How we connected to computers

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Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 4:24 am

This was high tech stuff

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9dpXHnJXaE

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 6:21 am

That has me beat. My oldest is a genuine Hayes Smartmodem. It's a 300 baud ( and slower ) external modem, one of the first with the Hayes Command Set. There were lots of them made, so I don't know if it is of much value. Last time I fired it up, it worked fine. It has a DB25 connector and a small bank of dip switches to set options such as parity, auto answer, etc. It was used in my BBS days.

Not quite a Newb Joined: 26 Dec 2009 Posts: 25

War Games

Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2013 9:05 am

my first computer was a ti994a 16 bit computer. monocrome monitor with no modem at all. no hard drive it used an external taperecorder. and dos basic was advanced programing. I actually spent months creating small programs that sucked.

now I barely know how to post on these forums...

sad.... after all these years practicing, I still suck at this. LOL

Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2013 11:14 am

The first computer I ever used was the MU5 mainframe at Manchester University

It had a staggering 128K RAM. My mobile has twice that.

Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2013 11:37 am

First computer I bought was a Tandy 1000. It used Ms-DOS and GW-Basic. Took me months to firgure out how the damn thing worked. I bought it because I was studying Electronics and knew more about how they worked on the inside than how to actually plug it in a operate it. I spent some time playing Games on it and learning Basic and C languages. Never could get the idea of arrays though.

Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2013 11:47 am

Hey Roy

Is that a punch card data entry system left of center in the pic?
Wow

Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2013 12:06 pm

Looks more like a punch tape machine. I used to use a Freiden typewriter to make 1" wide tapes in RS-244(?). We used them to operate our NC milling machines.

Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2013 12:14 pm

Fascinating (hands steepled one eyebrow raised)

Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2013 12:14 pm

Checking out some old photos I find a picture of my first computer - well not actually mine, the Bank I worked for in the early 1970s.

IMB 360 - 1024 kB

Those were the pioneering days of 'Data Processing' (IT), when a 20Mb hard drive was the size of a small house !

Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2013 12:26 pm

Technically I didn't own the Texas Instruments computer either. It belonged to my dad... Lol

Puter died horribly in a freek lightning strike. Very sad... Not home owners paid for new puter yey color monitor and get this it attached to a phone. You could type stuff (mostly pointless stuff) and others would see it on thier puter. Very very cool. .. For about a minute then got tired of it... Nostalgia (big sigh looking at nothing) Smile

Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2013 12:35 pm

The first CNC machines I ran used a General Electric 1050 control.

http://inv.gibbsmachinery.com/machpict/003000/2551e.jpg

Your common tracfone has more capacity than this old bird did. I was always deleting one program to fit another into it. Took about an hour to reload the Main Operating Program and Manual Setup Data tapes into it.

Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2013 2:02 pm

Burroughs B6700 for The Midland Bank (subsequently HSBC)

We used to kick the overnight batch job off with punched cards, the password card was pink and had to be hand punched every night with one of these...

But this was my first computer that was mine.

Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2013 9:35 pm

Not only old computers, also an old thread. 2 year necro!

Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2013 1:03 am

Well since a mod has already replied,I will chime in.TRS-80,with 4k memory,and l1 basic.Upgraded it to a whopping 16k with l2 basic.Cassette player for the tape drive of course.Actually owning a computer in 1979 or so actually got me in to computer course that was closed at the time.The instructor was so impressed the I had a computer that he let me into a class that was full.I still have the damn thing somewhere in the cellar.

Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2013 1:04 am

LOL, (OOPS!!)

Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2013 1:14 pm

Ford wrote:

War Games

Damn straight! I loved that movie! Totally opened my eyes for computers. Smile

The first computer I used was a Piccolo - most of you will probably never have heard about it, it was a Danish produced computer for educational purposes, and used the Comal-80 language as OS.

I was 13, and saved money I earned from my local newspaper route, and I bought this:

A year later, the C64 came out. So I had to start saving up again, but by the time I had enough for buying the C64, the machine below had been released, so I bought it instead - which I regretted many times since. Laughing

The rest is history. I have owned a computer of some kind ever since, and can't imagine a life without one.

419Eater is my life Joined: 18 Jan 2010 Posts: 357

Big Al wrote:

First computer I bought was a Tandy 1000. It used Ms-DOS and GW-Basic. Took me months to firgure out how the damn thing worked. I bought it because I was studying Electronics and knew more about how they worked on the inside than how to actually plug it in a operate it. I spent some time playing Games on it and learning Basic and C languages. Never could get the idea of arrays though.

Ha! I had a Tandy 1000 TL2. Oh memories.... Razz

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