I remember my first pc .... how about you?

by talesin 11 Replies latest jw friends

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  talesin

  I remember the olden days of pcs and word processors, back in the late 70's, early 80's ...

  There was a Xerox WP machine I worked on that had a 6"x4" screen, you could only see about 3 lines of type at a time ... I kid you not! After 3 hours of working on that, my eyes were buggy !!

  One of my first pcs was the Apple 2C, what a b*tch that was!! Imagine a 2,000 page report done on one of those - a step above the typewriter, but not too high.

  At age 24, I was teaching WP at a technical college, it was an exciting field. The hardware and software I taught was from a company called WANG. Once again, I kid you not. I still have some of their promotional buttons "I Love My WANG", and "My WANG works wonders", or how about "I'd be lost without my WANG". The company was based in Lowell, MA, which is where my aunt lived, so I got to visit there and 'drive by' the head office. I loved my job!! It was cool, 'specially being young and enjoying success.

  Then I moved into a personnel agency, and ran their word processing/computer services side of the business. They bought me a bee-yoo-ty-full MAC system. It was state-of-the-art, and had everything from Desk-Top Publishing to the Internet. Yes, I was on the 'net in 1987! It was before the WWW, or WorldWide Web. I had more fun with that PC!

  How about you? Any funny/horror stories from the 'old days'??

  talesin
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  Teela

  First on was a 286 Olivetti. Formated the hard drive the first day!!!. Forturnately where I was working had a computer dept who got it up and running again.
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  Insomniac

  Ahhh, my first pc. I happen to be typing on it right now. I'd never used a computer at all, but 5 years ago I started dating a true computer geek. He eats, sleeps, and breathes pcs. Taught me the basics, then I enrolled in a couple of classes. He eventually bestowed upon me one of his computers he wasn't using, which I'll play with until I can afford something newer and faster. It's hard to believe that we did not even have the internet, or home pcs, in homes when I was a kid.
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  talesin

  teela

  It's always nice to have that support staff for the 'puter ... now that I'm on my own at home, I'm much more careful *lol*

  Insomniac

  'tis true - hard to believe fer sure, gosh I dunno what I'd do without "google" and "ask Jeeves" now ! It has come so far in so short a time, and I don't think people realize what a resource they have at their fingertips. C'est encroyable!

  tal
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  TD

  I've had many PC's, but what I remember as a first wasn't mine at all; it belonged to my younger brother. It was a Cosmac Elf. (Similar to the Rockwell AIM64) No screen, no keyboard, no drives of any kind, not even a floppy. This was mid-70's and "Personal Computing" at the time was strictly for hardcore hobbyists. These computers did not even arrive assembled, they had to be built.

  It had a Hex keypad, a two digit hex display plus an 8 LED processor status display. (A visual representation of the 8-bit flags register) It was built around an early Rockwell 6502 chip, and had a whopping 2K of memory (Slightly faster versions of this CPU were later used in the Apple I, II, & II+, the Franklin Ace, (A shameless knockoff) the Atari 400/800, the Commodore 64 and most of the early console gaming systems)

  Watching my brother build and tinker with this thing, helping him enter programs, (which were lost as soon as you turned it off) is what got me interested in computing enough to purchase a used Apple II.
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  simplesally

  I remember having a typewriter with mag cards. We used to use shoe boxes to hold all of our magnetic memory cards. Then we got typewriters that could store about 10 pages of memory.
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  Nosferatu

  I had a topic like this a while back. My very first computer was a TRS-80 Model 1. I bought it for $10 when I was around 10 years old. Soon after, I moved over to a Commodore Vic-20 (which I overpaid for), then a C-64 which I absolutely loved (I still have it). I wrote some beautiful software on that thing.
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  Elsewhere

  And what has this all culminated in???

  The world's largest collection of porn in the history of the world!
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  drwtsn32

  Timex Sinclair 1000... complete with McDonald's cash register-style keyboard:

  
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  drwtsn32

  I still have some of their promotional buttons "I Love My WANG", and "My WANG works wonders", or how about "I'd be lost without my WANG"

  Truer words have never been crafted by any marketing department in history. LOL!