@sundialsvcs So the Pause/Break (upper right area) key on modern QWERTYs isn't the same as "Break" on older teletype or "programmers" keyboards?.... and it really has been quite the ultimate Kings Dominion roller coaster hasn't it? : )

That ^ made it to my "Favorite LQ Quotes" file.

Funny, all I recall is that it seemed to have only 1 primary program. To store Addresses, Phones Numbers, and Other Important
simple, date-based records.

But a lot has happened since 1984.
I may have simply forgotten about some of it's other features, if any.

Apple II and that lead to a series of Apples and Macs

Mine was stolen out my pickup truck.

it was fast and used a att phone radio contract for internet. Windows CE was the bomb for me then. Battery life was phenomenal also. You could drop it from 6 feet or more because I dropped it alot and it never even dented it, No color screen though. Green screen.

http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/OTQ0WDEyNj...VcglO/$_57.JPG

"In those days," 'computers' were necessarily time-shared. None of the "decidedly graphics-oriented" technology of today existed ... yet. (The order of the day was "24 lines by 80 columns," green screen. "Go figger.")

And ... "no one missed it, because that was 'the technology of the day.'"

Such a computer could support up to 32(!) serially-connected terminals, at up to "1200(!) baud." More-advanced terminals were "more than video-teletypes." They were capable of positioning the cursor!

Uh huh. We ran a University on that! We amazed Hewlett-Packard on what we managed to do with their equipment! (hackahackahackahack...)

... and, all that I can say is: "so sorry that you missed it." Because, these were the heady days when computer technology was literally inventing itself, right before your very eyes, and constantly pushing the limits of the very-severe technological limitations of the day. "And you were There."

Those days ... are gone. Forever.

Probably, "having never known them, you will never miss them." However, "having known them, I shall cherish the opportunity never to forget them."

---
Therefore: as you "happily hack" with the technology of today, simply bear in mind that you are living ... and hacking, as are we(!!) ... "in the world of our then-wildest dreams."

Computer technology ... "now, and 'then'" ... is still "the ultimate head-rush."

Agreed! There exists a comedian whose name I forget that has a cool bit about how fantastic Science Fiction can seem at game (world) changing events/inventions. In a nutshell he plays out a Star Trek conversation

Where no man has gone before.......

Cpt Kirk : Mr Spock set a course for Rigel 4!

Mr. Spock: Googling that now, Captain.

IOW How in the world, did Sci Fi completely miss The Internet?

It's nice to see this thread up again!

My first at work was the original IBM PC. I had the deluxe version: 2 floppies and a colour monitor. A separate box on a table beside my desk held the expansion chassis, with 10 MB HD, serial port, and parallel port. I can still remember things like editing directories to undelete files.

My first at home was 16 KB Sinclair Spectrum, which I still use - as an ornament!

My Sinclair QL lasted for years, with CPU upgrades, extra memory, etc. Like Linus, I was impressed by the contrast with the PC: real multitasking and a powerful command line. I never got a HD for that, but I did get 3.2 GB ED floppies. One of those could hold a PC emulator, DOS, and a C compiler.

It seems that I'm a bit newer than most of you...

The first computer I remember was running Windows ME. That was when I was about 7. Then XP came out, and we got a new Dell Dimension E520, with a Pentium 4 and 1 GB of RAM. My mom still uses it today.

So unfortunately, I don't have stories of tapes, or punch cards, or even floppies.
My first computer experience that comes close to your stories started when a family friend gave me her old Dimension 2400. Intel Celeron, 1GB of RAM. I soon acquired a P4 and 1.5G of RAM from friends. But it had no hard drive, the original owner kept it. But I had an XP install CD, a USB SD card reader, and a 4GB SD card. Needless to say, that didn't work . I had heard of this free Linux thing, and knew a guy at my church who knew a lot of "that computer stuff." He sent me a link to a Lubuntu LiveCD. I messed around with that just in the Live environment until my dad got an old HDD from his office. I installed Lubuntu, then played around with Ubuntu Server for a while.
I got in to high school, and during my sophomore year I started helping the school's "computer person." (I really don't know a better job title, she manages everything and anything to do with computers.) I was offered a summer job helping her re-image all of the desktops in the building. (Running around with Clonezilla CDs, pulling an image from a Samba share.) Everything happened without anything major. Except for one computer, which Windows absolutely refused to install on. It would sit at one of the "preparing your computer" screens for a while, then pop up some hex error code, asking to reboot. Of course, when it rebooted, it gave the same error over and over. So we "technically" threw it out, only I got between the front door and the dumpster . It came with a Core2 Duo and 3 GB RAM. I had been wanting to try out Debian, so I started there. My dad got a few more old hard drives, which I threw into a RAID0 for my files. Then I actually went out and bought new RAM for it, upgrading to 8GB. (Up to this time, I was running 100% scrap/donated hardware.) This computer eventually replaced the Dell Dimension mentioned earlier, and I now use it as a server/desktop. (I'm sitting at it right now.)

That's pretty much my story up to today. I realize it's not the punch-card-filled floppy-disk-wielding hard-drive-capacity-race that many of you have, I have a feeling that it will be relegated to a similar rank in the past. (Let me tell you about this thing called a hard drive. It had a metal disk that spun! Can you imagine that?)

Whatever advances the future brings, I look forward to them. Who knows what new technologies will replace and supersede the things we consider state-of-the-art? Unfortunately, the only thing I see in my future at the moment is my Calculus summer homework that I need to finish for Monday...

Hi,

My first computer was one that I built back in the early 70s' using a Intel 8080 with 256B memory, tape storage(paper) from a ASR33 that was the tty with a 20mA loop opto isolated connection. I later expanded the memory to 1024B and was in heaven. Built a cassette interface for program storage (paper tape is a hassle, even with my opto reader). Machine code was the way with that little beauty. I then built a S-100 buss system that used the Zilog Z-80 with 4K of memory. I got tired of the noisy ASR-33 so I built a console with keyboard and video.

Soon tired of that and then got a bare TRS-80 using a cassette for storage. TRS-80 Expansion was too expensive so I built my own. This interface had a debug/single step with Address & Data captured buss LED along with a S-44 interface buss to allow interface expansion via that buss. I could code toggle in via the buss switch interface and step through. I finally got a Hard disk, a whopping 5 MB that cost many $$.

ASM was really easy using the Hard disk & expanded memory. You learned to code clean and tight. Over-night assembly/linking was the norm for some of the code (my toolbox grew back then). I could not afford the new IBM-PC so I waited until Heath released their compatible. It was great! Half the price of the IBM. I started building interfaces for LAB experimentation using that Zenith PC to program and experiment within the University LAB IBM-PC on my own system. That research led to some very useful devices and more money for my new hardware.
Memories!!

The HP-85.

First home computer: a DEC PDP-8/E with two VT05 and an ASR33, and a line printer.

Commodore 64C, with a 1541C Disk Drive. The drive pissed me off because they came out with the 1541-II like 3 months later. The "C" had a white case, but was a behemoth like the original. The "II" variant finally externalized the power supply.

But... as good as the C-64 was, this was the real legacy of Commodore. When Macs still shipped with black & white monitors and DOS struggled to make everything work in 640K/1MB of RAM, this machine was running a preemptive multitasking kernel that was only 256K.

Commodore 64. I eventually had two 1541 drives, modem, mps1200 printer, color monitor.
HP48sx (yes it was a calculator but was really a portable computer, try programming ML in nybbles)
Commodore SX64
Amiga 500
Harris 80286
Intel 386DX40
a few misc in between
Compaq Armada 1592DMT
Dell Latitude C400
Asus eeePC
Dell Latitude 6420

Hi,

That C-64 was one nice little machine. We used several in our University LAB for instrumentation experiments. Loved the versatility.

I posted some time ago here that my first computer was a soc mk14, built from a kit in 1977, with a whole 256b ( yes bytes ) of ram as standard, a hex keypad and a calulator style display ( 7 segment LED ), anyway came across this:
http://www.robsons.org.uk/archive/me...4emu/index.htm
A couple of days ago, would you beleive someone wrote an emulator, i tried it out, it needs dosbox , works like a charm and it was like being 17 again!