Computer Memory Lane
- Thread starter easysurfer
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I date back to the punch card days. Getting a tape punch teletype was a huge step forward. My first personally owned computer was a 64k Apple But in those days, I knew how to do everything on the computer and operating system. I also remember booting the old machines with levers and they had lights flashing that I could read to tell what it was doing ... or not doing as often as not.
CoolChange
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First PC I owed was a new Commodore 64 which I assumed would last forever since it was a solid little machine without moving parts; and, I couldn't imagine ever needing more than 64K of memory for anything.
First machine I was paid (minimum wage at the time) to work with: IBM with 8086 chip inside.
First machine I was paid real, post-college, wages to work with: IBM 370 mainframe.
I wrote assembler code for all of these chips; so, I had a fair understanding of how they actually worked. But, I no longer claim to actually understand anything.
First machine I was paid (minimum wage at the time) to work with: IBM with 8086 chip inside.
First machine I was paid real, post-college, wages to work with: IBM 370 mainframe.
I wrote assembler code for all of these chips; so, I had a fair understanding of how they actually worked. But, I no longer claim to actually understand anything.
SecondCor521
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Let's see:
PET 2001 with chiclet keyboard and built in tape drive. 8K RAM, I think. Had a subscription to GAMES magazine that sent a cassette tape each month with about 6 or 8 programs on it. I remember trying to use the "FastForward" key on the tape deck to cut down the amount of time waiting for a program to load. But if you went too far and missed the beginning...whoops!
Commodore 64 - $595 when it first came out - plus external single-sided 5 1/4" floppy drive that stored 170K per side and an Epson 110 (?) wide format dot matrix printer. I remembered cutting notches in the floppies to use the back side. Played Donkey Kong and ran Busicalc, a forerunner or knockoff of Visicalc.
I also remember fondly writing a little program for school. The assignment was to print 1,000,000 dots. Every one of my classmates dug out the printer manuals, discovered that the "@" sign had the most dots, did some division, and printed out like 50 pages of "@" symbols. I knew my Epson could be programmed via escape codes, so I wrote a program to print 1,000,000 dots programmatically by firing all 9 pins across the entire width of the 17" wide paper. I managed to both (a) fit the entire 1,000,000 dots on a single sheet of 11x17" paper, and (b) print exactly 1,000,000 dots; IIRC correctly the last row wasn't a full row and I had to do a single dot at the very end.
Circa 1990, a Compaq "portable" computer at work that probably weighed 15 pounds and had an orange-on-black monitor. Came with a shoulder bag thing.
Also...IBM PCs, VAX 11/780s, IBM mainframes, HPUX workstations, then just stuff everyone would recognize now...Dell laptops and desktops mostly.
2Cor521
PET 2001 with chiclet keyboard and built in tape drive. 8K RAM, I think. Had a subscription to GAMES magazine that sent a cassette tape each month with about 6 or 8 programs on it. I remember trying to use the "FastForward" key on the tape deck to cut down the amount of time waiting for a program to load. But if you went too far and missed the beginning...whoops!
Commodore 64 - $595 when it first came out - plus external single-sided 5 1/4" floppy drive that stored 170K per side and an Epson 110 (?) wide format dot matrix printer. I remembered cutting notches in the floppies to use the back side. Played Donkey Kong and ran Busicalc, a forerunner or knockoff of Visicalc.
I also remember fondly writing a little program for school. The assignment was to print 1,000,000 dots. Every one of my classmates dug out the printer manuals, discovered that the "@" sign had the most dots, did some division, and printed out like 50 pages of "@" symbols. I knew my Epson could be programmed via escape codes, so I wrote a program to print 1,000,000 dots programmatically by firing all 9 pins across the entire width of the 17" wide paper. I managed to both (a) fit the entire 1,000,000 dots on a single sheet of 11x17" paper, and (b) print exactly 1,000,000 dots; IIRC correctly the last row wasn't a full row and I had to do a single dot at the very end.
Circa 1990, a Compaq "portable" computer at work that probably weighed 15 pounds and had an orange-on-black monitor. Came with a shoulder bag thing.
Also...IBM PCs, VAX 11/780s, IBM mainframes, HPUX workstations, then just stuff everyone would recognize now...Dell laptops and desktops mostly.
2Cor521
Brat
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
We had a Victor 9000 before IBM produced a personal computer. I would go for coffee when I asked the spreadsheet to recalculate.
http://www.commodore.ca/history/people/chuck_peddle/victor_9000_ad.jpg
http://www.commodore.ca/history/people/chuck_peddle/victor_9000_ad.jpg
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ls99
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And of course, this was my first:
That's not a computer. It is a"human interface" Teletype. with a tape reader no less.
RYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRY.
Test message: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog's back.
ls99
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An EIA "desktop" TR-48. It did take up the entire top of a desk. This is an analog computer.
calmloki
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Think our first was a Magnavox with an 80Mg harddrive and a printer. Late 80's. It was either a computer or a dedicated game machine and it seemed like the computer could play games and do other undefined stuff, so I was gifted with the computer. We added Quicken and that was that - off to the races! Wolfenstein never had a chance. Either that computer or our next, with an upgraded 210 Mg hard drive and DOUBLE the offered RAM at 2Mg was just under $3000 with printer. Profligates. Now my honey has a $600 box and I'm on a $499 Emachine. Strange, but I remember the first 10 years everything was advertised as having blazing performance - is that still the preferred term for a new machine?
Onward
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They say you never forget your first:
I've been developing for its descendants ever since, and I'm looking forward to taking a break on retirement later this month.
I've been developing for its descendants ever since, and I'm looking forward to taking a break on retirement later this month.
I guess my first exposure to a computer was programming in "Intercom" language on a Bendix G-15 that my college had gotten as surplus from some Government agency. Anybody else ever seen a Bendix computer, it had about 500 tubes in it.
freebird5825
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
dh2b chimed in...his first computerized device was an Atari game console, with games such as Pong and some psuedo 3D maze game (name?).
His first real computer was a TRS-80 with a cassette tape drive.
My first computer experience at college was with an IBM 360, untouchable by mere undergraduate students. The system had teletypes for student use, punch data card readers, 9 track magentic tapes, and 132 column printouts for each batch run of our very simplistic FORTRAN programs.
His first real computer was a TRS-80 with a cassette tape drive.
My first computer experience at college was with an IBM 360, untouchable by mere undergraduate students
. The system had teletypes for student use, punch data card readers, 9 track magentic tapes, and 132 column printouts for each batch run of our very simplistic FORTRAN programs. Just to show how things have changed since 1967:
When my school got their Bendix system there was no open room to put it in. The Science building was next to the Library with a connecting structure between them. Both buildings had restrooms for both men and women. Someone decided that they would clear everything out of the women's restroom in the Science hall and put the computer in there. Nobody complained about that, however, the system gave off more heat than was expected. It was so bad that in mid-winter at zero degrees or lower one would see windows and exterior doors open on the building to keep it cool.
When my school got their Bendix system there was no open room to put it in. The Science building was next to the Library with a connecting structure between them. Both buildings had restrooms for both men and women. Someone decided that they would clear everything out of the women's restroom in the Science hall and put the computer in there. Nobody complained about that, however, the system gave off more heat than was expected. It was so bad that in mid-winter at zero degrees or lower one would see windows and exterior doors open on the building to keep it cool.
Bikerdude
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rescueme
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Worked in Base Supply? ....My first in the Air Force 1967, Univac 1050-II minus the model of course. Rats.
Onward
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You folks are making me and my dual-floppy PC seem downright recent.
Bikerdude
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My first exposure to a computer was in 1963. We got one at megacorp and it was an IBM 1401. I had to go to programming school which at that time was all fortran and cobalt. The computer itself was huge with all the tape drives, card readers, printers and a dozen girls doing punch cards. When we had something complicated we had to transmit the data over telephone lines to a central computer in Detroit (an IBM 360). It did the calculations and transmitted the date back to our site. The computer I'm on right now is probably a 1000 times more capable that that thing back in '63. Off the topic a little, I remember in 1976, my boss told me that when those new battery operated calculators got below $100 he was going to get one.
I lived in Minneapolis from 1968 to 1974. In about 71 a friend of mine was a math teacher in Fosston, MN. He drove several hours from there to Minneapolis for the sole purpose of buying one of those $100 four function calculators that you couldn't give away today.
rescueme
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How about COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language)
...BTW, my first was an IBM1620 (Fortran/SPS), in 1965. That was on the solid state computer devices. I actually started on unit record equipment (402/403/407/514/519/082/083/084/etc), using plug boards for "programming" and a manual to review the timing charts for the machine cycles...
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