Discovering My Past: The Evolution of Computers in 1984

[wolram]

I had a vic 20, or was it a mick 40.

 

[NoTime]

Thanks, I've always been told that.

With good reason

 

[Smasherman]

I have to say all I saw were the legs, too...

On another note, I remember using DOS, enjoying fancy 16 colors in Empire and later Warcraft 1! Now when I play Warcraft 3, there are some kids that don't even know what Starcraft is! Probably never even played Doom 1...

I believe I first got onto the internet with 98, though I had the capability with 95, just not the knowledge. I remember getting a new computer that I thought was just awesome. It had 6 gigabytes and took me years to fill. Now my music library is larger than that.

 

[wolram]

Two threads have me all goose pimply tonight, Ivans jets, and Evos computer,i am torn between the two, i think i would forgo my life long ambition and go with Evos computer.

 

[Integral]

Is it a museum piece? http://www.vintage-computer.com/compaq_portable.shtml

It's a "portable" computer.

They were commonly refred to a "lugable" not exactly a laptop.

I was runing my Apple ][+ pretty hard in those days. And, at work, beginning to learn the new IBM OS... MS-Dos.

 

[Anttech]

Nice Computer, wonder if it is worth something now. I remeber DOS, and also 3.11.. which was interesting.. I can't remeber the code, but I would boot up into DOS, then like linux init 5 cmd would load up the GUI, I was young at this time, so I did it to play games mostly hehe... Thats when I was totally fed up with Daily Thomasons Olympic game on my ZX Spectrum

My Dad still has a co-axe single bus ethernet network at home joinning a bunch of old PC's he still has to access from time to time.

 

[Astronuc]

In 1982, I bought a Zenith (for about $2000), which used Dos 2.0. It had 8088 chip with 320 kB RAM and two 5.25" (360 kB) floppy drives. What a pain.

I subsequently added an 8087 math co-processor.

My best friend bought an original IBM PC. With the employee discount he still paid several thousand bucks for it.

 

[Gokul43201]

My first computer sometime in the late 80s I think, was similar to Astro's Zenith. It ran DOS 3(ish), had a tiny RAM (some kB), a pair of 5 1/2" drives and no hard drive. You had to think thrice before hitting the Save key!

 

[Astronuc]

I couldn't afford a hamster drive like Evo's, so I had to use personal peddle power. It also had a build in slide rule for back up.

The OS was Xenith version of MS-DOS.

Seriously, though, I couldn't afford and HD, which were on the order of 2 MB back then. One of my friends and colleague invested in a 300 baud modem.

Those were the days!

In the NE department, we used MACs and were fortunate to have a network in our department, which we put together ourselves. We also had an early CP/M based machine - Ugh!

 

[Cyrus]

I use to have this bad boy...

It had games like Chesssmaster, "I am the chess master" "I win, you loose!"
"check mate, you loose!"

And there was one prog you could type and it would talk. It sounded exactly like stephen hawking

 

[Astronuc]

Geez, I just noticed the computer desk - someone's cute legs were in the way. We had the same model.

 

[Tsu]

Don't mean to hijack this thread, but GOOD GOD - Sis, our legs are SO identical! I swear - it's like looking at my very own legs attached to a PREGNANT BODY! And I've never had kids, so you can imagine what a shocker THAT is...

OK. Sorry. Back to the computer... Those recipes you spent so much time typing into it... can you still access those?

 

[Evo]

Don't mean to hijack this thread, but GOOD GOD - Sis, our legs are SO identical! I swear - it's like looking at my very own legs attached to a PREGNANT BODY! And I've never had kids, so you can imagine what a shocker THAT is...

I know every time I see that bathing suit pic of you on the beach in Hawaii, I think it's me.

Oh and you remember the little neighborhood boy, Vermin. I looked like a barrel on toothpicks. So he goes over to my husband and say's "hey mister, your wife is really fat".

OK. Sorry. Back to the computer... Those recipes you spent so much time typing into it... can you still access those?

Uhm, no.

 

[Astronuc]

... can you still access those?

At the first company at which I worked out of grad school, I walked into the 'computer room' during the interview. IBM XT and AT. Not even networked. I thought Oh, Sh!#! Well they did upgrade to 1200 baud modem - over a NYNEX line. We used time sharing on a mainframe in Dallas. I can't tell you how often I had to resend or re-retrieve a deck that got boogered up due to the noise on the phone line. And one of the clients wanted to know why we did so many runs. Spurious characters.

I remember the first P5-133 with Win 3.1

We also had to bash together a network, the first of which was for printing.

 

[Tsu]

I know every time I see that bathing suit pic of you on the beach in Hawaii, I think it's me.

separated at birth...

Oh and you remember the little neighborhood boy, Vermin. I looked like a barrel on toothpicks. So he goes over to my husband and say's "hey mister, your wife is really fat".

What a crack up. 'A barrel on toothpicks was ALWAYS how I described myself, except with my thyroid weight loss, I'm now just a pony keg on toothpicks.

Uhm, no.

 

[brewnog]

And there was one prog you could type and it would talk. It sounded exactly like stephen hawking

YES! I remember!

The programme was called "Say". I still giggle when I think of Steven Hawking saying "poo" over and over again!

 

[DaveC426913]

You cropped it. Post the rest of the pic!

This is me, 9 months pregnant with the Spawn.

 

[NoTime]

Geez, I just noticed the computer desk - someone's cute legs were in the way. We had the same model.

Now that you mention it. I have the same desk too.
That's just to funny.

 

[Smurf]

According to wiki, that bad boy cost $2999 bucks new in 83!

It's a good thing computer prices have gone down

I don't know, it could be worth the same today