Vintage Computers

[Turboslacker]

My earliest interaction with computers would be in 1977. At my Dads accounting business in Kansas City he had some huge ribbon tape type of computer. As a kid my job was to vacuum up all the tiny freakin colored dots that it would spit out all over the floor and itself. I remember that the punched tape roll became the memory. Hanging chads would have been a bad thing lol.

Then in 1980 he got a Harris with a green font monitor. That was the first time I was able to play games on a computer.

Good times.

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[Nodak]

The first computer I programmed on was a Bendix G15 that my college acquired from military surplus. It had 500 tubes in it and used the Intercom programming language. The operating system was on paper tape and when it was powered up one had to be ready to reach in and give the drum memory a nudge to get it spinning.

 

[braumeister]

In 1976, I did a short (one year) gig at a megacorp and saw they had an IBM 360/70 that seemed to be just sitting there idle. I asked about it, and was told that the previous VP had bought it, but nobody knew how to use it.

I asked if I could "fool around" with it a little, and they said sure, it's not like you could hurt anything.

So I went to a terminal and quickly found that full instructions were available within the machine, and I printed everything out and started reading. It also included tutorials in PL/I, which was the language used to write programs on it.

Within a few weeks, I was the company's only computer programmer, and I was having a ball with it. No other duties assigned, they were just kind of amazed that someone could figure out that big hunk of iron.

For the rest of my year there, I wrote about six or eight different programs to improve their logistics operations, and they were still running happily every month for who knows how long after I left.

 

[M Paquette]

The first one I bought was an Apple IIe, with dual floppies, and the extended memory, for a whopping 128 kilobytes total.

The first one I used was a Malmstadt-Enke analog system. Plugboard, rack full of vacuum tube op-apms, 'function generator' to send triangular or square waves through the system...

The oldest machine I currently have is an Intel Intellec 8, with the 8080 upgrade kit installed. Yes, it boots.


I also have some newer (but still old by computer time) NeXT machines and Macs.

 

[NW-Bound]

The very first computer I used was an Intersil IM6100 development board, back in 1976. It was a teaching aid for a college class where I learned about digital hardware and machine language programming. This Intersil chip emulates the PDP-8 instruction set (12-bit machine!), where the subroutine return address is stored at the top of the subroutine (no re-entrant code!).

See photo linked in from the Web.

 

[karluk]

I owe a big debt of gratitude to the first two pcs that I owned. The first was a TRS-80 4k machine from Radio Shack. It's likely I would never have gotten interested in computers except for that machine, but objectively speaking it was a piece of junk compared to pcs already being sold or soon to be available.

My second pc was a Commodore 64. Even though it was marketed as a games machine, it was comparable in power to the Apple II and the early IBM pcs. I wrote a Forth compiler using the C-64 assembly language, so by the time I outgrew my C-64 I considered myself to be a rather sophisticated programmer. I went on to make IT my profession for the last three decades of my career.

 

[Rustward]

Although the curriculum was directed toward systems programming for the IBM "OS" operating systems of the era (OS/VS1, OS/VS2 Rel 1 (SVS), and OS/VS2 Rel 2 (MVS)) on S/370 hardware, I was required to take some EE courses. One of those courses featured a PDP-9 and its assembly language. The EE department had recently acquired an Altair 8080. For a class project, the prof, kind of a mad scientist looking guy, but very astute, made us write a cross assembler for the 8080 that ran on the PDP-9. Most of us thought this was double duty, but we got through it. The PDP-9 had 64K core memory, paper tape reader and punch, two Hazeltine CRT's, two TTY's for hard copy. For faster, more readable printed output, one could punch a tape and walk it over to the Friden Flexowriter and interpret it. Words are insufficient to describe a Flexowriter in action: Friden Flexowriter on Vimeo

Another project on the prof's wishlist: interfacing the Flexowriter directly to the PDP-9. Don't know if he ever did it, though.

I was told there was a PDP-8 in storage somewhere -- not sure I ever saw it.
There was also an older Univac system (tube based) that was somewhat operational but only on a limited basis and not for any real work. What I remember being told is that there was never enough air conditioning capacity to use it nonstop, but every now and then there was a demo. The AC was normally off and the room locked, but for a demo, the air was run for about 8 hours, then the machine was powered up and ran about 4 hours before the machine would thermal check, and that was the end of the demo. IIRC, I never saw one of these demonstrations, but I did see the machine. I probably heard this from an old timer who was telling me how things used to be.

 

[clifp]

The first one I bought was an Apple IIe, with dual floppies, and the extended memory, for a whopping 128 kilobytes total.

The first one I used was a Malmstadt-Enke analog system. Plugboard, rack full of vacuum tube op-apms, 'function generator' to send triangular or square waves through the system...

The oldest machine I currently have is an Intel Intellec 8, with the 8080 upgrade kit installed. Yes, it boots.


I also have some newer (but still old by computer time) NeXT machines and Macs.

Oh a working blue box cool. I don't think the one in the Intel museum works. Interestingly enough despite my many years at the company, I never used one.

I was tempted to get a Next Cube, but all those old computer take up so much room..

I do regret getting rid of my original 128K Mac, with the signatures of the original Mac team inside the cases.

 

[FIREd]

The first computer I ever used was an Amstrad CPC (owned by a cousin), circa 1986.

I bought my first computer only in the late 1990s. It was a Compaq Presario 5660.

 

[LoneAspen]

Words are insufficient to describe a Flexowriter in action: Friden Flexowriter on Vimeo

Very cool stuff! Thanks for posting. It's fun to see old computer gear in action.

My first job out of college was maintaining mainframe applications on MVS, and I must have had a knack for understanding complicated JCL and assembly, because people would come to me for help on those two things. I couldn't understand CICS to save my life, since my systems were more batch oriented, so I'd hit them up whenever I needed CICS help.

I still remember the days of trying to explain JCL to mainframe newbies. They'd want to know what the IEFBR14 program did, and I'd tell them "nothing". It's the program that does nothing. That would blow their minds

 

[GalaxyBoy]

My first computer was an Atari 400. I actually upgraded it to replace the membrane keyboard with a "real" keyboard, and I upgraded the 16k RAM to 64k. Both were third-party add-ons.

Dear Old Dad got into computers around 1964 for a major railroad. He tells tales of a mainframe with 4k (!) of RAM, and they had to translate the code from assembly language to hexadecimal by hand because there wasn't enough overhead in the computer for an assembler. He wrote the first payroll program for the company because at the time you didn't buy software, you sent a bunch of people to computer school and got a bookshelf full of manuals. He says that in the late '90s they tried to call him back to do Y2K work, but his response was, "None of my routines have that problem!"

 

[Idnar7]

Bought a TI-99/4A for $200 in 1982. Cassette for storage and tv for monitor. Had add-on Extended Basic. Also had a speech add-on that you could program to speak. You would buy games/programs on cassette.
In the mid-sixties my high school offered a programming class. You got a huge box of pre-printed computer cards. You pulled the cards to create your program. They were sent offsite to be run. God help you if you ever dropped your box of cards. It was always tedious to put your cards back in the right place (they were numbered). Don't think we learned much programming.

 

[Beststash]

My first computer (other than mainframe at school) was a DEC PDP11/40 at work. You would load the bootstrap addresses with front panel keys and then load the boot device (cake platter for us).

What was really cool was we had the Unix System III source code (written in C) available also. I remember the only type of editor was ED and when VI came out we thought we were in hog-heaven. Very cool times writing shell scripts and modifying the c-code to write our own commands. We also had all of the machine language docs available so we could set traps, etc. to isolate runtime problems.

I was definitely a command line person and remember well when the GUI programs first came out remarking that they would never be for anyone in engineering environment. Because CC (Unix compiler) available as part of the OS there were lots of on-the-job apps written by everyone.

Exciting times.

Peace

 

[NW-Bound]

The very first computer I used was an Intersil IM6100 development board, back in 1976. It was a teaching aid for a college class where I learned about digital hardware and machine language programming. This Intersil chip emulates the PDP-8 instruction set (12-bit machine!), where the subroutine return address is stored at the top of the subroutine (no re-entrant code!).

See photo linked in from the Web.

Forgot to say that the above development kit was the 1st computer that I could touch and interact with.

Prior to this, I learned Fortran programming, which was required of all engineering students, not just EEs. However, the Fortran programs we wrote were submitted on punched cards, and the output was via wide 132-column printouts. The big Univac 1100, a 36-bit machine, was behind close doors, which we did not get to see.

The university also had several PDP-11's with teletype terminals. Again, the machines were behind close doors.

In 1980, I did buy a Sinclair ZX-80, then later an Mattel Aquarius. Both used a Z80, and I was going to add more memory to them but never got to do that.

My next computer purchase was in 1985, and that was a really superior PC XT clone made by Mitsubishi, and that ran with a 50% faster clock (Turbo mode!). I was able to run MS Fortran compiler on this machine; a real scientific computer, and not a toy. Hog heaven!

A year or two after having that 1st PC, I took the risk to unsolder the Intel 8088 CPU and replaced it with a NEC V20 which was a bit faster still. And I bought the 8087 math coprocessor for it (was $200!).

After that first PC came at least a dozen of PC machines, with CPU from the 80386SX (had to buy the expensive 387 math coprocessor too!) to the quadcores that I am still using now.

 

[Rustward]

They'd want to know what the IEFBR14 program did, and I'd tell them "nothing". It's the program that does nothing. That would blow their minds

You have probably heard this one already, but IEFBR14 did have an APAR opened on it. It was simply BR 14 and was not clearing the return code in R15. Don't remember how they cleared the return code (doesn't really matter much), but it did add one instruction.

 

[braumeister]

You have probably heard this one already, but IEFBR14 did have an APAR opened on it. It was simply BR 14 and was not clearing the return code in R15. Don't remember how they cleared the return code (doesn't really matter much), but it did add one instruction.

DING DING DING !!! WE HAVE A WINNER !!!

I do believe that is the single geekiest paragraph I have seen here. Congratulations!


(and please don't think my comment is in the least pejorative; it's purely complimentary!)

 

[Rustward]

The computer industry tends to acronymize as much as possible as do other industries. I was in for 32 years, been out almost 6. I may not live long enough to lose it all.

APAR is Authorized Program Analysis Report. It is documentation that somebody notified IBM that something probably needs to be fixed.

Here is a nicely done little article about IEFBR14 in Wikipedia.
IEFBR14 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Yellowjacket]

As a kid I wanted an Atari for Christmas as most kids in the neighborhood had one. My mom "researched" it and got me a TRS80 instead. It has the entry level 12k model and was not the top end 16k model. All of the good "radio shack" games were for the 16k model, and none of the other kids had a TRS80. My mom sent me to several programming classes/camps for the damn thing. Learned at any early age basic. All I wanted was to play frogger, et, pitfall, space invaders, etc......

 

[LoneAspen]

You have probably heard this one already, but IEFBR14 did have an APAR opened on it. It was simply BR 14 and was not clearing the return code in R15. Don't remember how they cleared the return code (doesn't really matter much), but it did add one instruction.

LOL - I do remember hearing something about that years ago. To think that IEFBR14 had a bug in it is priceless

Without Googling it, I'm going to take a wild ass guess from my ancient assembly days...

I'm guessing they had to add a "SR 15,15" statement to zero out the return code? (I hope I got my syntax right - been years, decades even, since I had to think about assembly)