by AlmostAtheist 40 Replies latest jw friends
Hmmm this takes me back
My first computer was a cross between a typewriter/copier and a computer. It functioned in many ways like a computer and had a cable so I could connect to a real computer or a printer. It had no long term memory so every thing had to be printed during that session.
Then I moved up to a real computer -- a 286 running DOS. I still remember many of those codes and it definitely helped me when I had to get into the BIOS
AO..
that computer was also called the TS1000 (Timex Sinclair)....it had what 1K onboard...did you have the 16K memory pack that plugged into the back? If you moved the computer, the pack came undone.... and saving programs to a cassette player was time consuming.
no colour and as far as I remember, no sound either and definately no hard drive.
nope, if i recall it was white background with black letters (or maybe thats how i had it set up)... but I made that thing sing...it had sound...but only if you routed it from the computer through the speakers of the cassette player...I used a machine language program to enter music...if you can call Kingdom Melodies music?! it was tinny but recognizable
other computers I had or used: Trash 80s (TRS 80...from Tandy/RadioShack), Apple II, II+, IIe.....I used to buy, repair, and sell old computers in high school for extra spending money...cause our family didnt have the moolah for my little hobby...in addition to the TS1000...I had a TI994a (my uncle had the works ..hard drive..peripheral box, everything)....C-64 (it said 64, but it only had 38K usable) ..I think my first PC was a 386...a Gateway...cost me $3000. (I had cashed in my 401K when I left my good FT w/benefits job....for yet another "theocratic goal" of temp Bethel...ugh). My current is a Noblis...2Ghz duo core chip, 2GB memory, 200+GB HD...19" flat screen monitor (I almost bought a 32" last month) ..got it under $1500...
Anyone remember their first ISP? I had Compuserve...remember those numeric@ compuserve.com addresses? I had a 300 baud modem (they had a 2400 service that was expensive)..this had to be in the early 80s..I was still in high school (84 grad)
Then Prodigy...I was on a JW BBS...a very simplified version of this forum... met a few people...this was back in the late 80s/early 90s..
Juno came along in 1996 as a text email only service...I beta tested Version 1..web service came in 98...and still use it as my primary email addy...
20 years ago, who would have thought about T-1 lines and DSL, 10meg cable internet, WWW, Google, YouTube, and renting a video being delivered across the net, web cams, etc?
We've come a long way
Snakes ()
I belonged to the Commodore 64 community.
My parents bought a used Packard Bell in 1993. The guy had bought it three months ago and was already selling it with tons of software and peripherals (including a monochrome hand scanner!). It was a 486SX. Now the 486SX was kind of like how the Celeron processors are today. Intel would test each processor and if everything worked, it was sold as a 486DX. If the floating point unit was defective, it's bus was severed from the rest of the processor and was sold as the cheaper SX. Basically, the SX processors had no floating point unit and were the factory rejects of the 486 line. Ours ran at a blistering 33 MHz and we had 4 MB of RAM, upgradeable to 64 (!).
Instead of just booting into windows, Packard Bell decided to make things a little more user-friendly by including a front end called "Navigator." It was a simplified interface containing one-click shortcut buttons separated into menus. You could get into Windows 3.11 from there as well. There were also user menus with blank buttons so you could add shortcuts to your new programs in Navigator. I was browsing through the creation process and saw a bunch of miscellaneous icons. I actually thought I could use these icons to make new games. I assigned an icon and description to a button, thinking I had just programmed a new game. It was kind of a let-down when I clicked the button and nothing happened.
I did learn a lot about computers just by messing around on it though. I screwed it up pretty bad a couple times, and once I put a password on the BIOS and forgot what it was. My parents were pretty pissed. I started playing a couple games that required a lot of memory, and I longed for 8 MB like all my friends had. I played this one game called Ultimate Domain that required at least 600K of free base DOS memory. Since DOS had a limit of 640K, I had to make a bootdisk that just loaded the minimal amount of drivers thanks to my specially tweaked autoexec.bat and config.sys files. I learned to mess around in config.sys and change the DOS prompt to a time stamp or whatever I wanted. Man, what great times.
Not my first computer, but my first Pocket PC: Cassiopeia Casio E-125, MIPS processor. I recently resurrected this heavy little beauty and am search for a way to use it. It's too good (for its age) to leave packed away! Has anyone else used one of these? Have you applied it to any contemporary use?
-V
My first computer was an off-brand near cutting edge 386SX, 4 meg of RAM, 16 mghz processor, 20(?) mg hard drive, and a 13" Super VGA monitor. With the printer it cost me just over $2,000 (and that was with no software except for the operating system). I remember how excited I was when I upgraded the memory to a whopping 8 meg and the processor to a blazing 24 mghz. My sister had just bought a 286 with a 12 mghz processor and I was quite smug about what a monster I had in comparison. I still have it, though it doesn't work. It quit shortly after its 5 year warranty expired. I have many fond memories of playing King's Quest, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, and other adventure games from Sierra on it. Those were the days.
AO..
that computer was also called the TS1000 (Timex Sinclair)....it had what 1K onboard...did you have the 16K memory pack that plugged into the back? If you moved the computer, the pack came undone.... and saving programs to a cassette player was time consuming.
no colour and as far as I remember, no sound either and definately no hard drive.nope, if i recall it was white background with black letters (or maybe thats how i had it set up)... but I made that thing sing... it had sound...but only if you routed it from the computer through the speakers of the cassette player...I used a machine language program to enter music...if you can call Kingdom Melodies music?! it was tinny but recognizable
I think that you are right.
I remember the dodgy expansion pack, I stuidily thought that it was some sort of storage at the time - akin to a memory stick today. I was so miffed after I'd spent what felt like an evening typing in some program or other, only to find it vanished after a reset !!
I remember plugging code into it.. I think it was a variant of BASIC and machine code.
I didn't advance to the audio stage of it - but then I was only 7 at the time
It has been fun reading this. I have bought about one computer a year since the middle 80s, so I don't remember them all. I remember one computer I had that had exploding bombs when I did something wrong, the more serious the error, the more bombs exploded. It was funny but it's nicer now that computers take better care of themselves!
Timex Sinclair ZX81. A put-it-together yourself computer, with an awesome 1K!!
Of course, we got it with the 16K memory pack. That seemed like an enormous amount of memory back then.
But it was fun. Got to learn how to write BASIC computer games and all.
Right... that's it !
I've been trying to post on this thread for ages... I bet it works now and makes me look stupid !
It looks like there are a few ex-ZX81 users out there... I hope this gives you as much of a flashback as it did me.
