That is the kind of thing my son taught himself...I think he eventually went ot C (?) for his programing system - but getting graphics to work was tough especially with the TV as a monitor. We also used a casset tape player as an I/O divice for awhile. My first harddrive was 40MB. I remember when I got my 386 system - what a hummer that was at the time.
i have a computer RAM question
- Thread starter Haynie
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Dan Hintz
Member
Well, if we're traveling down memory lane... :biggrin:
I started with punch cards, but the first "power" system I had access to (through my father) was a DEC Pro. In between I owned a lot of small systems, like the Timex Sinclair 1000 (with 16kB ram upgrade pack and thermal printer!) and the ZX Spectrum, but the '386 was the first "power" system I purchased with my own money. Then came the DEC Alphas, and Intel started stepping up their game and I've been in their camp ever since.
The first computer I ever built was an 8088... etched my own PCBs, and programming was done with a panel of switches for setting bits. Toggle the programming switch, and it auto-incremented the address. Nothing drove you insane like "typing" in a 0.5k program and messing up a bit... no way to back up, you just had to start from zero again :-/
My dad wrote a 3D vector display program when he first got into computers in the late-60's / early-70's, so I followed suit... of course, I tended towards embedded systems rather than PCs whenever possible, but it was audio, video, or any other DSP-based work I could get my mitts on. I'm still doing embedded work, but I haven't done graphics work for a paycheck in too many years (and I miss it).
Oh we weren't getting into 'memory' lane Dan. Just the PC part.
The first computer I worked on was and IBM 707 Vacuum Tube System. You would not believe how big that computer was and how many cables it took to connect it all together. No one smaller that a pretty big organization could afford the Electric bill, much less the computer rent. That was in 1960 - transistor systems were out but we were still refurbishing tube systems coming off rent.
I also worked on IBM 7090s, 7094s 1401s, 1410s, 1710s and a couple of other systems not as well known.
Then I went to work on System 360s and in fact worked on testing the very first system 360 delivered to an outside customer (we had installed two or three at IBM locations before the first non-IBM customer shipment) it was a S360 Mod 40 that went to Gulf and Western in 1965 which was before the company got into entertainment companies. I also worked on S360 Mod 50, S360 Mod 44 before going to work for Federal Systems Division in 1968.
After that I worked on government contracts and I was a user of time on Main Frames via terminals until the late 80s when our site installed PC's for the main frame terminals. Prior to that my PC experience was all with my own unit.
Dan Hintz
Member
Where's the rim shot? :tongue:
A bit more modern than your first ones, but I still remember using dial-ins for school computer work... 300 baud modems to the mainframe, you could watch the characters print on the screen. Those were the days. Now, students expect everything local... if you can't play Call of Duty or Crysis in 16.7 million color and 30fps, it's a crap system.
Oh, dear God, I'm starting to sound like an old fart again! :mad-tongue:
walshjp17
Member
300 baud modems? Speed demons compared with the 75 baud units we had to deal with in the '60's & '70's in the Navy aboard ships. And the input/output devices were paper tape!!
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Sub Vet 10
Member
Still have 300bauds, and burned paper printers/ I\Os, behemoth units & power supplies that were made in the 70's but the tech is closer to 50's on some...
Hard drives are going back to solid state devices.
If it ain't broke, and won't break, dont fix it.
sbwertz
Member
Remember how we used to figure-8 the paper tape around your thumb and pinky finger to store it? Hadn't thought of that in years!
I remember one time when I was working at GE and was going down a stairwell with a box of punch cards on my hip and a guy coming up the stairs caught the bottom of the box with his briefcase and dumped the whole box down the stairwell. There went a whole day's work! By the time I got them all right side up and frontwards and back through the sorter, I was a day behind schedule.
jsolie
Member
I should show my kids this thread, but they'll just roll their eyes and go back to their iOS devices (which outperform many of those old power systems)...
Since this thread has touched on acoustic modems, paper tape, punch cards, etc, if you know what "BOOT 14114" means, we can probably have a discussion about a long gone computer company.
First computer was in 1978. I was in Jr. High when my dad brought home a TRS-80 Model I with 48K of memory. Since we had the Expansion Interface as well, it wasn't too long until it was sporting a Percom Doubler and a couple of full height 90K single sided 40 track floppy drives. These sure were a lot more convenient than that old cassette deck... The rather uninspiring line printer was also soon replaced with C.Itoh 8510. The sad thing is my dad still has that computer somewhere in one of his huge piles-o-junk.
Since this thread has touched on acoustic modems, paper tape, punch cards, etc, if you know what "BOOT 14114" means, we can probably have a discussion about a long gone computer company.
First computer was in 1978. I was in Jr. High when my dad brought home a TRS-80 Model I with 48K of memory. Since we had the Expansion Interface as well, it wasn't too long until it was sporting a Percom Doubler and a couple of full height 90K single sided 40 track floppy drives. These sure were a lot more convenient than that old cassette deck... The rather uninspiring line printer was also soon replaced with C.Itoh 8510. The sad thing is my dad still has that computer somewhere in one of his huge piles-o-junk.
Dan Hintz
Member
ChrisN
Member
Oh, man, I love this thread! I'm not old enough to remember any of it, but I really like reading about the history of computers. It's kind of awe inspiring to see just how for computers have come!
LagniappeRob
Member
You worked on a Pr1me? I'm getting ready to sunset a UniVerse box that replaced ours. (Well. Pr1me -> PI/Open via vmark, ardent then ibm then rocket) -> UV. Be in the MV world since '95. Sad... 18+ years for me. 25+ for the system.
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jsolie
Member
Every day I'm in the office at my day job I work on an AIX box running UniData. I think we still have a few green screen terminals around here somewhere. Actually, I think the UV progression was VMark, Ardent, Informix, IBM and currently Rocket Software. Been working with this type of database since the late 1980's. I started on a Prime 750 running PI. I still enjoy the looks on the faces of relational database programmers and admins when they try to wrap their brains around what you can do (or get away with) in UV/UD :biggrin:
To keep the thread from wandering too much, the machine has quite a bit of RAM in it, but nowhere near what the hardware supports. More like what the company wanted to spend on it. :wink:
jsolie
Member
LagniappeRob
Member
Yeah, forgot entirely about Informix. I updated for Rocket. New app is Oracle based on AIX. Still getting used to it. Wish they had gone with something Cache' based. This Oracle system needs lots more hardware than my old HP-UX/UV needed... LOTS. 512X the memory, and 32x the processors across 2 systems and it isn't anywhere nearly as fast.
Dan Hintz
Member
I am my own Google when it comes to technology ;-) Difficult to work with varied systems like DECs, Timex Sinclairs, Commodores, Apples, and IBMs without seeing all kinds of weird crap.
LagniappeRob
Member
Are you channeling me or something? Or stalking?
I can add to that many 'nix boxes (going back to SVR2 days), plus Sinclair QL, and several OS-9 (Microware not Mac) from CoCo2 & 3, to specialty 6809 through 68040 boxes.
Been there done that....in the 50's some of our ships communications came in via teletype and went to paper tape sometimes printed sometimes punched. We also sent some things that way using punched paper tape (usually created on the crypto machine). Most communications were either voice or morse code received by a Radioman who typed it as he received it.
None of that was very fast but it worked at the time.
Crypto was the biggest pain...we had no enlisted guys on the ship with clearance to work on it, and usually no officers with enough know how to fix it. In an emergency they would get an ET (me a couple of times) stand us in front of the Captain of the ship and he would tell us that anything and everything that we saw, heard or did inside the crypto machine room
stayed there. We'd then go in lock the door and be under the eye of an officer cleared for crypto until we found the problem, fixed it and left. We then went back to the Captain who reminded us that any disclosure of anything we did to anyone would result in punishment just short of being shot at sunrise.
sbwertz
Member
Your coffeemaker has more RAM than the computer we started on. A GE 225 had 4K.
ChrisN
Member
And it's amazing what was done with that 4K! I do CAD/CAM work, and one of the first computer aided design programs, Sketchpad -- which ran on a TX-80 (IIRC) -- had features that are just now becoming mainstream in today's CAD programs.
Haynie
Member
I have never liked computers. In fact, the more computer oriented my kids get, the more I want them out of the house. I just don't enjoy them.
Dad brought home a computer when I was little. He was enamored with it. I might have used it once or twice. As my friends become more computer oriented I gravitated to hanging out with different friends. The great outdoors was much more interesting to me. That computer had a 64 in the name.
Dad brought home a computer when I was little. He was enamored with it. I might have used it once or twice. As my friends become more computer oriented I gravitated to hanging out with different friends. The great outdoors was much more interesting to me. That computer had a 64 in the name.
Hey John, I just learned they were even slower than we thought. Teletype was called 60 speed (most common) or 75 speed but the baud rate which were 45.5 and 56.9 baud respectively.
Dan Hintz
Member
Are you channeling me or something? Or stalking?
I can add to that many 'nix boxes (going back to SVR2 days), plus Sinclair QL, and several OS-9 (Microware not Mac) from CoCo2 & 3, to specialty 6809 through 68040 boxes.
I was always the oddball out when it came to game systems, too. While most had Intellivision, I had a Colecovision. Most had a Sega, but I purchased the TurboGrafx-16 because the specs were superior. To be fair, I went with the crowd when it came to the Atari 2600, but there weren't too many other choices outside of standalone pong machines (had one of those, too).
Yeah, but it's goooooood coffee :biggrin:
Well Haynie I went online searching Kodu and introduced it to my 9 year old that has been on some type of computer since he could reach a keyboard. He plays mine craft as a regular and set up his own server including setting up the network for his server so his friends could play on it.
Now he is ready to start Kudo. My question is you mentioned purchasing a book. I can't find it but i did find the online getting started one.
Now he is ready to start Kudo. My question is you mentioned purchasing a book. I can't find it but i did find the online getting started one.
LagniappeRob
Member
walshjp17
Member
Hmmm ... add to that pitching decks, 30 foot seas, completely overcast skies. Go ahead just try to explain to the Admiral that comms are running a bit slow and we can't get that targeting approval
NewLondon88
Local Chapter Leader
I remember getting our bright orange Odyssey game for Xmas..
Haynie
Member
JD Combs Sr
Member
Thanks Sharon, you are absolutely correct. It's hard to think in "kb" today when we are dealing with Gigs.:redface: I also misquoted the floppy, it should have stated "160kb",:wink: I had it larger then the hard-drive I upgraded to.
I am going to lay the errors off to my age and my poor memory.LagniappeRob
Member
I know I'm reviving this thread... but I got an email from O'Reilly I thought some that had kids interested in programming might want to see. 50% off intro programming e-books, and 40% off print.
Learn to Code - 50% off ebooks, 40% off print books - O'Reilly Media
Learn to Code - 50% off ebooks, 40% off print books - O'Reilly Media
healeydays
Member
I know I'm showing up late to this dance, but here's my 2 cents on the original question. Don't upgrade a dinosaur, replace it. When you get around to replacing the memory, operating system and the hard drive (cause they were tiny compared the the needs of today) you have put out the money a new system will cost you.
As for the other direction this forum has gone, I am one of those computer dinosaurs. I remember being one of 3 kids in high school allowed to play on a computer.
I remember playing war games in the Army lugging an old IBM 360 to a mountaintop trying to get it operational only to have to get the IBM techs out basically in their white labcoats to get the machine running
I remember after getting out being a COBOL programmer doing code sheets our admin would type onto punch cards. I also remember the 1st time I dropped a box of punch cards and hadn't numbered the cards...
Oh, the good old days...
Mike B
As for the other direction this forum has gone, I am one of those computer dinosaurs. I remember being one of 3 kids in high school allowed to play on a computer.
I remember playing war games in the Army lugging an old IBM 360 to a mountaintop trying to get it operational only to have to get the IBM techs out basically in their white labcoats to get the machine running
I remember after getting out being a COBOL programmer doing code sheets our admin would type onto punch cards. I also remember the 1st time I dropped a box of punch cards and hadn't numbered the cards...
Oh, the good old days...
Mike B
Dan Hintz
Member
Be careful with what you order. For example, the book Linux Device Drivers, 3rd ed. is $40 in hardcopy... but on Amazon it's $25.
EDIT: My bad... forgot to take the 40% off, so prices are comparable with Amazon in a lot of cases (but the Amazon price has been that low for a while now, so...)
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dbledsoe
Member
Okay, I'l jump in:
I started programming in Fortran 4 on punch tape at Lockheed, and that's after I got a Mechanical Engineering degree without ever seeing a computer. I learned to type - sorta- on a punch card machine at LTV Aerospace.
My first PCs (wish I had kept them) were no-name sets running CPM, with 8" floppies. If you could write a program with 4k memory, you could use it. Now the name of the program uses more memory than that. I wrote estimating programs in Basic, and had to find a local wizard to MAKE a cable so it would print.
My first real PC was a 1984 IBM that cost $6000. Later I paid $1200 for a 20 mg hard drive to go with it.
Remember Visicalc?
Remember the first "portable" computer - the Compac Portable? Weighed something like 30 pounds and would barely fit in a overhead bin. People actually carried those things around.
I started programming in Fortran 4 on punch tape at Lockheed, and that's after I got a Mechanical Engineering degree without ever seeing a computer. I learned to type - sorta- on a punch card machine at LTV Aerospace.
My first PCs (wish I had kept them) were no-name sets running CPM, with 8" floppies. If you could write a program with 4k memory, you could use it. Now the name of the program uses more memory than that. I wrote estimating programs in Basic, and had to find a local wizard to MAKE a cable so it would print.
My first real PC was a 1984 IBM that cost $6000. Later I paid $1200 for a 20 mg hard drive to go with it.
Remember Visicalc?
Remember the first "portable" computer - the Compac Portable? Weighed something like 30 pounds and would barely fit in a overhead bin. People actually carried those things around.
Tom D
Member
go to pricewatch.com they list all computer parts by price.
jsolie
Member
As well as dBase II and WordStar? :biggrin:
LagniappeRob
Member
This is true on ebooks too. Sometimes the Amazon price meets or beats the ORA direct price even with a 40% or 50% off code.
One nice thing about the ORA direct ebook is that it is usually device independent (some books may not be in some formats sometimes - is that enough of a conditional?
), and can be loaned to others. Plus if you own the print version, you can get the ebook version for $4 or 5 (something like that).