Great deal on an OS (joke) or A trip to Hardware Hell.

[groover km]

You know, your comments echo a thought that I have often had. In fifteen to twenty years, when I explain to my son that "when I were a lad" we had -

- A black and white telly
- That showed four channels
- No phone in the house, nevermind a cell phone each
- No car, public transport all the way
- 7" singles that I loaded individually to play

... and various other pythonesque hardships, he will look at me with a mixture of incredulity and disdain, then flip his 3D glasses back down and go back to watching Rocky XXV on his ipod watch.

Recently however, on reflection I have started to think more pessimistically that I will explain this to him while he reads a book by a candle, and we burn firewood, as I regail him with tales of 'energy consumption gone wild'. Rather he will look at me and say -

- You had a car 'each'? With three empty seats??
- I read about oil in history books - you paid HOW MUCH a gallon?? Only $3???
- So you're telling me that people actually *knew* they were killing the planet?? And did nothing???

... and we'll have this conversation in chinese, which will be his (required) second language.

(Hey, I'm entitled to be grumpy, it's monday morning )

[gEd]

what a great thread!

I was explaining to my son last sunday how I used to spend a day typing in the code for a game from a magazine. He wasn't impressed.

When I was 19, I bought an Oric - like a spectrum only it was supposed to be technically superior. Man, what a death that product died...

The first modems I ever worked with were 1200 baud, dialing into customers systems to resolve problems and using kermit to upload files. When the 9600's came out, I wet myself..

The first commercial systems I worked on were made by Systime (Leeds, UK), using an OS derived from the DEC PDP/11. 8086 chip @ 5mhz. it used 5MB removable amcodyne disks - basically a big disk inside a plastic case. Our customers could store all their documents and accounts on one of these. They were £500 each.

Many of our customers of the time use Logabax computers which was basically a very large typewriter with 2 x 8" disk drives. The deluxe model had a screen.

When Systime brought out their turbo 386 with 128MB ram, we could have 24 users (word processing) simultanously.

I just found this site.

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/

runs off to grab a tissue (to wipe away tears)...

and THEN we used to eat hot gravel from middle of road..

[groover km]

and THEN we used to eat hot gravel from middle of road..

What?!? HOT gravel, you say? Luxury! We used to DREAM of hot gravel....

(etcetcetc)

[ubu]

.....when I were a lad, we used to walk 6 miles to the pub, buy a packet of Woodbines, a packet of crisps and a pickled onion, drink ale all night and still have change from sixpence........

which was basically a very large typewriter with 2 x 8" disk drives. The deluxe model had a screen.

In the 80s I had job writing business apps on minicomputers made by Wang (best known for being the brand leader manufacturer of word processors - remember when a word processor was a piece of hardware rather than a piece of software?). The other programmers (IBM mainframe types) referred to us disdainfully as "wangers". Only the Brits on the team got the joke.

[gEd]

Apparently, Wang's parent company (Japan?) wanted their customer support organisations around the world to be named Wang care.

[ubu]

Apparently, Wang's parent company (Japan?) wanted their customer support organisations around the world to be named Wang care.

LOL!!

Confusingly (and ironically), Dr An Wang immigrated to the US from China in 1945 after escaping the Japanese occupation of his country and Wang Labs was based in Lowell, Massachusetts (off Route 128 - the Silicon Valley of the east coast). Most people assumed they were Japanese though.

[A_Brass]

LOL!!

Confusingly (and ironically), Dr An Wang immigrated to the US from China in 1945 after escaping the Japanese occupation of his country and Wang Labs was based in Lowell, Massachusetts (off Route 128 - the Silicon Valley of the east coast). Most people assumed they were Japanese though.

Now that's one of the those interesting bits of info that no one ever knows. I assumed the same thing.

I always associated Wang with two things. Super Computers like "Cray" and this huge inventory computer I tore out of my uncle's business. It had several terminals, green on black, had to love those, all tied back to a "Server", and use that term loosly, via 25pr cables. The Server looked like an octupus or something with all this big honking cables hanging off of it.

This might have been the computer that used the 7.25 disks. Yeah, I think it was.

[ubu]

It had several terminals, green on black, had to love those, all tied back to a "Server", and use that term loosly, via 25pr cables. The Server looked like an octupus or something with all this big honking cables hanging off of it.

This might have been the computer that used the 7.25 disks. Yeah, I think it was.

That's my baby!!! Wang VS80 was the model we had. The terminals had the keyboard and VDU all built into one "console" that must have been built out of cast iron or something they were so heavy. And the server (well that was before "client server" - we used to call it the "machine" and "servers" were people who would bring you a beer while you were looking at the menu in a restaurant ) did indeed have all those proprietary cables and the big floppy drives (seem to remember they were 8" - everybody had their own proprietary size back then) and separate storage units the size of a small fridge with removable hard disk packs in transparent, sealed plastic bubbles with a handle on top.

Our "disaster recovery plan" involved running into the computer room, each grabbing a couple of disk packs and running down the street with them to another of our offices four blocks away that also had a VS80. Nobody seemed to glom on to the fact that the most likely "disaster" in San Francisco would be an earthquake and that the other office would likely be a heap of rubble by the time we got there.

I do remember that the only way to IPL (Initial Program Load, or "reboot" for younger viewers) the machine was to stick a sharp pencil into a hole in the front and push. Sort of an early version of what later, with the advent of the IBM PC, became known as "the big red button, the programmer's friend".

[mobiusnz]

This is too much - Our first pc (when I was 7) was an Atari 400, went to an 600xl, the a 130XE with 128KB of Ram and a floppy disk! (Remember manually notching the disks with scissors to double side them because you weren't one of the rich kids that had a device to do it with).

My dad used to subscribe to Compute magazine -we'd spend HOURS typing all the lines of basic in only for it not to run so we'd have to go back and check it all - they were usually around half

100 DATA 10,50,10,43,23,234,34,213,232,12,123

And stuff so you couldn't even apply logic to bug check them - you just had to read it all back against the magazine! I swear if ever I was going to commit suicide as an adolecent it was after typing a game in for two hours only for it no to work!

My father still has every issue from issue 1 till they died of Byte magazine (A New Zealand publication).

We Went through the Atari's to a Franklin (An apple clone who got sued by Apple and went out of business - the damb reset was on the front edge and you contantly hit it with your knee after typing pages of unsaved work!) - To our first PC

4.77mhz XT with Twin (thats right two of them) 360KB floppy's and 640k of ram. Banged a 5mb MFM (or maybe RLL) hard drive in it a year later. Then went 286, 386 and so on from there! Ahhhhhhh those were the days!

As someone commented - programming was a lot tighter then - some of the games written to fit two floppies that gave HOURS of entertainment (Space Quest, Lounge Suit Larry) were just amazing. I swear modern games made me loose attention span.

Also remember going from our original 2400 modem (leaving it on all night on a bbs downloading a few megabytes - It was built into an Amstrad made pc clone luggable - used to have to warm up dialing some 30 times before it would handshake properly - then it was good for the night!) to a 14.4K Supra i got second hand for a BARGAIN of $600NZD (about $300 USD then probably). A mate got an inheritence so sold me that after buying it for $800 a few weeks earlier to upgrade to a Zyxel that did proprietery 16.8K (only to other zyxel's - about 2 BBS's in Auckland had them).

Superbreakout with Paddles on the Atari is still one of my all time favourite games - that two player gave us hours of family fun - Also had the original Pacman and Defender.

Good times! My Dad still has the 600xl in a drawer.

Sorry to ramble - but the more you think back the more comes rolling out!

[A_Brass]

More treasure, I just found a Diamond Multimedia Stealth 3D 2000 video card from 1996. Anyone can have it for the right price.

As I recall the "3D" in the name of this card, was wishful thinking.

This thread is bringing back so many memories,

As someone commented - programming was a lot tighter then - some of the games written to fit two floppies that gave HOURS of entertainment (Space Quest, Lounge Suit Larry) were just amazing. I swear modern games made me loose attention span.

I loved Space Quest and Leasure Suite Larry, I think the orgianal space quest is the first good game I played. It was on my friends 286. With 4 colors. Wow. Before that the only thing I could get my hands on was an 8088 and that didnt' have a harddrive. IBM Model 25. Intregrated everything including 13in monitor. Upgrade you say? It ment tossing the whole thing out. The most you could do was add a second floppy.

Let me know if anyone wants that Diamond 3D video card !