Yeesh…
I really DO need to clean out some cabinets…
You youngsters may not recognize this…
That is a real floppy disk…
And the up close version you can see it’s a start up disk for DOS ver 3.30 from 1987…
And I actually do have the book somewhere around here too…
And DOS commands STILL work on Windoze, regardless of what MS says…
Don’t believe me???
Here’s the command prompt where I typed defrag (a DOS 3.3 command) and guess what…
YMMV, I didn’t stay at a Holiday Inn last night (Yea!), and I’m not a lawyer, nor I do I play one on TV…
Hah, I’m an old CAD operator myself, DOS based Autocad (8?) was my 1st program and I still remember some of the commands.
MY personal best computer ‘Doh’ was DOS related. I was ‘wiping’ disk information on those floppys, having to verify what was on the disk was okay to be deleted. Switching drives from ‘A’ to ‘C’ was required – so when I typed FORMAT, I wiped my computer’s drive accidentally. Screen went to orange black block lettering – my jaw dropped and I desperately typed UNDO UNDO UNDO – no dice. We laughed and laughed.
Lucky my boss at the time was computer savvy – I only lost a couple of files, couldn’t decipher what name was the original.
Thanks for the memories.
j.r.- Oh hell yes… I ‘think’ we all did that at least once… LOL
I’m not old enough to remember all that stuff.
Programming in 4 Tran or Cobol? What’s that? Something from the dinosaur era…
I don’t remember the days before the IBM Selectric came along nor do I remember carbon paper with a manual typewriter.
I have no recollection. WAY before my time.
Or mimeographs.
Too small. Real floppy disks are 8×8″.
I still have a box of punch cards somewhere in my office. I used to use them, along with floppy disks in assorted sizes and pictures of IBM 360s in lectures to my IS classes to demonstrate how fast technology has evolved.
The students looked up, yawned, and returned to texting…
The first PC I ever used was an IBM XT with two 5.25″ floppy drives. My daughters are convinced I must have known dinosaurs by first name. 🙂
Mine too ! It ran at the speed of 12 Mhz, but with adding a program called Lightning, went up to 14 Mhz. I’d load a drawing, go get a cup of coffee and it was STILL loading up after 2 minutes.
Anyone remember printers and plotters ? Epson dot-matrix printer, I can still recall the sound (Nyerrrrp! Nyerpppp! :^) Our pen plotter had a caroursel of pens you loaded up, one pen at a time printed and the pens drew in the order you drew the lines. So you would freeze all the layers except for the color plotting, PRINT and hear the paper being manipulated to follow the order of lines. When that was done, remove pen, switch out another color, freeze the layers except for THAT color and do it again. And again. And again.
The best part – the monitor NEC Multi-Sync II, IBM XT and printer cost $3200 ! This was back in 1988 if my memory is serving me right.
That’s what you use to play music on, right?
If its square; how does it spin, though?
+1 for Ed.
My first floppy was an old 8″ for a school data processing class where we were learning COBOL and RPG II.
Joseph in IL
LL- LOL, sure… sure… 🙂
Ed- True! Actually I started with punch cards on an IBM 360… Fortran even…
Tim- LOL, figures…
Rev- Yep! 🙂
SPE- Shaddap… 😀
Joe- So you’re a dinosaur too! 🙂
What in heavens name is that newfangled looking thing?
I refuse to give up my reliable, good old paper tape. Chadless of course.
RK- ROTFLMAO! I used to have one of those (from the Navy days)…
There ain’t no floppies in MY house (of the computer variety). 😉
Sadly you are dating yourself. Sadly, I remember using those. I have destroyed all the evidence of their existence, however, along with 8 tracks. Therefore, I am 29 again.
Buck- LOL, good one!
Fargo- 🙂 Great answer… 🙂
Fargo, are you named after the town or the 1401 language?
My first assignment as an IBM SR was to convert about 75 403 plug boards to as few 407 panels as I could. Ended up about 50.
First computer assignment was on a 1401G which used only punch cards as I/O. Wrote the programs in AUTOCODER.
Kerry
Heck . . . that’s new stuff!! I still have a sealed box with DOS 1.0 and a full set of manuals including a full set of schematics for the very first IBM xt – that started out talking to an audio drive! Never used that, bought a HUGE 10MB drive right out of the gate. The IBM replaced my Osborne 1 . . . with CPM . . . and that replaced my SWTB 6800 with their own propriety DOS that came before CPM . . . damn I’m getting old . . .
Once was a whiz at programing control boards for 80 column punch cards. Adept at creating tape for teletype transmittal. Didn’t like any of it. Skipped the whole digital revolution, learning just enough to get by. Still haven’t advanced much beyond that. Luddite forever.
teletype prechecker for ma bell work orders while in college, never did know what I was doing… still don’t…
The first computer I ever had was an Atari Commander I think it was. Then we got a Radio Shack TRS-80 for the business and I do believe they were the 8″ floppy disks. What a nightmare to operate for a complete computer illiterate who had recently gotten out of the USN at 37 and was an ADR nosepicker!
I still have my first computer in the basement, complete with it’s tape drive (used cassette tapes) and it’s 300 baud modem. (I eventually upgraded to a “lightning fast” 2400 baud modem, even though the computers I was accessing could only handle 1200 at the time.
Oh–and we didn’t have monitors. Mine just hooked up to the back of a portable tv set.
Kerry- Ouch!
Bill- Now you’re just showing off… LOL
WSF- Doing 80 column punch cards is enough to turn ANYBODY other than a true nerd off… 🙂
Dammit- So you’re saying there are STILL people waiting for their phones??? 😀
Ev- A Trash 80??? Dang… And yeah that MUST have been fun for an ADR! 🙂
Murph- So you still have a fallback is what you’re saying… 🙂
Remember back at the “U” learning FORTRAN and using punchcards for the IBM mainframe in the School of Bidness Computer Center. One comma out of place and you received a stack of mostly blank pages about 8″ thick; or you received a single page with one line of indecipherable gibberish. Never worked so hard for a barely passing grade.
My first laptop was a dual floppy Zenith, blue screen with dark blue text, an 8088 processor and 300 baud dial up modem up . Must faster than the old 8086’s (lol)!
Mikey- Try dropping the WHOLE #$$!^ tray of punch cards… sigh
Been there, done that!
My trash 80 and Commodore 64 are both out in the shed.
Ed- Not hoarding are we??? 😉
Geez, such nostalgia. They had just moved to terminals (had the plug boards as hall passes). It was a combo system. A CPM one for the COBOL class and timeshared HP9000 for the RPGII class. The sys admin for the HP9000 had a sense of humor. If you had an error, the HP9000 would supply you with a core dump. Since we had a printer terminal to run and print off our assignments, we could read the first line before canceling the core dump.
It said “Error occurred. Prepare to eat core.”
Old joke.
Q: How do you make a programmer cry?
A: Trip him when he hasn’t numbered his deck.
Went from that to a VAX running UNIX with the vi editor (DIE! DIE! DIE!!!). Learned C, PASCAL, FORTRAN 77, and Assembly.
Then I worked for the VA. DEC VAX cluster for the normal stuff. Had a PDP 11/44 for the older sites. Then George H W Bush had midterm elections and I moved on to the commercial sector. Data General MV 15000’s.
I love working in the healthcare industry. I get to work with bleeding edge technology.
First machine was Altair8800 1974 (December!).
I have a machine at my elbow that still uses 8″
floppies to boot.
I seriously predate IBM PC.
Eck!
While I was only 17 at that time..I do remember those.
Last year we bought a 97 jeep cherokee. Our kids had no idea what window cranks were, and thought they were something new and fancy…lol
Wow, talk about a trip down memory lane
Joe- You win…LOL
Eck- Dang! STILL???
JUGM- ROTF!
Rick- Yep!
‘NFO, yep still and I even use it.
The rest of the collection incudes PDP-8f, multiple PDP-11s and my own VAXcluster using various small VAXen (mostly 3100s).
I still have basic for Altair on paper tape! Got rid of the TTY as it was too noisy. For fun I even have and drag around
a Darth Vader lunch box (AKA kapro 4-84).
As to your dos3.3 floppy… want a copy of Winders1? 😉
Still fun after all these years.
Eck!
I remember when DOS 3.3 was the latest in a long line.
Of course, my first computer was a CP-901.
Eck- That is hilarious! Bet you confuse the hell outta most folks… I have a machine at my house with I ‘think’ Windoze 1 or 2 still loaded… I also remember those Kapros… sigh
Randy- LOL Mine too! Until I got to VP-30 and we had the DEC system!