Personal Computer Related Memories - I Remember:

[davehc]

Some of these really bring my age home to me!
Computers at school!!! I belonged to one of our hobby groups - we were building a two valve radio on a breadboard ready for parents day. That was about as much knowledge as we had of computers.

P.S Later.
I have had a couple of private messages from members, who were wondering what I meant by "Breadboard". Well, in those days, (around the late 40's and early 50's), home cooking was more popular. Most used a breadboard to roll, and eventually cut, their home made bread. In order to string together a homemade radio or amp then, a reasonably large flat workable surface was required. The bread board was the answer. This was also a very good vehicle for demonstrating the wiring. Later came the plastic perforated boards, which were much easier to work with but took a little of the glamour away. Later came kits of all varieties, which exceeded our hobby expectations and, in a way, destroyed the enthusiasm. Of course, I have nothing left to show, so did a browse. I was astonished to find that there is still enthusiasm for the hobby, but it must be difficult to find the right parts these days. Here is a picture - note the breadboard base!

 

[Tully]

The Space Race

See attachment!

I tried several ways of pasting a Word .doc. but they didn't work!

Tully

Another part of the story:

I also lived in an area that had deposits of Galena ore. Galena Ill was where Galena (lead ore) was mined in the 1900,s.
I had big chunks of Galena at hand. so I built many versions of the "Cat Whisker" radio. It was also called a "crystal radio".
The reason it was called a "Cat Whisker" was because to tune it to a station you had to place a spring wire in the correct area on the
Galena crystal. Thus "Tickle it with a Cat's Whisker".

In reality it was acting like a crude transistor!

Tully

Another addition:

If you are interested in the Monroe "Hand-cranked Calculators" They were the upmost calculators of their day.
For more info "Bing" Monroe Calculators. There are many collectors of these calculators!

Could not paste .jpg pic of Monroe Calculator! Any Help would be appreciated!

Tully

 

[HippsieGypsie]

An honor to read posts that add to our fortune of the forum and fellow forumeers! Two distinguished "older" gentlemen with such computing pioneer careers. What a gift! They did their share of pioneering the technology that we so much enjoy today. Thank you!

Davehc with his breadboards containing vacuum tubes, amplifier, antenna, and mechanical tuner. That's all I could identify on the board. Perhaps he could share more? I barely remember my oldest brother making a receiver (via the Boy Scouts) out of a toilet paper tube with wire coiled around it and some other components of which I don't remember. I know it was pre-transistor days. We would listen through a pair of headphones. It was all mounted on a similar board. The last time I saw one of these was at a museum. Thank you for sharing!

I was born a couple of weeks late of the forecasted due date for my mother was going through a great crisis in her life. I always felt that I was a little out of synch in the timing of life except during the cycle of Cancer of which I am one and we are presently living. It is Sunday morning for me. I got out of bed, performed my bathroom duty, got my cup of coffee, booted up my PC, and logged on to the site. I immediately received a private message from Tully. My heart began to race. I intuitively knew it was going to be something good. How true it turned out to be! He shared some personal information which included that we grew up within an hour of each other in the same area, although he is older than me.

Then I noticed he had posted on this thread. What a thrill to read his story on a quiet Sunday morn having my coffee! Perfect timing! Thank you for sharing!

EASY / Lionel Ritchie - YouTube

 

[Tully]

In ref. to HippsieGypsie mensioning the HP calculator:

I used the HP27 to calculate closed loop servo resonace during the "Space Race". I still have it & all the accessories and the "Programmer's Pocket Reference Guide" for the Intel 8086/8088/8087/80186/80188 processors, which I used way back then.

The predessor of the HP27 was a Monroe "Hand Cranked" mechanical calculator.

(See Pic Upper Left)

"The Oldest Guy On The Forum"

Tully

 

[Tully]

The last time I looked on the web the HP27 & all accesories was going for 1800 BUCKS!!

Tully

 

[HippsieGypsie]

Wow, Tully! I remember seeing these things in the school office and others. Yes. I was sent to the school office more than once.

"The Oldest Guy On The Forum"

Tully

Nice post and pic. Thanks. Would you happen to have that famous Middle East guy's sandals in your collection by any chance?

 

[Tully]

HyppsieGypsie:

No! But I might have picked up his crocheted head cover while I was there!

I have an ATTIC full of computer junk. All the floppies going back before Win95.

CDs that you would not believe & MS announcement road show items Such as the Win95 "T" Shirt handout.

If you want any type of connectors, cables or parts, I have them somewhere!

I have donated a items to a local computer Museum!

But don't ask it would take me forever to find the one you would want.

Tully

 

[mart4494]

My goodness guys you make me feel like the nipper round here. I got involved with the old CPM program powered by an Amstrad. It was state of the art in it's day. Everything ran off 3" floppies. Think Amstrad had done a cheap deal with the suppliers.

Then upgraded to a PC with a huge 20mb HD - 5 1/4 floppies. The HD was bust and it cost a small fortune to replace. Fortunately my neighbour was computer literate. From memory to install the HD you had to run debug first then was it fdisk followed by a format. Only then could you power up with the MS DOS floppy and install.

Next PC was a 286 followed by a 386, then a 486. In those days it seemed all the rage to try and overclock the hell out of the things. So basically I'm one of the self taught crowd.

I still enjoy tinkering here and there especially when it's someone else's PC but a great deal of the fun and grrrr!!! has gone out of it. I've gradually moved into web design since retiring but it's more of a fun thing although I sometimes get paid here and there for my efforts.

Loved it though when I first walked into a print shop some years ago and the artist proudly boasted in a load voice so everyone could hear that MAC's never fail. He was showing me something - think it was Quark and suddenly the MAC locked. His face turned the deepest shade of crimson imaginable. Absolutely priceless.

 

[HippsieGypsie]

I have donated items to a local computer Museum!

Tully, you are a live walking museum, aren't you?

My goodness guys you make me feel like the nipper round here. I got involved with the old CPM program powered by an Amstrad. It was state of the art in it's day. Everything ran off 3" floppies. Think Amstrad had done a cheap deal with the suppliers.

Thanks for posting your mems, mart4494.

LOL! I had to look up nipper, for at first I thought you meant a nipping dog as we refer to it here in the States or the RCA listening dog as I knew of him! That even ends up being even much more than I knew. Nipper - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. I see you use it as slang for a child. Is that an English thing?

I don't think you're the nipper here, though, if you use things dating back to the late 70's and/or early 80's if using a 286. I understand what the Amstrad computer was, but what is the CPM program? I did a search, but the acronym means so many different things.

I'm glad that you're enjoying retirement with the web designing. Perhaps you will share some links to some of your designs?

 

[CB]

Nothing much that I can remember about my first encounter with PC.

It was in late 1988 I touched one, played some simple games, and forgot it. By 1991 I started using one an XT series (I believe) which still have 5,25 inch floppy. At the same time started learning simple programming with dBase, dBase III+, moved to clipper 86 then clipper 5. As my core duty is nursing, it was amazing to create program, wrote down source program, and compiled it into standalone programs. I was able to help medical record section to making better information and reporting system.
By 1992 I was able to buy an Acer AT 386 system while working in one of arabian country. That was my first time having my own PC. Sit in front of it most of the time.
After that nothing was special as most people started to know PC as part of daily life.


Kevin

 

[mart4494]

I understand what the Amstrad computer was, but what is the CPM program? I did a search, but the acronym means so many different things.

Typical me - I meant CP/M - (Control Program/Monitor) by Gary Kildall of Digital Research - apologies for the typo. Now (after looking it up) if it hadn't been for Gary's wife refusing to sign a NDA with IBM in Gary's absence then there may not have been a Microsoft as we know it today. Full story here -

Gary Kildall - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yes nipper is English slang for being the youngest and retirement (or part time semi-retirement) is treating me well. I miss some of the characters in my old business environment but not the politics and red tape.

Told an American buddy of mine I'd been on the grass all day and she thought I'd been smoking the stuff. No such luck. What I meant is I'd been cutting the stuff. Such is the translation between a common language.

 

[Mike Lonewolf]

WOW!! You guys are lucky to start out with powerful PCs like that. My first encounter was with a 8086, dual 5 1/4 floppies, No hard drive, and ran Machine language for the command structure and programming. Oh yeah, it had this beautiful yellowish amber screen with a cute looking cursor blinking on it ALL the time. <g> And it predated the Colecovision game system. *Pulls out Driver's License to prove his age.

 

[mart4494]

WOW!! You guys are lucky to start out with powerful PCs like that. My first encounter was with a 8086, dual 5 1/4 floppies, No hard drive, and ran Machine language for the command structure and programming. Oh yeah, it had this beautiful yellowish amber screen with a cute looking cursor blinking on it ALL the time. <g> And it predated the Colecovision game system. *Pulls out Driver's License to prove his age.

You were spoilt Mike - 2 x floppy drives and an amber screen with a 8086 processor.

The old Amstrad was powered by a Z80 processor, single floppy that you used to power up CP/M with and then insert a separate floppy to get the word processor working all connected to a daisy wheel printer (I had to refer to wiki to get that information as it seems like it was light years ago).

When I got my first 8086 with an amber screen I thought it was going to be the fastest PC ever. Didn't know about the famous Moore's Law of computing.

 

[Mike Lonewolf]

Yeah, BUT you seems to have forgotten, one floppy drive for the program you wanted to run, and one floppy drive to save your files on. Back in the GOOD OLE DAYS. No one EVER heard the term hard-drive, heck if you happened to work for IBM (King back then) you had reel to reel tape to save on, and load programs onto. I was lucky, I had a data tape recorder - (Yeah, you could also play cassette tapes on it.) LoL Actually the FIRST Castlevania (Castle Dungeon) game from it. (yay for Dirk the Daring) LoL Bet you NEVER knew you could play a cassette tape version of games. <g> What strikes me as funny is, is that Linux THINKS it was the first to use "Live" media with their live CDs. Hate to burst their collective bubbles, but that's been around longer than I have been around with cassettes, and floppies. LoL

 

[DMHolt57]

Edlin was my friend...

 

[Tully]

One UP!

A PDP8E Desktop by DEC (See pic top right in Smithsonian Museum) Digital Equipment Corporation) Also a Friden Flexowriter ( as pic top)
The Friden was invented to punch 8 channel ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange)tape When typing on the Friden typewriter keyboard.

The PDP8E was booted by using 9 toggle switches on the front panel. 8 for 8 bit words & 1for enter.
This activated the punch tape reader, which would load the Operating System. Then the "Basic" program tape, then the actual basic instructions.


The booting was done on startup & the Basic program was entered only once. After that the "Basic" data tape had to be run for each data pass. The data pass had to be punched out, placed in the Friden to create a printed sheet of information. If the program ran correctly, you received your data. If it failed it printed out the errors & you had to make & punch a new tape until you got it right.

No monitor, no floppies, no HD, no Mouse no Keyboard on the PDP8E!

But we got the "Man On The Moon"

Tully

 

[FSeal]

While this was the first computer I ever used:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Decwriter.jpg
(Yes I know that's not the computer. To tell you the truth, I don't remember what it was connecting too over the phone lines!)

It wasn't the oldest. This was!
http://whitemore.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/ibm360_full.jpg

Course Tully still has me beat

 

[Tully]

Of course I got the toggle switches wrong!

Tully

 

[Mike Lonewolf]

WAIT a MINUTE here Tully! This is a keypunch machine!

 

[HippsieGypsie]

While this was the first computer I ever used:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi.../Decwriter.jpg
(Yes I know that's not the computer. To tell you the truth, I don't remember what it was connecting too over the phone lines!)

Wow ,FSeal, You're older than I thought! Is that a shortcut key list next to the keyboard?!

It wasn't the oldest. This was!
http://whitemore.files.wordpress.com...bm360_full.jpg

These were the type of machines my buddy showed me at his work which I described in my story in the start post.

Course Tully still has me beat

Yes. Tully is older than dirt! BTW, Tully, as you probably know for you lived in Galena. That town put out a few American Civil War generals. Now I know of one more....you!

Also, our microwave ovens of today probably have more computing power than the Apollo moon missions had.