write and print a resume on it. But I got the job that launched a long and lucrative career.
That’s nothin’.
I’m still using an abacus, Thankyou.
First personal computer I ever witnessed in operation was a Kaypro. That thing was so big it could have moonlighted as a sledgehammer.
I also took FORTRAN in college with punch cards. Don’t forget the sequence number on the punchcards!
Slide rule in high school and college.
Manual typewriter.
Yeah, that’s some old technology there. Sure am glad I upgraded to the Bernoulli Box.
In a similar episode, a teenage family member came to visit and was feeling condescendingly cool enough to want to share some current music with us that she thought we might like. So she whipped out a tiny gizmo and went to the stereo, stopped, looked puzzled and asked where the portal to plug it in was. Ummm, hun, that stereo doesn’t have one of those; it’s older than… well: You. Times two.
I was at a USAF course where RAdm Grace Hopper was a guest lecturer at a class.
Little old gal almost 80 year old chain smoker.
Pioneer in DOD computers.
Interesting old gal.
pianamusic- Damn right!
*flicks bead*
I seem to remember a Challenger 2P when I was a little kid. Only because it was blue.
https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/challenger-2p.jpg
Built my first computer in 1978. Had to solder most of it together. Ran assembler and Fortran. User interface was a DEC LA-36 printing terminal – eventually got a Perkin-Elmer CRT – woo hoo! Programmed my own 2-D aerodynamic flow solutions on it while a college student.
Yeah. Old.
Make sure you have the record player on at night.
My first computer was made of wood.
Anonymous
APRIL 17, 2020 AT 2:55 PM
“I had a TRS-80. Good times.”
…I had the cassette folio for a checkbook balancing program. Sometimes, I would just unplug the special silver Realistic tape deck and listen to what data sounded like.
And then sit down for HOURS of it going “mmmm. Mmmm. MmmMMMMmmm. Mmm.”
“…Install Next Tape”
“MmmmmmMMMMMmmmmmmm. Mmm. MmmmMM.”
…it DID teach me how to program in BASIC, though, variarions of which I still use to make money TODAY, so it was $500 fat, 1980’s dollars well spent, even if it DID start with
5 CLS
10 PRINT ‘HELLO’
20 GOTO 10
RUN
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
HELLO
>break at 10
10 PRINT ‘HELLO’;
RUN
HELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLO
HELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLO
HELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLO
HELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLO
HELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLO
HELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLO
HELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLO
HELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLO
HELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLOHELLO
>break at 10
(Yes, kids, we were MUCH more easily amused by computers then…)
^ Todaze equivalent is…
HELLO WORLD!
Get with the program, Super!
I was in the army in 1977 waiting for AIT to start. In September of that year I was at Ft. Belvoir, VA, raking leaves when an officer asked for volunteers to attend school. Didn’t want to rake leaves anymore, so I volunteered. Was on the internet (arpanet at the time) using touch screens and connected to the University of Illinois. Was text chatting with professors there. Got me hooked and I’ve been a network engineer since.
Boxes of punch cards lead to reams of green & white printer paper, damn College Bookstore made a fortune off COBOL class.
Now a cell phone has more computing power than the Apollo Capsule, that’s why I feel old.
In the last half of the 70’s LSU had one mainframe for all 25000 students. It had 64k main memory
BFH
APRIL 17, 2020 AT 3:55 PM
“My first computer was made of wood.”
….MY first computer was one of THESE babies. Picked it up cheap and barely used at a garage sale, rubber bands and all, can’t IMAGINE why they were willing to part with it…
https://retrothing.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/digicomp.jpg
…like I said, easily amused, but my dad WAS a programner on one of those room-sized ones with vacuum-sealed reel-to-reel tapes and punchcard inputs, so I did have some encouragement…
Jimmy
APRIL 17, 2020 AT 4:01 PM
“^ Todaze equivalent is…
HELLO WORLD!
Get with the program, Super!”
…but you could change it up even MORE by adding a simple SPACE!
10 PRINT ‘HELLO ‘;
RUN
HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HEL
LO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HEL
LO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO
HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HEL
LO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HEL
LO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO
>Break at 10
…and you thought MMORPGSls were fun…
well, just don’t show the kid your 5 1/4″ floppy drive
Got to play around with a DEC Mainframe in HS, don’t remember the model, but it had removable 10mb platters the size of most laptops these days.
Then went right to the TRS-80.
DOS/Windows 3.1
using IBM emulation board in a Wang computer
Hi tech for the day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAAObdsbGAE
Desdinova
APRIL 17, 2020 AT 4:07 PM
“I was in the army in 1977 waiting for AIT to start. In September of that year I was at Ft. Belvoir, VA, raking leaves when an officer asked for volunteers to attend school. Didn’t want to rake leaves anymore, so I volunteered….”
…seems to be how these things happen…my dad was another accountant at a life insurance place, and was apparently standing around with a smart look on his face when someone said, “Hey, we need to send someone to train on these new computers, wanna go?” And he did, going out 30 years later as their Senior Programming Engineer.
…many years later, I’m standing around my new factory with a smart look on my face when someone says, “Hey, we need to send someone to train on these new robots, wanna go?”
And I did.
…now, 25 years later…
An abacus?
@BFH – yeah actually mine too, a wooden scale, some how connected through my hand to my brain…
HB pencil in your case? OR was it a Derwent??
I favored a rapidiograph pen on vellum with a T Square and triangle…for the final product.
Will have to forward to ya for a ‘final crit’ one of these days…
Dolt
APRIL 17, 2020 AT 4:33 PM
“…Wang computer…”
…given how much of the Internet was developed for and occupied by porn, I’m a little surprised that THIS brand didn’t do better…
I have never paid as much for a computer as I did for the 486sx I bought in early 90’s. It was two house payments worth.
Technically, my first computer was an 8088 you had to program and I can’t remember what it was called. I won it in a drawing but never did anything with it. Can’t count the occasional use of an abacus for whatever reason in my childhood. It certainly wasn’t a tool for me.
Hammurabi wrote the first known code and his computer was made of stone….
Back in my… I say… back in my day… all the computers could still make a sammich.
“My first computer was made of wood.”
Slide Rule? I still have one. Not that I can remember how to use it.
I don’t even know how to turn on a computer….
I remember sliding my Wang between a pair of IBM 38s.
Cisco Kid, I went back to school (after being laid off) in 1996 for a computer degree. Guess what we had to take? A COBOL class! Actually, that was one of the easiest classes in that program. When I got to C++, I knew programming wasn’t for me.
Guess what I eneded up doing? Webmaster. But that didn’t include any real programming languages, just markup languages. I could write a line or more, test it, and if it worked, continue. Guess I just like immediate gratification!
PHenry, the “Wang” was developed by Dr. Wang.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Wang
If you had a problem with your Wang back then, you could take it to the good doctor.
@jimmy
My joke worked better in 1985.
I had to search image because none of you cavemen ever actually said what the hell the picture was of.
Anyway, after a diligent 2 second internet search, I came across this article from 2017 that talks about that joke that started in 2014.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/24/16505912/floppy-disk-3d-print-save-joke-meme
So now you should feel really old.
Little Morphin’ Annie
APRIL 17, 2020 AT 3:37 PM
“…a teenage family member came to visit and was feeling condescendingly cool enough to want to share some current music with us that she thought we might like. So she whipped out a tiny gizmo and went to the stereo, stopped, looked puzzled and asked where the portal to plug it in was. Ummm, hun, that stereo doesn’t have one of those; it’s older than… well: You. Times two.”
…I had something like this when I called tech support for a 1989 industrial SCADA/HMI computer 10 years too late. The person I talked to was probably 8 when it was made, and he wanted to know the software version.
I asked where that information might be on the drive, since we inherited the system from a bankrupt competitor and they had thoughtlessly tossed out the manuals and boxes.
He said, “OK, go up to the icon in the corner…”
I stopped him there and said I couldn’t do that.
He said, “Sure you can, just take your mouse and scroll…”
…again I stopped him and said I couldn’t do that.
He was getting a little aggravated at this point, asked “why not?”
…which was when I told him that there was no mouse, and it was running on a DOS operating system we had only recently upgraded to DOS 6, and so did not have icons or ways to scroll to them, given that navigation was done with arrow and TAB keys.
He was speechless for a moment, and said, accidentally I assume, “Well, I’m going to have to get one of our OLD guys to help you” by which I’m SURE he meant “Senior”, and put me on hold until the aforementioned old guy came on the landline (yes, landline) and actually was able to solve my problem.
But I’m sure his younger colleauge was shaking his head the whole time…
Timex-Sinclair.
Wired a real keyboard to it, tapped the video to run off a monitor, instead of a TV.
Mounted it in a wooden box.
Wrote a inventory database for the cable company that stored data on a GE cassette player/recorder.
Yeah, I had a slide rule back then.
1401
Jimmy
APRIL 17, 2020 AT 4:01 PM
“^ Todaze equivalent is…
HELLO WORLD!
Get with the program, Super!”
…well, my Trash-80 only had 4k (that’s KILO, not MEGA) of memory, so one more word would probably have locked it up forever…
USAF crypto 1967 – I’m trained on IBM 2540 reader punches, went to IBM ED center, first time, in Chicago in 1978, I’ve worked on IBM drum storage, and core storage, and many water cooled main frame models. Ive had timex sinclairs and still have a commodore 64 with schematic, a VIC 20, and a early Apple up in the attic along with a IBM XT. And its all fading away in the dust like me.
Computer? What’s a computer?
I still enjoy my laserdisc collection.
Chuckie
APRIL 17, 2020 AT 7:29 PM
“I still enjoy my laserdisc collection.”
Laserdisc? I had RCA Capacitance Electronic Discs, YO…
https://youtu.be/hfDpsVVZeGM
Deplorable Second Class
APRIL 17, 2020 AT 6:11 PM
“USAF crypto 1967 – I’m trained on … a IBM XT. And its all fading away in the dust like me.”
…yep, we old dudes, our stories, our knowledge of a lost world, everything we know, will be lost with us…
https://youtu.be/NoAzpa1x7jU
…everything we do will fail.
…everyone we love will die.
…everything we know will be lost.
…I think there’s a song about it…
https://youtu.be/tH2w6Oxx0kQ
“I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment’s gone
All my dreams pass before my eyes, a curiosity
Dust in the wind
All they are is dust in the wind
Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind
Oh, ho, ho
Now, don’t hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away
And all your money won’t another minute buy
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind”
-Kansas, “Dust in the Wind”
@SNS- I had a CED player as well. Had to thin out the herd with my audio/video components and gave it to a buddy of mine. I thought the format was really cool.
Chuckie
APRIL 17, 2020 AT 8:14 PM
“… I thought the format was really cool.”
…yeah, but it used a contact needle just like a record player, and good luck finding one of THOSE now…
I was a “pro” computer operator by the time the pictured hard-cased microdisk was created. Used the bigger true floppy disks for a long time, though.
Since I’m not tech oriented my only reference to computer experience “firsts” is using MS-DOS and creating WordStar files as an Administrative Assistant in 1987. The computer was a IBM Personal Computer XT, then our office upgraded to IBM PS/2 Windows. Good times.
Remember text editing before there was word processing? I can’t remember any of the characters used, now. And the earliest spreadsheets were a lot of fun.
I still have my 1977 TI-30(?) from my time in the Air Force. I probably kept the original box and paperwork, too. I bet it would fire right up, too, if I plugged it in. Probably still made in Texas, you know? TEXAS Instruments?
I have loving memories of our Commodore 64 and BCs Quest.
my stepmom was the supervisor of the keypunch operators at the UofMD back in the ’60’s & early ’70’s … I actually learned to type because of that … fascinated me that machines could read the punch cards & perform operations due to the hole punches in the correct locations
I enrolled in the UofMD w/ a Computer Sciences major … & promptly dropped out
in the late ’70’s we had some Trash 80’s at work … a most frustrating experience … I gravitated more to the FORTRAN & COBOL languages of the mainframes … “Magua understand, very well”
in my work I was more into time-capture of Quindar time pulse for measurements of volume, viscosity, level & on/off commands & status (I/O) relay over telephonic, & later, microwave
my first ‘home application’ experience was when I purchased an Apple console from Sears … it took me 12 hours of programming to produce a ‘lightening bolt’ effect … I promptly gave it to my 10 year old son. then I purchased a Commodore 64, complete w/ a dual tape drive … that I promptly gave to my then 12 year old son who programmed it to play fart noises & the theme to ‘Beverly Hills Cop’
purchased a ‘real’ computer in about ’84’ (?) when I purchased the components to hammer together a 40k hard drive (40k! no one will ever need more!) w/ a 5 1/4″ ‘A’ drive & a 286 processor … strictly DOS platform, w/ an orange screen monitor! … did word processing, spreadsheets & even played a few games … brickdown, etc.
Bill Gates stole Steve Jobs best ideas … & the rest is history
Actually, I invented the method of counting on both hands AND both feet!
I … let’s see … the Late Pleistocene? … or the Early Neolithic? … can’t really recall … Helen Thomas was with me … but her feet looked like monkey hands …
You know your getting old when you’ve lived long enough to “remember” the wrong timeline. I became computer “savvy” in 1984 as a Admin. Asst.
I started using microdisks as an Illustrator, creating artwork-illustrations, posters, displays slides etc. at UNC-Sch. of Dentistry, in 1987. Time flies.