DOS

[clean32]

Talking to my receptionist today. Now hes a 22 year old boy that dint grow up eating worms and making bows an arrows, probably sleeped with his game boy.

any way he was arguing with his desk top so called me down to have a look. we got talking about computers and i realized how much things have changed.

so what were your firsts

first computer

8086 8 MHz, twin floppies amber 3X5" no HD the CPU was cooled by a gel pack 1meg ram. that was a hot set up for its day running DOS 3.3 Lotus 123 V1 and every thing else was done in Basic. all typing and correspondence was sent to the typing pool where the girls had electric typewriters ( and those girls scared the hell out of me) it cost $9345 NZD
first modem 940 bps

[d@rk51d3]

Ahhh, DOS.

I loved it. They were the good old days.

[p38arover]

You had a fast system!

Mine was a Z-80 based Dick Smith System 80 Business Computer (no cassette deck for data storage) with 64kb of RAM using NewDOS. My first modem was 300bps.

My first programs were on punched cards for use on the UNSW (ILLIAC, I think) computer in 1966. My first computer I used at work was in 1968, it was a HP computer with 4kb (yes, 4 kilobytes) of memory.

[miky]

First computer: Commodore which had a tape to store programmes. Wow.

Second: Apple II which actually used a floppy disk to store programmes. Double Wow.

DOS came much later :)

There was of course different vendors of DOS such as DR-DOS (from Digital Research) that ran on the Intel 8080

There was of course: Microsoft MS-DOS and the IBM PC-DOS

[JDNSW]

My first computer (1983, I think), an Altos, ran CP/M. It had 8kb memory with a Z80 processor and two 8" floppies - which held twice as much as a 4.5" floppy. I still have it somewhere. Went from it to an 80286 running DOS - and with 10MB hard disk!

The first computer I had direct dealings with was one we started to use at work in 1972. It was a CDC Cyber 76 from memory. Input was punched cards, or a 40" digitising tablet, output was a line printer and a 40" pen plotter.

John

[p38arover]

I still have my C.Itoh 8510 dot matrix printer from the 80s. It cost me $800. Anyone need one?

Today, I threw out my two Tallgrass 60Mb HDD/Tape Drive combos in a cleanout of my workshop. I also tossed out two brand new Actron Token Ring adaptors that ran off the parallel ports and allowed ethernet connections. (They are in my workshop bin if you want them.)

[bblaze]

remember to park the heads,
My first business computer was (cant remember) ibm, had a hard drive and 5 1/4 floppies (they were real floppy). Taught all my kids to work in dos, I think they thank me. I still have early sets of dos disks in the store room (only looking the other day think I should throw them out. What about trying to work out conflicts with asigned com ports etc. Them were the days
cheers
blaze

[haggisbasher]

mine was a modern 486 dxII 66.....

But..... i had to service the old computers in the Halifax and TSB branches back home and they still used the old Philips equipment with, yup, a 8" fdd, and to boot from it was combination 2-7-5 (2 clock wise, 7 acw, 5 cw) on a KEY SWITCH.....

and servicing the old dotmatrix printers was fun. Always very rewarding and frustrating all at once.

:)

DOn't get me started on ATM machines over here tho!

[dmdigital]

1980 - DEC K10 or a PDP11/23 at uni.

Then I think it was either a TRS-80, IBM-XT, or DEC Rainbow. After that the list grows but mostly DEC equipment. But also ICL, Wicat, NEC, NCR, Fujitsu, Sun, HP...

I managed to come by a DEC Rainbow being discarded in 1991 so I guess that was my first home PC - dual single sided 5 1/4" floppies, 10MB hard drive, 896KB RAM 8088 + 8087 and 8-bit colour screen running MS-DOS 2.11 or CP/M.

[Ferret]

The first computer I had direct dealings with was one we started to use at work in 1972. It was a CDC Cyber 76 from memory. Input was punched cards, or a 40" digitising tablet, output was a line printer and a 40" pen plotter.
John

Wow some old memories there. The first computer I used was an ICL 1904A mainframe about 1974. 96k of magnetic core memory running the George 3 operating system. Data input via punched cards. Still got the operating handbook for it.

Later graduated to a PDP 11/45 and then a PDP 11/70 which at least had input via a terminal.

After that got a Perkin Elmer 3220, one of the so called 'super minis' of its time. Four boxes each about the size of a domestic fridge, cooled by 2 x 7hp air conditioners, 350k of ram and 4 x 5 Meg hard drives, two of which were used exclusively by the machine. Ran OS/32 and this was well before OS/2 was even dreamed of by IBM. What a machine.

Sadly, things went down hill from there and someone in the office got a PC - 640k ram and 1 x 10Meg hard drive all in a box you could put on a desk. Is it any wonder it took off.

[JDNSW]

Wow some old memories there. The first computer I used was an ICL 1904A mainframe about 1974. 96k of magnetic core memory running the George 3 operating system. Data input via punched cards. Still got the operating handbook for it.

Later graduated to a PDP 11/45 and then a PDP 11/70 which at least had input via a terminal.

After that got a Perkin Elmer 3220, one of the so called 'super minis' of its time. Four boxes each about the size of a domestic fridge, cooled by 2 x 7hp air conditioners, 350k of ram and 4 x 5 Meg hard drives, two of which were used exclusively by the machine. Ran OS/32 and this was well before OS/2 was even dreamed of by IBM. What a machine.

Sadly, things went down hill from there and someone in the office got a PC - 640k ram and 1 x 10Meg hard drive all in a box you could put on a desk. Is it any wonder it took off.

The CDC Cyber was a bureau service - and we had programmers who could work through all the loopholes in their charging system; when they closed the loopholes, we were able to justify replacing their service with a Data General - can't remember what model. What I do remember was that six months later we wanted more memory - and the cost of another 256k needed to go to the BHP board for approval! Also remember the hard disk drives - all of 20MB, and the size of a washing machine.

John

[WhiteD3]

My first computer was a Commodore Amiga with an external HDD. Taught myself QBasic (I think that's what it was called). In 1990 I stumbled into a job as a tech doing automation and bought a new 386 for $4k:eek:. At the time we were using IBM 286's at work running our DOS version of our Automation OS.

When our OS moved to Windows 3.10 I fought the move like crazy because the windows version was so much more time consuming to program than DOS (and still is).

[Graeme]

My 1st (work) computer was an IBM 360-30 with 16K ram where you could see the banks of ferrite cores with 3 wires running through each core and at 1 core per bit, that was quite a sight to see.

I had a fix for the sometimes broken return spring of the console typewriter (an elastic band) that got us programmers extra access time for having gotten the operations people out of a bind.

I still program my home computer using Quick Basic running in DOS sessions, having never bothered to learn to program under Windows.

[cal415]

My first computer was a TRS-80, i dont remember the hardware stats, as i was only a young kid then im only 30 now, but i do remember the commands i used to use to run programs, and remember how long it took to load programs from the cassette drive.

shortly after i went to a Commodore 64/128d with a tape drive, it even had a 300cps modem and thankfully it had a floppy drive(i still have a c64 at home with heaps of programs and games packed in a box somewhere) around that time i was also the computer boy at my primary school, setting up there micro bee computers with monochrome monitors etc, i knew more about them then the teachers did so they always got me to set them up.

Then i was at the age that i got into gaming consoles, starting with Sega's, my collection has grown over the years and still keeps growing with new consoles as they come out now, i have collected 2 megadrives, 1 megacd, 1 32x, 2 master systems, 1 nes, 2 snes, floppy disk backup for catridges for the snes and megadrive(baught from friend who got them overseas) a sega nomad(also from overseas) atari lynx, game boy, game gear, sega saturn, nintendo 64, ps1, ps2x2, ps3, psp, xbox, 2x xbox360s, there probobly more i cant remember, but i still have them all much to my wifes disgust :)

When i was in high school i got my first IBM, a 486sx33 with 4mb ram and a 200mb hdd, i also got a 2400baud modem, it was pretty damn flash at the time, and i found my first dial up BBS service. I eventualy saved enough money to upgrade to 16mb ram, a dx4 100 CPU, and a 1.3gb hdd, I also managed to get my hands on a new 14.4k modem speeding up my BBS downloads considerbly,

Shorlty after i built my first computer a pentium 133, with 32mb ram, and a voodoo 3d graphics card(the type with the loop through from the main display card), it took me ages to get the money up to buy it, i think this was when i was in yr11-12, most of the parts were recycled from old computers i had got my hands on except for the mainboard, cpu, ram and graphics cards. It was a huge step up for game play, eventualy i upgraded to a voodoo 2 card, got my first network card, upgraded to 200mhz cpu, more ram and a 2gb hdd. I started playing lan games alot with nerd friends :) I also got myself a 33.6k modem when they first come out and i was helping run a local BBS with 4 dial in lines etc as a co-sysop I was a huge nerd..... :)

Around this time i started working in IT so my collection of computers just grew like made, at the moment i must have 10-15 laptops, I was working for HP for a while so i managed to collect a bunch of old laptops and repair them, probobly 6-7 good ones, the rest are old p3s or older, and about 4-5 desktop machines with reasonable hardware but also stacks of old parts right back to old 486 gear and heaps of old HDDs.

Working in IT still its crazy to think how far its come, these days i work for a mining company as IT support looking after computers, servers, network and comms gear and looking around in my office at the moment, I have about 8-10 laptops im setting up for users worth around 4k each, plus stacks of desktops piled up on my work bench, my desk has 3 22in flat screen TFTs plus my laptop and a 2nd machine.

Well thats a long post!

[LROCV309]

... so what were your first first computer

The first computer I bought was a Commodore 64, in 1984. I had seen the tape storage system on a friend's PET and decided I would lash out and get a HDD! I added another HDD and a modem later on.

I used various computers at college and work, before and after getting my own, but the first computer I worked on was an ICL <something> in 1971 - 256kB of core memory, reel-to-reel tapes, some hard-disks, card reader, paper tape reader and a chain printer. The operators' console printed on paper - no screen. All in a huge air-conditioned room.

David M

[Captain_Rightfoot]

My first computer was an Apple iie. Twin disk drives, 6502 processor running at 1 MHZ, 64k of memory with an 80 column display card which also had an extra 64k of memory on it!

I still have it and it still works!

[JDNSW]

My first computer was an Apple iie. Twin disk drives, 6502 processor running at 1 MHZ, 64k of memory with an 80 column display card which also had an extra 64k of memory on it!

I still have it and it still works!

The Apple 2e was probably the most successful PC before the IBM PC.

John

[bruiser69]

Amiga- the most advanced home computer of the time.
My first computer was an Ohio Scientific that I imported from US. Basically a board with 6502CPU that outputed to a TV. One of the first computers with animated graphics.
Next a VIC20, then Commodore 64, followed by Amiga 500. What an awesome advance over the 386 PC of the day. It had only 512K of RAM which I expanded to 2Mb in external 20Mb HDD). The Amiga500 had parallel processing with dedicated CPU/GPUs for each major function. OS was based on UNIX. This allowed 3D graphics, stereo sound, and multitasking with only a 7Mhz clock speed. My mate who had just spent $10K on latest 386 nearly cried when I showed him what $1000 Amiga could do!
I've still got it & still works.
Couldn't affort Amiga 2000 or 3000, so reluctantly went down the IBM clone path & still there. Now run an ASUS MV51Va laptop which is as powerful as most Desktops & about same price.
Maybe someday we will see another little startup company as Amiga was, bring out a revolutionary computer & OS to bring some real competition back into the PC market.

Cheers..B

[p38arover]

In the Eighties, I was the Principal Technical Officer in charge of the OTC Message Relay System.

The hard drive there was a 99 Mb Fastrand Drum

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1d/Fastrand.gif

Specifications (FASTRAND II)

Storage capacity: 22,020,096 36-bit words = 132,120,576 6-bit FIELDATA characters = 99 megabytes (8-bit bytes) per device
Drum rotation rate: 15 per second (880 RPM)
Heads (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_read-and-write_head): 64
Sector (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_read-and-write_head) size: 28 36-bit words
Track (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cylinder_Head_Sector.svg) size: 64 sectors (1,792 36-bit words)
Track density: 105 tracks per inch
Average latency (seek plus rotational): 92 milliseconds
Data transfer rate: 26,283 36-bit words per second = 118 kilobytes per second (8-bit bytes)
Recording density, one-dimensional: 1,000 bits per inch (along one track)
Recording density, two-dimensional: 105,000 bits per square inch of drum surface
Max FASTRAND devices (drum units) per controller: 8
Controller price: US$41,680 (1968 dollars)
FASTRAND device price: US$134,400 (1968 dollars)
Weight per FASTRAND device: 4,500 pounds
Weight per kilobyte: 6 ounces



I still have one of the frames from the disassembled unit as a bench holding my drill press.

[JDNSW]

Amiga- the most advanced home computer of the time.
My first computer was an Ohio Scientific that I imported from US. Basically a board with 6502CPU that outputed to a TV. One of the first computers with animated graphics.
Next a VIC20, then Commodore 64, followed by Amiga 500. What an awesome advance over the 386 PC of the day. It had only 512K of RAM which I expanded to 2Mb in external 20Mb HDD). The Amiga500 had parallel processing with dedicated CPU/GPUs for each major function. OS was based on UNIX. This allowed 3D graphics, stereo sound, and multitasking with only a 7Mhz clock speed. My mate who had just spent $10K on latest 386 nearly cried when I showed him what $1000 Amiga could do!
I've still got it & still works.
Couldn't affort Amiga 2000 or 3000, so reluctantly went down the IBM clone path & still there. Now run an ASUS MV51Va laptop which is as powerful as most Desktops & about same price.
Maybe someday we will see another little startup company as Amiga was, bring out a revolutionary computer & OS to bring some real competition back into the PC market.

Cheers..B

I agree - my boys had an Amiga 500 - until a year or two ago I was using the TV set that came with as a monitor.

I think there is an Amiga emulator available; probably runs under Linux.

John

[cal415]

There are emulators for most old school computers and gaming consoles available for windows, i have alot of them, its pretty cool to load up old C64 games and relive my childhood memories, sometimes its hard to think how these very simple and graphically crap games kept me interested for so many hours.

[LROCV309]

... its pretty cool to load up old C64 games and relive my childhood memories

Slightly off topic but I have had a recent yearning to play Scarabeus (sp?) which was probably my favourite C64 game. I've searched but I couldn't find it.

Have you heard of it?

David M

[cal415]

Hmmm the name rings a bell, i will dig out my old collection of emulators and c64 games and see if i have it, what was the game about?

[cal415]

C64.COM - For the best in C64 nostalgia (http://www.c64.com/games/no-frame.php'showid=1707&searchfor=&searchfor_special=s&from=10&range=10)
found it :)

[HangOver]

you guys are making me feel old !

my first computer was a zx81 with a HUGE 1k of ram.

I recently bought a zx81 kit new, unopened in the box lol
After that was a commodore 16

[bruiser69]

There are emulators for most old school computers and gaming consoles available for windows, i have alot of them, its pretty cool to load up old C64 games and relive my childhood memories, sometimes its hard to think how these very simple and graphically crap games kept me interested for so many hours.

I must download an Amiga emulator & dig out my collection of games Etc.
Which emulator have you found to be the most compatible?
How do you use these emulators? I assume you need to load the amigaOS (V1.3?)first?
Cheers..B

[Blknight.aus]

a microbee 16, dads still got it it still works and all the games were text adventures like frankensteins monster.

I evolved into a pair of atari 130's (an st and xe) with 5.25 disks then onto a 486 with 4mb of ram,120mb hd, 512k graphics card and an adlib soundcard.

from there it pretty much followed the IBM trend with gaming consoles to match (starting with the atari 2600)