Old Enough To Remember?

On my run down period I wrote my CV's on the "new" Naval Air Squadron computer back in..... erm.... 1986, using Wordstar on the dreaded greenscreen monitor... and having to put page offsets into the document for printing out!

All went well until the winchester drive developed a fault and the stoopid engineer made a mistake by doing a read and write back before verifying the data and the drive were actually working properly... I lost my CV and the squadron lost all the records... bear in mind this was a trial system, with no backup.....
 
Daboo said:
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.
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I can't remember the brand name of the first computer I used in '84 at work. It was a "portable", suitcase sized, keyboard folded down from one end, two 8" floppies, one for the OS and one for data. Next was an IBM XT with a 20 mg HD, 640k RAM, 5 1/4" floppy and an amber monitor.
 
ReSTored said:
I can't remember the brand name of the first computer I used in '84 at work. It was a "portable", suitcase sized, keyboard folded down from one end, two 8" floppies, one for the OS and one for data. Next was an IBM XT with a 20 mg HD, 640k RAM, 5 1/4" floppy and an amber monitor.
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That would probably have been a Compaq portable - basically an IBM XT in a suitcase.
The first IBM PCs only had 5 1/4 floppies.
I was in the technology field for 50 years and lived through all the 'introductions' of the Commodores, Vics, Trash 80's, Apples, IBMs 'PCs', etc.
And the various word processing/database 'wars' (Wang, WordPerfect, Multimate, DBase, DMS, IDSII, ...) and PC operating system 'wars' (CP/M, DOS, OS2, Apple...).
There was an early clone of the Apple - Franklin - but they got that part of their business shut down early on.
My first 'remote' terminal ran at the blazing speed of 300 baud - but it still beat having to drive to work in the middle of the night to fix a problem.
And yes, I could program an IBM026 card punch like nobody's business! ;)
And I worked with the 96 column Burroughs punched cards also.
And about every type of mainframe from IBM and the BUNCH that was made.
I even remember when AutoCad was a mainframe product! :biggrin:
 
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ReSTored said:
It wasn't a Compaq. Looked similar to below, but the floppy drives were oriented vertical, not horizontal.



1701996499445.png
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The original Compaqs looked like this (with the vertical diskette drives) -

1702005718955.png

We called them 'luggables' as you'd better have a good back if you were going to tote those babies anywhere! ;)
 
ReSTored said:
It wasn't a Compaq. Looked similar to below, but the floppy drives were oriented vertical, not horizontal.



1701996499445.png
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An upstairs neighbor bought one of these when they first became available. Got to help them learn BASIC so they could program their home accounting service. Anyone else remember the days when commercial software packages were still someone's pipedreams?
 
Shuey said:
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!
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Reminds me at all the nights behind my Commodore C64 (breadbox)... BASIC and WILDCARDS... ;) (programmed an "ATM" on that, welcome screen, insert PIN, 4 accounts... agonizing hours...)
Of course with a Datasette ... :cool:
And one of the early first-person shooters: Rescue On Fractalus..."the first computer game to really scare people"... :biggrin:

Next step was a 386/4MB... 320MB HDD (exposed moving parts on the outside)... boosted it with a math co-processor and legendary 8MB (with wire-pins you stuck through the main-board)... DOS, Win 3.**... later CD-ROM drive and a sound-card...
 
Uncle Phil said:
Maybe as a boat anchor ... ;)
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During PC 'early days', our T1000 was considered an exceptional desktop. Occasionally I would bring a problem home and work on it, program the calculations in Basic and launch it before bedtime. It would usually finish by the time I was ready to head back to work in the morning. Early reliability analyses. I'd like to think there's still some of me somewhere in the current programs.
 
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