Who remembers when this was the cat’s meow…
I’m an old fart, my first modem was a 300 baud one… sigh… ARPNET/Compuserve… And BBS…
And the first computer I ‘owned’ was a hand me down IBM XT, upgraded with a ‘Lightning’ processor load (and TWO floppies)…
A ‘hand me down XT’ – lucky! I paid for the same box, , a 286 XT, speed 12 that sped up to 14 with Lightning, and a NEC Multi-Sync screen, Epson dot matrix printer for (drum roll) $2,700 ! Back in 1988 if I remember correctly. My boss had a 386 that ran 18 – wow, 33% faster.
My box had two floppies as well, it was fun formatting disk with DOS until you forgot you didn’t switch drives when your did that on your box’s hard drive.
We laughed and laughed. :^)
Those were the days… my first modem was a 300, too. Connected to a Commodore 64, with which I controlled (somewhat shakily, but it worked)a CDC 6600, which in turn controlled NOAA’s big machine in Colorado Springs. It worked, and got the job done… I eventually upgraded to an AT&T 8086/8087 machine. Wow!
Ian? You aren’t NGS’ Ian, are you?
I built my XT with a lot of help from a buddy. He got me the parts at cost. 2 floppy for 400.00 in 87. Added a 30 Meg HD for 300.00 the next year. Had Hercules graphics.
My gosh, half of 1987 Radio Shack is in my pocket now.
We still use modems at work. Some of our systems on in .gov installations, so we have to use dial up. The connect via USB now….
Where has time gone?
My first programming language was Fortran II. We typed our programs onto punch cards and then submitted them to the mainframe IBM which did batch runs. We didn’t see results until the next day and then it was usually some minor formatting error and you had to wait another day. Many an engineering student was seen crying while sitting on the floor in a pile of punch cards he had just dropped.
Later I graduated to Basic which we ran on a GE timeshare. Input was a punch tape. Output was a teletype that shook the table.
I didn’t get a calculator until 1975. I still have my slide rule.
BTDT at Louisiana Tech, 1969… sigh
We had a key puncher who would back space.
I have three USR 56K desktop modems stashed away. Just in case. Might have to find a serial-USB adaptor, though.
Leading Edge model D with two floppies and no modem. Word processor, Lotus 123 and a basic interpretor.
Also, when you comment on other sites, is there any way to get rid of double taps?
I didn’t own it (couldn’t afford it) but had one just like it at work, an XT – and that modem was the sHNIZZ!
LOL, You floppy youngsters! chisel & stone, boys, chisel & stone…
Clay tablets and pointy sticks!
Hey, cuneiform tablets can be read. When was the last time you saw an 8″ floppy reader?
And my agency lost a lot of historic data because of that.
The Chyron at T48 in Houston had an 8″ floppy to run the logo that appeared on the news broadcast. I used it up until 1997. Not that long ago.
Yep, familiar indeed. My first computer was a Commodore 64, followed by a Commodore Turbo XT (2 Mhz!). And an amber-on-black monitor the size of a hall closet.
Started w/ an Atari 800.
Expanded middle memory card from 16K to 256K.
Then a Bentley Turbo-10 (10 MHz IBM PC) w/ a 40 Meg hard drive.
Passed it on to one of my sons.
— ARRognlie
Oh, YEAH!
My first (after the Timex-Sinclair) was (I think) a well-used 286.
30 day warrantee – the color card crapped-out on day 31!
All those tones accessing the Internet – and IRC and bulletin boards!
Those were(n’t) the days!!
🙂
gfa
Texas Instruments TI 99/4.
Commodore 64.
Amiga.
Home brew XT.
There is a new Android phone in Europe branded Commodore PET.
All-Thanks, and yeah smartphones are a WORLD apart from where we came from. Kevin, I have no idea what causes it.
Posted from my iPhone.
My buddy Robert used a new fangled modem to play computer chess with a guy in CALIFORNIA! Imagine where we’ll be in 35 years … sharing pictures of cats?
Oh well, the future is still a pretty cool place to live.
Hey Old NFO;
My first computer was a Texas Instrument 99/4A. I started learning basic to write programs for it. I used a cassette tape storage medium…..Paid good bucks back then for the stuff…….times change
Sigh. Y’all started with the good stuff. All I had at high school was a SWTPC home-built machine with a whopping 4K (yes, that’s K) of RAM and a cassette player. Along with the ADM-3A dumb terminal that tied to an acoustic coupler (two rubber cups for the phone’s earpiece and mic) that went across the street to Vanderbilt U’s PDP-7.
College got me punch cards on the Burroughs B6700, followed by the dumb terminal hooked to the VAX.
High times was the brand-new Apple Mac 128K machine with a 1200 baud modem that I could dial into the college computers in my junior year. I’d gone high-tech then.
Times have changed and we’ve all gotten older…
Cut my teeth on Fortran and COBOL on the Chicago Public Schools mainframe on punch cards. We also had an Apple II which we signed out to take home on the weekends. First machine I actually built was a 386-33 after I discovered the original incarnation of Computer Shopper in the Stars & Stripes bookstore. I don’t even remember what it cost….
Probably about $4000…
I’m only 30 and you’re making me feel old 😛 I remember being happy to find one under a hundred bucks.
Here’s a little trip down Memory Lane:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2y486n
Mine was a Commodore 64(1986 – $995); then in 1987 I upgraded to a Zenith Laptop ($2K) with a 286 processor and dual 3.5″ floppies. Then in 1992 further upgraded with a 300 baud modem that I then connected via dial-up from pierside CVN72 to NAMI Pensacola to send my first text message.
All- Thanks! So I’m not the ONLY old fart around here.
Posting from my iPhone.
Motorola Exorcizer system with dual 8″ floppy drives that I had to take apart every morning to put the drive belts back on when startup would drop them off the pulleys because the cold pulley shrank enough for the flat belt to drop off.
Eventually I got tired of this drill, got OK from the family treasurer to get an Osborne 1 — teeny screen but GREAT software bundle for the time. And then I got hooked on programming, and began the awful descent into nerdery.
I worked at Megahertz back in the 90s! It was the best company that I ever worked for.
Oh, and I forgot about the WORM drives we used on my EC-130E in the mid-90’s. Write Once Read Many optical platters about 14″ in diameter. Reliable but slow.
When I bought my second computer, I purchased a extra 4 MB of ram.
That extra 4MB was a $360 option and I was glad to have it.
And it had a built in 14.4 modem.
All- thanks for the comments!
Posted from my iPhone.
Lets see here…
The Odyssey, Intellivision, Sinclair, TI-100, VIC-20, C-64, Radio Shack CoCo 64, Commodore 125, Amiga 500, then the XT, AT, 386, and then the 486 with DOS 2.1.
First hard drive a 25Meg ST-225, first modem, 14K(sometimes) 750K costing almost $1,000. EGA then VGA tilt-screen 14″ monitors.
Between my son and I we pretty much covered the field.
Bob- That you did!
My first computer, at the very end of the Reagan Administration:
Standard for the times. IBM XT “clone” (back when you had to ask whether a given computer was IBM compatible), MS-DOS, top speed “Turbo” 10 Mhz, 640K RAM, two 5.25″ 360K floppy drives (no hard drive let alone modem, natch), monochrome monitor (amber; the alternatives were green or white) and dot matrix printer.
And yes, I remember devouring Computer Shopper back then. Including the ads for 300 baud modems.
I kept that computer for roughly eight years, during which I had a modem installed and frequently used it for dial-up (Kermit, natch — back when we needed separate communications software).
Now I haven’t even used a “Grandpa box” (as Dilbert affectionately dubbed it) for five years.