Y'all should ask @bracconiere about that. He was with one of the original covered wagon trains that went west. THAT was life changing.
Y'all should ask @bracconiere about that. He was with one of the original covered wagon trains that went west. THAT was life changing.
I'll bet 90% don't get this one. Although given the probable average age of the forum, I could be wrong.
What was the b:\ drive for?
Yeah. People actually didn't realize that "hanging chads" existed before CY2000. Those cards punch machines, in addition to being a monstrosity needing frequent cleaning and dusting, also often produced faulty cards that would clog the compiler loader. Contrast that 800# hunk of iron that you'd have to wait in line sometimes an hour of more just to get access to compared with the 10 oz. Bluetooth keyboard I'm typing on right now, not to mention the instantaneous feedback I get from the countless programs and apps I have instant access to on a computing device that sits on my desktop rather than occupying a 2,000 square foot office space. It's truly a marvel we take totally for granted on a daily basis.Or when everything is right, and it was only chaff hanging on that one card that caused my mental breakdown!
Good point! (I was going to say, "Spot on," but decided that one pun was better than two).Ya know - ink jets are still dot matrix.
Brew on
I did some work on an 1130 in Fortran II. Anyone else remember the single 14" hard platter, hard case, removable disk cartridges?
Also did some hand assembly coding, and toggle switch input, on a PDP-8.
I did work for many years at the home of the 1401, but never used one.
Brew on
The early portables were more correctly referred to as "luggable." Several history pages on the web - here's one. Osborne was the first, and Compaq had the first IBM PC compatible.Good point! (I was going to say, "Spot on," but decided that one pun was better than two).
Ooooh. Remember the early 'portable' computers? You know, the ones that were literally about the size of a full sized Sampsonite suitcase? (Kaypro, maybe?). I remember getting on a small commuter airline flight one day, circa 1980, with some random business traveler having to lug that thing down the airport ramp to drop it off by the airplane's baggage door. The ramper heaved it into the the baggage area on top of a bunch of other unrestrained cargo and bags. Always wondered if the DATA arrived intact, even if the 'computer' did.
Today we all have laptops, in addition to having much more processing power in our mobile phones than a thousand of those early portable computers.
The early portables were more correctly referred to as "luggable." Several history pages on the web - here's one. Osborne was the first, and Compaq had the first IBM PC compatible.
Brew on
Hey! Where'd you get that picture of me? Have you hacked the camera on my Mac Air?
I'm younger than your sons and I very clearly remember using diskettes.
I think my cousin got an old computer from school that had edutainment games on 8" floppys. School didn't get rid of all of them, though, because I'm pretty sure that we had a couple of those green screen machines in the classroom, while the good Macs with Number Munchers and a newer version of Oregon Trail were in the computer lab, and we didn't get to play those games until after a few rounds of Mavis Beacon.
My family's first computer, a Win98 machine, had a CD drive, and an even newer version of Oregon Trail. It didn't have a CD burner, though, and I don't know if USB drives caught on until we got an XP machine (I can't remember if my first USB drive was 16 or 64 MBs, but I know it had trouble with PowerPoint presentations). I very clearly remember taking word processing documents to school on floppys, and helping dad swap out disks as he backed up his Quicken files.
Those were some days. The world will never be like that again.
I had a computer class in college where the professor told us that he wasn't going to require a textbook, and we should instead spend that money on a flash drive, since they were going to be the next big thing. I spent about $50 on a 256 MB drive instead of $80 for the 512, because who really needs 512 MB of storage anyway?
Our first computer was a Texas Instruments Ti-99. It used a cassette tape player for programs, and had a slot for game cartridges; my mom played Parsec for HOURS on that thing. And I remember getting BYTE magazine, and spending hours typing the basic programs they would have every month. In my house right now I have four laptops (sometimes five if I bring the work one home), three tablets, one all-in-one PC, and of course the ubiquitous phones the spousal unit and I cannot be parted from. It amazes me how far technology has come in just the 40 years since we had that old Ti99.
And, Bill Gates (slight mis-)quote: "64k should be enough memory for anybody."
At my age, that would invoke near immortality. Not sure if that would be a blessing or a curse.May you live long enough to think yer current storage is but a percent, or two, of what ya "really" needed. Heh.
Operative descriptor: "teenage daughter".
My forty+ year old sons barely remember diskettes and I'm nearly certain none of them actually handled one
Cheers!
Look at the title of the forum this is in. Things meander off the tracks sometimes, but what better place.View attachment 752808
Is this a meme thread, or just a discussion of old computer tech?
I never dealt with punch cards, but I had bought a 64mb SCSI drive that weighed close to 20 lbs in one of my 1st computer builds for about $85. If you told me then that I would able to hold 256 gb on the tip of my finger (for $20), I would have simply asked you to pass me some of whatever it was you were on.
Amazing where technology is going. Can't wait to see what we have in 10 more years?
Even if one was compromised about the worst that could happen is one of my fermentation chambers, beer fridges, keezer, or my RO system, could be taken over
Cheers!
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