Old Computer Tech stuff

[DaveFromMi]

I started with an 8088 IBM clone. 254K RAM and a noisy 40 MB hard drive. We had a dot matrix printer and a Prodigy account with an 1100 baud modem. That was about 1989.
In college, I learned Fortran and BASIC using a deck writer. After that and due to a lack of monitors (hooked to large mainframe), I was relegated to using punch cards for Fortran programming.

 

[PoTreeBoy]

Commodore PET. 6502, Basic in 8K ROM, 8K (yes K, not M or G) RAM, cassette deck, $795 in 1976 (as I recall) dollars.

 

[torch]

My first computer was a kit from an ad in, I think, Scientific American around 1976. For the princely sum of US$500, it came with a circuit board, a bag of chips, a schematic and some suggestions about how to build an RF modulator for output, adapt a teletype keyboard for input and use a cassette player for program storage. Made by some fly-by-night company called Apple. Wish I still had it -- it might be the only bit of computer hardware I ever bought that I could resell at a profit today.

My first commercially produced personal computer was a TI99-4A. While the basic unit still relied on an RF modulator and cassette program storage, it did come with a built-in keyboard and I expanded the memory to the maximum 32Kb, added RS-232 ports and 5-1/4" floppy disks -- none of those paltry SSSD 90Kb drives, mind. Mine were a pair (one for the program, one for data) of DSDD drives. Don't have that anymore either.

I do still have my first, um, laptop? Precursor to the laptop, anyway. A Compaq Portable. They took a liberal view of the word "Portable". One of the first of the "IBM Clones" that eventually took over the market, it has a detachable keyboard that doubles as the case cover, a built in screen (9" monochrome in green), with a CGA video output port for connection to something bigger and two 5-1/4" DSDD floppy drives. It weighs something less than a quarter ton, perhaps, but I did add an RS-232 card and maxed out the memory to Bill Gates 640Kb DOS limit so maybe that's why. Sadly, my DOS disk is corrupted, so it doesn't boot to a command prompt any more.

 

[dlsmith]

First computer was a Radio Shack Model 1. It was all pimped out with the expansion interface, 48K of memory, 300 baud modem, four 5.25" floppy drives, data cassette recorder, and a Centronics parallel interface printer.
When the first IBM PCs, 5150 model, I bought one with 256K memory, dual 360K floppies, color graphics card and composite color monitor. I added a printer cable as the one from the RS used a card edge connector, the IBM used a DB25 connector, which was $50. Total was over $2400.
Not sure what year it was, but the first HD i bought for a customer was a 5 MB Hitachi. The drive and the 8 bit controller card was over $1200.
How times have changed, I recently bought a WD 500GB NVME HD for $50. That's 100,000 times more storage for one sixtieth the price.

 

[GreensvilleJay]

I still have 3 of the Tandy MODEL 100 laptops. All work fine. REAL keyboard,wordprocessor, BASIC of course,access to all hardware, modem,BAR CODE READER ! Ran 'forever' on 4 AA Alkalines.
The Model 1 also had a 'voice recognition' module you cold buy in 72ish, dang 50 years ago and NO major improvement on that tech.
The RS color computer was 6809 based, could be setup for parallel processing...that was fun....
I sold/repaired a lot of Tandy products, wished I'd kept the service manuals......
Still have a COSMAC ELF( 1802 CPU ) here in the basement......as well as Moto 705KC

 

[sheepfarmer]

My first brush with a "personal use" computer was one in a professor's lab. You had to start it with some toggle switches, coded in hexadecimal?? And any program went in on paper tape, and I think data went in on decks of punch cards. I decided it would be faster to analyze my data the old fashioned way. My ex spent months trying to debug his programs. Easier to determine the peak amplitude of a synaptic potential with a ruler. I thought fortran was fun, but I did want to graduate some time.

 

[Magicman]

I see that we have a couple of Teletype guys here. In the 1970's, I was a 28 & 35 guy myself. We had a couple of 33's but I never went to 33 school. Oh wow how things have changed.

Matter of fact, being a PBX Installer/Repair Technician is when my co-workers named me "Magicman".