Who else assembled their own first digital watch from a kit?Which of you “nerds “ had one of these?
Last edited:
Old Enough To Remember?
- Thread starter Shuey
- Start date
Uncle Phil
Site Supporter
Yep, those were the 'bomb' in the day ...I have a K&E slide rule also, probably from 1960 or so. Don't know why it was kept . . . nostalgia maybe?
Next to it is my TI Statistics calculator that I purchased for my first military ADP school (1981). Expensive for sure. Put it away in a drawer along with the slide rule about . . . damn, over 30 years ago now! Haven't touched it since then until today and . . . it powered ON! I don't know what kind of battery they used then, but it's still got some juice left. Pretty amazing.
So many good memories in this thread. Thanks all . . . keep'em coming.
Shuey
bdalameda
PaleoCyclist
I built a Heathkit Shortwave Radio when I was about 11.
ST1100Y
Site Supporter
Yours help up?!
Whilst the old TI-30 was indestructible, my oh so new TI-30 LCD had a sketchy keypad right out the box... punching a digit once brought like 5 to 9 times on the LCD ... drove me nuts/stressed during exams...
Replaced it with a Sharp ELSIMATE EL-230... battery life measured in DECADES!
i was in my basement and had my phone in my pocket so i took a pic of this
Wow, a TRaSh-80!
I had a VIC-20 and a C-64, but never did more than play with them.
I had a VIC-20 and a C-64, but never did more than play with them.
Two brothers in my neighbourhood were Calgary Albertan newspaper carriers and quite the salesmen. One of them won, in an Albertan sponsored contest (for carriers ??), a motor scooter. This was in about 1962 - 63 and the desirable scooters of the day were the Lambretta, the Vespa and the Honda Cub. The motor scooter prize was a Rabbit. We didn't know anything about the Rabbit and being know-it-all 15 year olds we didn't appreciate what it was.
Doing some research today, I see that it was produced by Fuji Heavy Industries (think Subaru). To quote Wikipedia "The Society of Automotive Engineers of Japan rates the Fuji Rabbit S-1 model introduced in 1946 as one of their 240 Landmarks of Japanese Automotive Technology." Who knew?
Did anyone here have a Rabbit?
diferg
Dan & Ingrid
I tried to place (SELL) Encyclopedia Britanica door to door in the very early 70's. had to learn a canned spiel and look for qualifying signs in the prospective customers homes. realized it was a scam with a 10 year obligation for the people that could afford it the least. I quit after a week! never made a placement.
ReSTored
Site Supporter
I was a carrier for the Montreal Star in the late 60's. Had about 35 customers and made around $6 a week. Big money in those days when a chocolate bar was either 5 or 10 cents and a dime bought you a bag of "penny" candy. Did this for 2 - 3 years. Not a bad job, except when it rained and Montreal winters could be brutal in terms of snow and temps.
One thing that always amazed me (still to this day) were customers who stalled on weekly payments as I made my rounds. 2 or 3 weeks went by and then I arrived to collect and found an empty house........... they had moved and stiffed me for a few weeks of a newspaper subscription. What type of adult person steals a couple of bucks from a 10 year old kid?
A lot of Amateur Radio Ops still run these tube amps (2 x 3-500Z Eimacs)I built a Heathkit Shortwave Radio when I was about 11.
Came as a kit as well
Andrew Shadow
Site Supporter
Me too, but the 70's.
You were to generous.
The Saturday paper was the big one that everybody waited for and wanted the most. I collected for weekly delivery on Friday and every customer knew it. For those who hadn't paid up on Friday I would make a second attempt to collect on Saturday. If I still didn't get payment they didn't get a Saturday paper, or any other paper until I got paid.
Back in about 1984???, a friend told me I should buy a computer. He had a Tandy 1000 and loved it. He said, "so Carol can put her recipes in it". My wife is a gourmet cook. She reads cook books like some people eat up mystery novels. I had visions of flour all over the keyboard, and I knew she would never type in all the recipes she had in the cook books she had.i was in my basement and had my phone in my pocket so i took a pic of this
"Well, you can do your budget on it." No George. We are DINKS with more money than we can spend. Carol, the accountant (as well as gourmet chef), can make a budget up for us in a couple minutes on the back of an envelope. We don't need a computer. Ever.
A couple years later, I'm assembling an XT clone at home so she can work from home if our daughter gets sick. I turn it on. There's an orange C:\ with a cursor blinking at me on a black screen. I ask her, what do I do now? "Type DIR". So I did. Okay, now what? "Hit Enter". So I did. And all the DOS 3.1 commands scrolled across the screen.
I was hooked.
That was the start of my life with computers. I ended up doing a business on the side building computers. I got transferred within Boeing to work in their IT department for 10 years, getting paid for my hobby. I didn't get a job in one area...and then six months later the two managers in charge of that area came over to apologize to me. Their guys were coming to me for help when they couldn't figure things out. They flat out said they should've hired me. When I took a prep class for the MCSE, the lead of their department was coming to me for help to get through the class.
My home has ...I don't know how many computers. A lot. Networked obviously. I have a NAS that I can access anywhere in the world. I took a computer security course and in the final "test" gave the Black Hat team I was on, the strategy to defeat the White Hats. They never saw it coming till it was too late.
And yet, my initial response back when those computers in the pics came out was that I don't need or want a computer.
Chris
My kit builds were mostly audio equipment: Dynaco PAT-5 preamp and AF-6 tuner, and a pair of Southwest Technical Products original Universal Tiger amplifiers.
I later on bought the circuit boards and parts to make a second pair of Universal Tigers, and made a 25-amp power supply, and bridged the amps for 4x the power.
I later on bought the circuit boards and parts to make a second pair of Universal Tigers, and made a 25-amp power supply, and bridged the amps for 4x the power.
The T1000 was our first computer as well. We ordered it with additional memory, 32K?, and TWO disk drives and an external modem (tied up the phone). Kept it until better/faster began hitting the market. It was the most expensive desktop we have ever bought.
I took no interest in computers until about 1994 because I had no ambitions to write code. But when I saw the desktop publishing capability one had, I bought a used 486 DX4 with a dizzying 8mb of RAM and two hard drives - 520mb and 200mb. Great Scott!
OP
OP
Shuey
Site Supporter
Commodore Pet was my first computer that I drove across PA to Tyson's Corner to buy back in 1978. Compared to the Apple and TRS-80 offerings at the time, it came with everything you needed, all in one . . . screen, chiclite key keyboard and a magnetic tape data storage system (built in cassette tape player!). I think it had a whopping 8k of memory. It offered "Basic" for an operating system (a reworked Microsoft form) and a few programs were available. It was an education opportunity, but, I'll admit, I probably spent more time playing "Hunt the Wumpus" than anything else! 
Shuey
Shuey
I have a 10 MB full-height hard drive. 5 1/4 inch. If you drop it on your foot, it'll break your foot. 10 MB must've seemed like more than anyone could possibly need when it came out originally.
Chris
Chris
John OoSTerhuis
Life Is Good!
In 1986 the business I worked for after the Army used these huge floppy discs:
Our work stations had AT&T 20MB desktops. We thought we were in heaven with Supercalc 4 and Wordstar. And no, I was not an IT guy, just a worker bee.
John
[~8”x11”!]
Our work stations had AT&T 20MB desktops. We thought we were in heaven with Supercalc 4 and Wordstar. And no, I was not an IT guy, just a worker bee.
John
Last edited: