OT - Remember When....

Frequency · 11-01-2002, 01:06 PM

The PDA thread got me thinking, so with apologies to the young punks

I remember looking through K-Mart ads to see if they lowered the price of the Commodore 64...

An IBM PC with TWO floppy drives!

Engineering pressure vessels on a Radio Shack brand computer

Compaq taking an IBM PC chassis, putting a small CRT on the front and a handle on the back - and calling it a PORTABLE. I liked it too

Bill Gates and the one meeting that would one day make him the richest man in the world.

IBM's Topview, Quarterdeck's Deskview, and Microsoft's Windows battling it out for ownership of the multitasking software market. Most rag "experts" chose IBM or Quarterdeck to win. HA - I was right. (too bad I didn't buy stock or move to Seattle - I'd have that Black Thunder now)

Watching an IBM-AT boot for the first time and not being able to read the screen fast enough to see the files load - and thinking "I'll never need this much processor power"

Running my former employers first PC based engineering network, late at night in the engineering office so we wouldn't have to go through corporate hoops and have electricians ask questions (my boss took the heat for that one, but forgiveness IS easier to get than permission)

X Windows - running programs on a different machine than the one you are sitting at. Hehehe - the ultimate test was opening a window on a buddies machine and displaying a picture taken of him and the stripper from his bachelor party - DURING a presentation HE was giving to our group. I earned alot of respect with that one

I remember $40,000 workstations actually being FASTER than $5000 PC's.

Formatting hard disks into five partitions so you could actually use the whole disk.

Finding out which Windows 3.1 files (only about 45 of them) were needed to load my Windows based program on any DOS machine.

My first pentium I machine - blinding speed - thinking "I'll never need this much processor power"

Clay Washington · 11-01-2002, 01:17 PM

How about "overclocking" a pentium 166 to a 200 'cause it was faster with Doom II

For all you mainframers out there... two words... PUNCH CARDS

CigDaze · 11-01-2002, 01:51 PM

My first PC was an 8086 XT. It operated at a blazing 4MhZ and if you pushed the "turbo" button it would operate at 10Mhz

The only problem was that it would get too hot, so you had to use it sparingly....

It had two 3.5", 720K floppys and ran DOS 3.3...Years later, when I could afford a hard drive, it was a seagate 20Meg Drive...The possibilities were limitless with that much storage.

BTW, it came with an amber monochrome monitor...

It has a 1200 Baud modem(remember "Baud"?)

I had to buy a plug-in math co-processor, so that I could run AutoCAD Version 8 on that shiny, new hard drive...

You weren't serious until you got yourself a CGA, 4-color monitor...Then you were stylin' Remember those awful purple and cyan graphics schemes...

Then came Video graphics Array(VGA)...256 colors that would blow you away.

They've certainly come a long way!

Oh ya, remember the old Radio Shack TRS machines(all in one monitor and cpu) Simply Amazing...

mr_velocity · 11-01-2002, 01:58 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Baja Daze
My first PC was an 8086 XT. It operated at a blazing 4MhZ and if you pushed the "turbo" button it would operate at 10Mhz
The only problem was that it would get too hot, so you had to use it sparingly....

It had two 3.5", 720K floppys and ran DOS 3.3...Years later, when I could afford a hard drive, it was a seagate 20Meg Drive...The possibilities were limitless with that much storage.

BTW, it came with an amber monochrome monitor...

It has a 1200 Baud modem(remember "Baud"?)

I had to buy a plug-in math co-processor, so that I could run AutoCAD Version 8 on that shiny, new hard drive...

You weren't serious until you got yourself a CGA, 4-color monitor...Then you were stylin' Remember those awful purple and cyan graphics schemes...

Then came Video graphics Array(VGA)...256 colors that would blow you away.

They've certainly come a long way!

Oh ya, remember the old Radio Shack TRS machines(all in one monitor and cpu) Simply Amazing...

Yea I had one of them, cost me $2K.

How many actually programmed using punch cards? I hated those days.

Frequency · 11-01-2002, 02:01 PM

Nick,

I remember being in a pinch one day on the TRS. I ran out blank disks and needed to save a new program desperately. Knowing that you could buy single sided or double sided disks I figured the media inside the sleeves would be the same. I carefully opened the sleeve, took out the media, cut out the sleeve to match the double sided version and slipped the media back in. It worked!

11-01-2002, 02:06 PM

I remember spending $2,400 in 1982 on a Radio Shack Model 4P (P meaning portable, as the whole thing, all 64K of it and the monitor and keyboard fit into a carrying case that looked like a sewing machine), and running superScripsit and Visicalc, the whole time being amazed!

CigDaze · 11-01-2002, 02:11 PM

Ya, the prices were outrageous...Just look at what you get now for $599.00 from Dell...

I used punch cards somewhat, but not a whole lot...mostly programming CNC machines.

Frequency, I've heard of that being done...Never tried it though.

What about when the 3.5" disk drives became 1.44Meg...did you guys all drill out the upper corner of the old 720(low-density disks) and reformat to 1.44?....

Frequency · 11-01-2002, 02:26 PM

Remember when .......

You saw someone typing on the keyboard at work and it meant they had to be WORKING!

Ratchet · 11-01-2002, 02:46 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Frequency
Remember when .......

You saw someone typing on the keyboard at work and it meant they had to be WORKING!

Isn't technological advancement a wonderful thing ?

Ron P · 11-01-2002, 02:55 PM

Do you remember

C:/dir so you could see what programs you had?