Nerdy Nostalgia.
Discussion
julian64 said:
JonRB said:
My first laptop was THE first laptop.
Ok, technically it was my dad's, but I used it way more than him and he tended to buy toys and then let me pretty much have them. Which was nice.
I'm not sure thats allowed the crown for first laptopOk, technically it was my dad's, but I used it way more than him and he tended to buy toys and then let me pretty much have them. Which was nice.
My Mum's house has recently been sold and from the loft I rescued my old Atari 2600 VCS, complete with about 7 or 8 games. I can remember paying £199.95 for it from Woolworths, where I had a saturday job between 1981 and 1983. Not had chance to see if it works yet...
I also still have an Atari 520 STFM upgraded to 2 megs RAM. And tons of programs for it. And the Phillips dedicated "medium res" monitor and a Protar 50 meg hard drive for it. All still working and used occasionally.
I also still have an Atari 520 STFM upgraded to 2 megs RAM. And tons of programs for it. And the Phillips dedicated "medium res" monitor and a Protar 50 meg hard drive for it. All still working and used occasionally.
tribbles said:
What's this "disk" thing of which you speak? Tape is nostalgia.
(Although I'm sure someone's going to say punched card!)
You called ?(Although I'm sure someone's going to say punched card!)
I started with punched card and paper tape back in the
late 1970s. I used to own shoeboxes full of old card decks.
Floppies were eight inch, as big as dinner plates and
held IIRC about 100K.
Unix on a 1MHz 4Meg RAM PDP-11, accessed via a fan fold
paper fed TTY33, shared between dozens of users, was a clever place to be.
No screen, so no vi, no emacs, certainly no graphics and ed
was the main text editor. The single character "?" was
it's primary error message.
A 5,000 line program was a big program then. These
days I sit in front of million line programs every day.
Wow. This is my kind of thread.
Here is a picture of some of my calculators. I also have Apple ][s, Early 128K Macs, Spectrums, Sinclair Programmable.
Also lots of other hardware stuff including Teletext testing equipment.
I have two bound folders of these.
Future classics?
This is a VERY small part of my collection!!
Here is the latest addition. A Texas Instruments CM990/189 development computer. I found it in a roundabout way via eBay.
The chap has never used it. Its still in its original box (marked 22/8/81). The board is like new and amazingly it has its original (+12,-12,+5) PSU!
More pictures to follow...
Here is a picture of some of my calculators. I also have Apple ][s, Early 128K Macs, Spectrums, Sinclair Programmable.
Also lots of other hardware stuff including Teletext testing equipment.
I have two bound folders of these.
Future classics?
This is a VERY small part of my collection!!
Here is the latest addition. A Texas Instruments CM990/189 development computer. I found it in a roundabout way via eBay.
The chap has never used it. Its still in its original box (marked 22/8/81). The board is like new and amazingly it has its original (+12,-12,+5) PSU!
More pictures to follow...
Seeing those Texas calculators reminds of the time in building tech when the exam asked for calculation of standard deviations for a set of concrete cube results.
No problem for me and my mate as we had the latest all singing all dancing Texas with std devs on board.
We both got the result wrong but interestingly not the same answer, so we queried it with the tutor who had also used her latest all singing Texas and she had marked every paper against the wrong result too.
Three like calcs next to each other following each others inputs and three different answers.
Taught all three of us a valuable lesson in knowing roughly what the answer would be without just blindly accepting a screen.
No problem for me and my mate as we had the latest all singing all dancing Texas with std devs on board.
We both got the result wrong but interestingly not the same answer, so we queried it with the tutor who had also used her latest all singing Texas and she had marked every paper against the wrong result too.
Three like calcs next to each other following each others inputs and three different answers.
Taught all three of us a valuable lesson in knowing roughly what the answer would be without just blindly accepting a screen.
Ahh yes, geeky memories 
I remember writing a programme for my CBM64 to randomly fling Q codes (or the meaning) at me for me to respond with the EXACT text equivalent or the Q code depending which direction it was in.
This was to help me learn all the Q-codes & variations for my maritime radio exam (MRGC). I think having to type them all into the array in the programme probably helped just as much! I even created a little ship shaped sprite to go across the screen when it started!
I remember as a newly qualified Air Traffic Engineer, going & buying an Amstrad 1512 to the awe of all my housemates - and then buying a RAM upgrade which came wrapped in a piece of household foil - no fancy antistatic bags then! Upgraded to 640k - and you could tell the difference!
Then stepped upto the giddy heights of adding a 40Meg hardcard. Drive & controller all on one ISA card. Had to be partitioned as 32+8 if I recall & to do a low level format required dropping into debug & issueing a command, g=c200 (? rings a vague bell).
I teamed it up with a 9pin Epson Lx-400 printer - hell that thing was noisy but to actually send out printed letters from home - state of the art in those days.
Anyone else rememeber the Tiger's face that came on the Amstrad? Printed that off for neighbour's kids so many time
I remember writing a programme for my CBM64 to randomly fling Q codes (or the meaning) at me for me to respond with the EXACT text equivalent or the Q code depending which direction it was in.
This was to help me learn all the Q-codes & variations for my maritime radio exam (MRGC). I think having to type them all into the array in the programme probably helped just as much! I even created a little ship shaped sprite to go across the screen when it started!
I remember as a newly qualified Air Traffic Engineer, going & buying an Amstrad 1512 to the awe of all my housemates - and then buying a RAM upgrade which came wrapped in a piece of household foil - no fancy antistatic bags then! Upgraded to 640k - and you could tell the difference!
Then stepped upto the giddy heights of adding a 40Meg hardcard. Drive & controller all on one ISA card. Had to be partitioned as 32+8 if I recall & to do a low level format required dropping into debug & issueing a command, g=c200 (? rings a vague bell).
I teamed it up with a 9pin Epson Lx-400 printer - hell that thing was noisy but to actually send out printed letters from home - state of the art in those days.
Anyone else rememeber the Tiger's face that came on the Amstrad? Printed that off for neighbour's kids so many time
My maths teacher was very big on teaching "rough approximation" in conjunction with using a calculator. As you say, a valuable lesson. 
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