When do you first remember using a mobile phone or computer?
Discussion
Computer: at college c.1970. Involved writing prog. to punched card, handing it in and getting the answer to something like 2+2 about a fortnight later. The contraption took up a whole floor of the main building.
Then in the mid/late 70s an IBM system 32 arrived at work. We had to keep manual things going because it kept falling over.
The first of my own was in 1987: an Amstrad PCW9512 which I used for getting typesetting from a remote outfit. Sending stuff by modem and getting the film output by return of post.
Then in the mid/late 70s an IBM system 32 arrived at work. We had to keep manual things going because it kept falling over.
The first of my own was in 1987: an Amstrad PCW9512 which I used for getting typesetting from a remote outfit. Sending stuff by modem and getting the film output by return of post.
My first home computer is still in the loft. It has a smoked glass face and I think four hexadecimal LEDs behind it
Still works, and has at least one game I remember playing for hours on it which was shooting down a fighter plane coming toward you.
You had to have quite a good imagination in those days
Still works, and has at least one game I remember playing for hours on it which was shooting down a fighter plane coming toward you.
You had to have quite a good imagination in those days
My mate had a 'mobile phone' in a briefcase back around 1984 or 85 and I used that a couple of times, think it was an NEC. Then I used my bosses car phones from about 86 onwards. First Nokia brick I had myself was late 89. It cost a fortune but made me a lot running big earthmoving jobs around that time. I seem to remember bills of around £300 a month which were offset by huge savings on plant hire.
First computer was a ZX 80 back when I was at school in 1980 where we programmed them using basic and an audio tape. First time I used a computer for work was 1992 when I discovered excel for the first time. Only ever used spreadsheets and p!ayed battleship for many years. Didn't send an email (or even knew what an email was) till 2001.
First computer was a ZX 80 back when I was at school in 1980 where we programmed them using basic and an audio tape. First time I used a computer for work was 1992 when I discovered excel for the first time. Only ever used spreadsheets and p!ayed battleship for many years. Didn't send an email (or even knew what an email was) till 2001.
FlossyThePig said:
As I started working for International Computers Ltd (before they changed the name to ICL) in 1974 the first computer would have been something in the 1900 series.
The company / shop I went to work for when I left school was set up by people who had been working at ICL in Kidsgrove. I recall some of the things we sold in there alongside the Dragon, Vic-20, Video Genie and so on was stuff like the Oric-1 with it's printer that was basically a plotter, the Commodore 64 with its floppy disc drive that used a serial interface so wasn't all that much quicker than a cassette (only ever sold one floppy drive), the Jupiter Ace (a forth-based home computer) and so on. I think one of my first jobs was upgrading a batch of BBC "A" computers to make them into "B" models, because it was so hard to get the "B".rolando said:
Computer: at college c.1970. Involved writing prog. to punched card, handing it in and getting the answer to something like 2+2 about a fortnight later. The contraption took up a whole floor of the main building.
My mum recalls my dad's office getting a new computer sometime in late 60s/early 70s. She recalls it because he had to go to work on a Sunday to help install it. It had to be a Sunday as that was the only day they could get permission to close the road so the crane could lift it straight into the second floor.droopsnoot said:
the Commodore 64 with its floppy disc drive that used a serial interface so wasn't all that much quicker than a cassette (only ever sold one floppy drive)
The serial interface was the new one and quite fast, but they made the 1541 drive backwards compatible with the VIC 20 which hobbled the speed. This limitation was only software based though and you could speed up the drive using various "fast loaders" based on cartridges (like the Epyx Fast Load)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epyx_Fast_Load
The Commodore 64 drive (1541) was actually a lot faster than the Commodore Datasette anyway.
Datasette (Cassette) - 50 bytes/s
1541 Drive - 500 bytes/s
1541 Drive with Fast Load Cartridge - 2500 bytes/s
I also used memory dumping software like Isepic that was used for taking a snapshot of whatever was running and create an image. So load the game on cassette, use Isepic to create a disk image and you have games that took 20 minutes to load down to literally seconds on disk.
http://www.ar.c64.org/wiki/ISEPIC
Later on there were 3rd party clones of the 1541 that were a lot faster
TheGuru said:
The serial interface was the new one and quite fast, but they made the 1541 drive backwards compatible with the VIC 20 which hobbled the speed.
If I recall correctly, we only ever had one C64, and probably only one Jupiter Ace as well. I don't really recall how stuff got into the shop - I was just a shop lad and every now and then one of the owners would bring something different in. I seem to recall there were wholesalers around, so perhaps our new stuff was just whatever they were recommending or offering on sale or return, or maybe people were phoning around. I can't think of a way that we'd ever have cottoned on to "specialist" stuff like that, though, even for something like the Dragon that we were more active on. We used to sell magazines, which of course covered a massive range of stuff at the time, but as home computers got more popular there was a wider range of them in general newsagents, so we stopped, and that would have cut off quite a source of information. TheGuru said:
droopsnoot said:
the Commodore 64 with its floppy disc drive that used a serial interface so wasn't all that much quicker than a cassette (only ever sold one floppy drive)
The serial interface was the new one and quite fast, but they made the 1541 drive backwards compatible with the VIC 20 which hobbled the speed. This limitation was only software based though and you could speed up the drive using various "fast loaders" based on cartridges (like the Epyx Fast Load)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epyx_Fast_Load
The Commodore 64 drive (1541) was actually a lot faster than the Commodore Datasette anyway.
Datasette (Cassette) - 50 bytes/s
1541 Drive - 500 bytes/s
1541 Drive with Fast Load Cartridge - 2500 bytes/s
I also used memory dumping software like Isepic that was used for taking a snapshot of whatever was running and create an image. So load the game on cassette, use Isepic to create a disk image and you have games that took 20 minutes to load down to literally seconds on disk.
http://www.ar.c64.org/wiki/ISEPIC
Later on there were 3rd party clones of the 1541 that were a lot faster
I had a ZX80 in 1982/3 ish, then a 48k spectrum in 1984. I ended up with a Spectrum +3, (that still works) and ended up going down the Playstation route.
I was late with phones though - although I was selling early one2one handsets for a while through a concessionary outlet in Halfords in the mid-late 90s, I didn't actually get my own phone until 1999, an Ericsson T28. I kept that for about 2 years before getting a Nokia 7650, one of the very early camera phones and I suppose a very early Smartphone.
I had a dabble with some Symbian apps, and ended up on a beta-tester scheme with Vodafone so I got a new Nokia every 6 months or so for a few years . I still have a few of them stashed away somewhere, but most of them went on ebay when a new one arrived. My personal favourite was the much maligned N900 - GPS, camera touchscreen, wifi, bluetooth, slide out keyboard, and 3 day battery life!.
So many features for the time, but it was in direct competition with the 1st gen iPhone, and the rest as they say is history.
I was late with phones though - although I was selling early one2one handsets for a while through a concessionary outlet in Halfords in the mid-late 90s, I didn't actually get my own phone until 1999, an Ericsson T28. I kept that for about 2 years before getting a Nokia 7650, one of the very early camera phones and I suppose a very early Smartphone.
I had a dabble with some Symbian apps, and ended up on a beta-tester scheme with Vodafone so I got a new Nokia every 6 months or so for a few years . I still have a few of them stashed away somewhere, but most of them went on ebay when a new one arrived. My personal favourite was the much maligned N900 - GPS, camera touchscreen, wifi, bluetooth, slide out keyboard, and 3 day battery life!.
So many features for the time, but it was in direct competition with the 1st gen iPhone, and the rest as they say is history.
Jinx said:
TheGuru said:
droopsnoot said:
the Commodore 64 with its floppy disc drive that used a serial interface so wasn't all that much quicker than a cassette (only ever sold one floppy drive)
The serial interface was the new one and quite fast, but they made the 1541 drive backwards compatible with the VIC 20 which hobbled the speed. This limitation was only software based though and you could speed up the drive using various "fast loaders" based on cartridges (like the Epyx Fast Load)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epyx_Fast_Load
The Commodore 64 drive (1541) was actually a lot faster than the Commodore Datasette anyway.
Datasette (Cassette) - 50 bytes/s
1541 Drive - 500 bytes/s
1541 Drive with Fast Load Cartridge - 2500 bytes/s
I also used memory dumping software like Isepic that was used for taking a snapshot of whatever was running and create an image. So load the game on cassette, use Isepic to create a disk image and you have games that took 20 minutes to load down to literally seconds on disk.
http://www.ar.c64.org/wiki/ISEPIC
Later on there were 3rd party clones of the 1541 that were a lot faster
My uncle worked in the middle east in the early 80's and appeared one Christmas with a ZX81 which I got to play with. Then had 16K Spectrum, 48K spectrum and usual BBC's, MTX's.
The thing I remember more was buying one of the early editions of a magazine called .Net just after I got my first modem (early to mid 90's maybe?) and in the magazine was a free fold-up poster, A2 i think, of a map of the internet. Can you imagine trying to do that now!
The thing I remember more was buying one of the early editions of a magazine called .Net just after I got my first modem (early to mid 90's maybe?) and in the magazine was a free fold-up poster, A2 i think, of a map of the internet. Can you imagine trying to do that now!
The first time I used a computer was probably the school's BBC Micro in about 1983 before they progressed to Commodore Pets soon after. I got a VIC20 with a thrusting 3.5K memory for Christmas 1985, expanded it to a mighty 15K with a plug-in expansion cartridge, and I still have it. A near-neighbour had a Commodore 64 with a disk drive and a printer, I was super-jealous and we used to play Attack Of The Mutant Camels (a rip-off of the Hoth ESB battle scene). Another friend had a ZX Spectrum with the removable rubber keys. The best game was Ghostbusters which was better to watch than the recent movie...
The first mobile phone I used was the Securicor one fitted to Dad's XR4x4 in 1986 The box took up a large part of the boot.
The first mobile phone I used was the Securicor one fitted to Dad's XR4x4 in 1986 The box took up a large part of the boot.
C997 said:
a map of the internet. Can you imagine trying to do that now!
Not quite the same, but https://xkcd.com/802/
First computer used was an Exidy Sorcerer at school,
just before a Research Machines 380Z.
At home we traded in the original Atari video game with lots of games and upgraded to a BBC Micro model B:
My friend had an Atari 800:
First proper job was using a DEC PDP11-73 and learnt to program in RTL/2 - real time language.
Following year using IBM 3090 mainframe running PROFS - used to chat to others in IBM across the Atlantic
I remember my first "portable" was a luggable Toshiba with orange plasma screen:
First mobile was a Mercury One2One:
All a far cry from current iPhone 6 and Macbook Pro....
just before a Research Machines 380Z.
At home we traded in the original Atari video game with lots of games and upgraded to a BBC Micro model B:
My friend had an Atari 800:
First proper job was using a DEC PDP11-73 and learnt to program in RTL/2 - real time language.
Following year using IBM 3090 mainframe running PROFS - used to chat to others in IBM across the Atlantic
I remember my first "portable" was a luggable Toshiba with orange plasma screen:
First mobile was a Mercury One2One:
All a far cry from current iPhone 6 and Macbook Pro....
Bought my first mobile phone in 1990. An NEC - big thing, with a foldy two-inch aerial on the top. Still in the drawer behind me ...
Cost me £300 roughly and then £17 a month with Hutchinson Telecom/Communications ... (calls extra of course)
It's the one on the right in this photo ...
As for a computer, it would have been the typesetter we bought for our studio - the very latest WYSIWYG machine - in about 1989. It would have cost our company £16,000 (but leased of course). A great bit of kit, but still the rolls of text had to be done in the darkroom next door.
It was a Compugraphic (I think) and looked a bit like this ...
Then about two/three years later we had a visit from a guy selling something called an Apple Mac ...
The screen for my first Mac cost about £3500.
Cost me £300 roughly and then £17 a month with Hutchinson Telecom/Communications ... (calls extra of course)
It's the one on the right in this photo ...
As for a computer, it would have been the typesetter we bought for our studio - the very latest WYSIWYG machine - in about 1989. It would have cost our company £16,000 (but leased of course). A great bit of kit, but still the rolls of text had to be done in the darkroom next door.
It was a Compugraphic (I think) and looked a bit like this ...
Then about two/three years later we had a visit from a guy selling something called an Apple Mac ...
The screen for my first Mac cost about £3500.
Hmmm, winds brain up....
The first computer I used, was a CDC Cyber 76, at Manchester University. It was hard work as a fresher, using a teletype for input/output, while the smug bar-stewards in their second year got to use these new-fangled VDU thingys that would play "Star Trek" properly
Then a few years later, I got to drive a mate out to get some more RAM for his Acorn Atom. 1 kilobyte cost fifteen quid back in early 1982 (or I could fill the tank in my Maxi for less
)
The RAM came as 2 1k x 4-bit chips, that had to be soldered into the motherboard.
You tell that to kids today and they just don't believe you...
The first computer I used, was a CDC Cyber 76, at Manchester University. It was hard work as a fresher, using a teletype for input/output, while the smug bar-stewards in their second year got to use these new-fangled VDU thingys that would play "Star Trek" properly
Then a few years later, I got to drive a mate out to get some more RAM for his Acorn Atom. 1 kilobyte cost fifteen quid back in early 1982 (or I could fill the tank in my Maxi for less
)The RAM came as 2 1k x 4-bit chips, that had to be soldered into the motherboard.
You tell that to kids today and they just don't believe you...
First used a computer at university. Think at that time it was an Amdahl mainframe. At home we played with Spectrums & C64s.
When I first started as a trainee programmer, existing staff shared mainframe terminals. It was a major breakthrough when we got a terminal each on our desks! Shortly afterwards the first IBM PCs started to appear (with 5 1/4" floppy drives).
Used to do on-call support, which meant going into the office if you got paged - until we got one of these babies:
First mobile was one of these:
It synched more or less seamlessly with Psion PDAs. I think I still have it in the loft somewhere.
When I first started as a trainee programmer, existing staff shared mainframe terminals. It was a major breakthrough when we got a terminal each on our desks! Shortly afterwards the first IBM PCs started to appear (with 5 1/4" floppy drives).
Used to do on-call support, which meant going into the office if you got paged - until we got one of these babies:
First mobile was one of these:
It synched more or less seamlessly with Psion PDAs. I think I still have it in the loft somewhere.
My Dad's Rolls had a telephone with a finger dial in about 1984. Never let me touch it though so dunno if it counts haha.
Was very jealous of my best friends cassette driven computer in about 1985/1986. I had fiddled with one of the typesetting computers at my dad's office prior to this though.
Seems like a lifetime ago.
Was very jealous of my best friends cassette driven computer in about 1985/1986. I had fiddled with one of the typesetting computers at my dad's office prior to this though.
Seems like a lifetime ago.
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