Speaking of Old Computers...

[ulthar]

You'll notice the 8" floppy to the right of the workstation, the next module to the right is a 10MB hard drive.

Trek, is that a PDP-11 or something of that ilk?

The first non-micro I seriously used was a PDP-11 running RSX-11.  The PDP we had had an 8" floppy and a 10 MB hard drive, also.  I did log on to a VAX before that, but really only for some remote access testing and the like.

From the PDP-11, my big iron experience began...back with VAX for a while, then a Convex Supercomputer with (iirc) four processors, then the big daddy, the Cray Y-MP64.  It was pretty incredible to log on to the Cray from my home with my whopping 2400 baud modem and run in a few minutes what would have taken weeks on the VAX.  I use those calculations now (cutting edge research at the time) as quick and dirty tests to check software upgrades and stuff..   

What's funny is that we thought the Cray was the most awesome thing to hit planet earth (at the time, it really was about as fast as you could go computing wise), whereas now, my small cluster runs in about 2 seconds what took that Cray over 3 minutes to run.   

[raj]

For a long time my grandma had this really old computer with Windows 3.1 on it. It's gone now. I used to play Solitaire and Minesweeper on it.

I hope you're joshing, threnody.  he says, with that annoying teeth whistle of old folk.

My first computer was the Radio Shack TRS 80 CoCo, where you saved thing on a cassette tape.  I still have that computer.  Even earlier than that I took a programing course at the local community college (one of those get the kids out of the house on the weekend in the summer programs) where we saved our programs on punch tape.

[Neville]

In the 80s I owned an Amstrad CPC464. It was an 8 bit computer, just like the C64 or the ZX Spectrum. It wasn't a big deal (green monocrome, tapes instead of disks) but software was very affordable (around $5 per game) and I ended up with around 120 games, most of them arcade conversions or film licenses such as "Operation Wolf" or "RoboCop". I have great memories of that era, although I craved for an Amiga computer for years.

I used this computer until the system's demise around 1993, then bough one of the first generation Gameboy consoles, and happily bought like a dozen titles until I got my first PC around 1995. It was a 486/66 with DOS and Windows 3.1, and I've been using PCs since then. This one (Athlon64 3400+, Windows XP) is my fourth or fifth, counting hardware upgrades.

I'm very interested in older systems and retrogaming, and an avid emulator user. I even finally got to use an Amiga this way! Not to mention an MSX2, a Super Famicon and a lot of truly amazing machines that now live on my hard drive.

Don't take me wrong, I like playing "Call of Duty 4" as much as the next one, but now and then I want something even more straightforward, and many of those games still hold well, specially those Genesis / SFC titles.

[zbranigan]

BBC model B with 5.25 inch floppies was first

after that i've had the following, spectrum(rubber KB and +3), commodore(64, amiga500 and 1200), atari jaguar, sega(game gear, megadrive, 32x), gameboy, PS1, PS2 and PSP, xbox and xbox360

and ofc my PC's since 486's

[trekgeezer]

You'll notice the 8" floppy to the right of the workstation, the next module to the right is a 10MB hard drive.

Trek, is that a PDP-11 or something of that ilk?

The first non-micro I seriously used was a PDP-11 running RSX-11.  The PDP we had had an 8" floppy and a 10 MB hard drive, also.  I did log on to a VAX before that, but really only for some remote access testing and the like.

From the PDP-11, my big iron experience began...back with VAX for a while, then a Convex Supercomputer with (iirc) four processors, then the big daddy, the Cray Y-MP64.  It was pretty incredible to log on to the Cray from my home with my whopping 2400 baud modem and run in a few minutes what would have taken weeks on the VAX.  I use those calculations now (cutting edge research at the time) as quick and dirty tests to check software upgrades and stuff..   

What's funny is that we thought the Cray was the most awesome thing to hit planet earth (at the time, it really was about as fast as you could go computing wise), whereas now, my small cluster runs in about 2 seconds what took that Cray over 3 minutes to run.   

That's a Wang 2200 which ran on Wang's Basic-2 . This was the first system I was trained on.  When I got back from four weeks of training in Lawrence, MA  I had to work on one of these. Well at training all they systems had the covers off, so I couldn't figure out how to get that table top off of the hard drive.  It was sort of embarrassing.

[AndyC]

Hee hee! I still remember laughing at Wang in high school. I remember one class where we were supposed to look at the want ads for some reason. I think to see how many computer-related jobs there were or something. Anyway, one company advertised that they were looking for a "WANG PROCESSOR." That was the bold heading.

A couple of us started giggling like Beavis and Butthead until a classmate who was geekier than we (which is saying something) set us straight in a really p**sy tone. Good times.

[Neville]

Hehe, computers and high school.  

That's when I first used a PC, a 286. I used to complete the assignments rather fast, then used to spend the rest of the class playing "Gorillas", the only decent game Microsoft ever produced.

[pacman000]

Found a TRS-80 Model 100 a few years ago. It doesn't work, but it did when I bought it. Nice machine, fairly easy to use, with a cool (& loud!) keyboard.

[Allhallowsday]

Found a TRS-80 Model 100 a few years ago. It doesn't work, but it did when I bought it. Nice machine, fairly easy to use, with a cool (& loud!) keyboard.

How did you bring up this old thread?

[pacman000]

Went to the last page in the forum, then moved forward till I found something interesting.

[Neville]

Unfortunately, I don't have room to store my old computers. However, having a pretty modern setup has its perks, like recreating older PCs with PCem:



Tandy model running Deskmate.



Amstrad PC and GEM.



My first-ever PC, a 486/66 with a Sound Blaster 16.

[pacman000]

GEM & Digital Research deserved a better fate.

Is Deskmate the ugliest GUI ever, or is it just me? It looks cool; don't get me wrong, but it doesn't look good.

[Neville]

One of the first things I wanted to try when I heard of the Tandy 1000 line is DeskMate. I don't know what I would have thought of it at the time, because then I would have sold my soul for a GUI that made things like file management easier. Now it seems to me a good idea but a so-so product. However, if you take into account that it ran on a 8088 computer with only 640 Kb. RAM, it's quite the achievement.



GEM... I also want to like it. I used DOS for many years, and until the arrival of DOS SHELL and Norton Commander knockoffs any GUI would have been a lifesaver. But from what I hear from people who used it at the time, it was not very good. Of course now it has its fans, if only because it was one of the few alternatives to Microsoft DOS.

[pacman000]

From what I've read GEM 1 was better than the later versions; it had an actual desktop, resizable windows, etc. It looked a lot like the Mac desktop, so Apple sued them. To get out of the suit DR modified the DOS version of GEM; later versions just outlined your hard disk in two fixed-width windows.

For some reason the Atari ST got to keep the desktop, resizable windows, etc.

[Neville]

I've used Atari ST emulators. However, I can't say I've used GEM often, most of the software boots from floppy and completely skips the desktop.

Still you have to admire what some of this computer manufacturers tried to avoid users the sight of of C:\_ My favourite desktop is probably the one IBM added to their PS/1 computers. It had a four screen interface leading to file management, system info and even a word processor.



It had its disadvantages too. It ate too much conventional memory and made upgrading your DOS a nightmare.