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Cyclopath
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PostWed May 27, 2020 1:40 pm 

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Malachai Constant
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PostWed May 27, 2020 1:53 pm 
I always remember to rewind my red box DVDs.

"You do not laugh when you look at the mountains, or when you look at the sea." Lafcadio Hearn
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Alpine Pedestrian
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PostWed May 27, 2020 1:58 pm 
My first computer was a Kaypro II. Two floppy disk drives! They also had a new, spiffy model called the Kaypro 10 with 10 megabytes of RAM. The salesman said it was more memory than you could use in a lifetime. When he asked what I was going to be doing with my computer, I said at my house it would be technology looking for a reason. It was 1982.

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cdestroyer
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PostWed May 27, 2020 3:21 pm 
my first personal computer came in a box, I had to soldier all the parts to the main board in 1980. it used a rca microprocessor the cdp1802 and used a color tv burst crystal at 3.57 mhz for the timing which was close enought to the 4mhz of the chip to run... it was the super elf ii.. had 8 kb of 2102 static ram....black and white tv for monitor no keyboard other than the hex pad for programming.

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Cyclopath
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Cyclopath
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PostWed May 27, 2020 3:30 pm 
I think this is generational warfare. Youth and vigor are no match for old age, wisdom, and treachery.

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H. Hound
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PostWed May 27, 2020 3:46 pm 
Some artifacts from work
Left to Right - Zenith Super Sport 286, Compaq 386, and Dynalogic Hyperion (8088)
Left to Right - Zenith Super Sport 286, Compaq 386, and Dynalogic Hyperion (8088)
And a Trash-80
1979 TRS 80 (Trash 80)
1979 TRS 80 (Trash 80)

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Malachai Constant
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PostWed May 27, 2020 4:01 pm 
Our first one was a Burroughs Redactor II word processor from late 70’s that used hard sectored 5.25 floppies it could run a primitive spreadsheet. Cost $15K replaced with a PCXT clone in early 80s cost $400 with 30meg HD. Both had Daisy wheel printers for presentation and dot matrix for drafts. WordPerfect and Lotus 123. Replaced with home built 486 so it could run Autocad. Lynda’s dads company had a a bunch of Trash 80s that were networked with a token ring wooo!

"You do not laugh when you look at the mountains, or when you look at the sea." Lafcadio Hearn
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olderthanIusedtobe
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PostWed May 27, 2020 4:03 pm 
We went thru several Kaypros in the early days of PCs. Ah yes, floppy discs, those were the days.

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Riverside Laker
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PostWed May 27, 2020 4:21 pm 
I was a programmer/engineer in my early career. Had three computers on my desk. Then I got a job at Boeing. It was a room with 200 people at drafting tables. There were 3 computers, rarely used. Culture shock. A few years later we designed the 777 using the largest mainframe system in the world. But earlier it was punched cards or Hollerith tape. Thems were the days, I tell ya, where running one program could use up the entire semester's $5 worth of computer time if you had an infinite loop.

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moonspots
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PostWed May 27, 2020 4:34 pm 
I still have some 5 1/4" disks, just in case! lol.gif My first machine was a TI-99A. Sold it at a garage sale years ago. Then, I picked up another one when my neighbor was having a garage sale, yee-haw! I still haven't fired it up yet.... The first "real" machine I had was an 8088 with a 10 MB hard drive. I kept it nice and tidy so I always had about 5 MB of extra space. didn't see any reason to have a larger drive than that. And I'll always remember (fondly) the dial-up BBS systems vs the internet. Just as fast at 2400b, vs my cable speed of 5-10mb now..

"Out, OUT you demons of Stupidity"! - St Dogbert, patron Saint of Technology
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kite
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PostWed May 27, 2020 4:40 pm 
wonder if anyone else remembers punching cards.....

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Malachai Constant
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PostWed May 27, 2020 4:58 pm 
Punched cards in college, used Arpanet to send emails to a buddy at sub base keyport from NWC.

"You do not laugh when you look at the mountains, or when you look at the sea." Lafcadio Hearn
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Randito
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PostWed May 27, 2020 6:41 pm 
kite wrote:
wonder if anyone else remembers punching cards.....
Yep -- I used those in college and in my 1st year at "The Kite Factory" I also used paper tape in high school and college. My high school actuall didn't have any computing equipment - however Bellevue (Community) College which wasn't too far out of the way home on my bike route from Interlake high School had a Wang computer and room of Teletype machines. I wasn't a BCC student and technically wasn't elegable for time on the Wang. I would use a Teletype machine to type in my computer program and then lie in wait for a BCC student to finish early or arrive late for their time slot on the Wang and when there was an opening, jump on the machine, load my tape and give it a run. Over the course of a quarter I was able to get several programs working -- including a program that would draw "Spirographs" on the XY recorder. One of my first projects at "The Kite Factory" was a program running on a Data General Noval 840. This machine came equipped with 64K words of core memory and two 5mb 14 inch diameter magnetic disks -- one disk non-removable and one disk removable and a 9 track tape drive When I was added to the project the engineer in charge of the project had only a surface understanding of how computing equipment worked. As a result the system he designed took about a week to process test data a day's worth of testing on the 757 and 767 structural test programs. I redesigned how the system handled the data reduced the processing time from a week to a few hours, shaving months off a test program that employed hundreds of engineers and mechanics. For my efforts, my manager "pulled out all the stops" with HR and got me a 6% raise. That was the beginning of the end of my career at "The Kite Factory"

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neek
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PostWed May 27, 2020 6:58 pm 
Alpine Pedestrian wrote:
They also had a new, spiffy model called the Kaypro 10 with 10 megabytes of RAM.
Hard drive maybe smile.gif 64KB RAM

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Get Out and Go
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PostWed May 27, 2020 7:11 pm 
Never avant-garde with technology, but with a teaching background, I did have a few a-ha moments. *Mid 80's while in a grad program at UW, a fellow had this strange metal box on his desk, a Compaq computer. I was curious but had no idea of what was to come. huh.gif *Early 90's while teaching at King Fahd University in Saudi Arabia, I started dealing with "Gopher" for interacting with the World Wide Web for English language teaching resources through SUNY (State University of New York)....and another huh.gif moment. "Are you kidding me; I'm in Saudi Arabia communicating with another teacher in Buffalo?" *And then the new teacher arrived in Dhahran with a Mac. huh.gif stun.gif *Mid 90's connecting with THE WORLD through Netscape. eek.gif "What a long strange trip it's been." ace.gif

"These are the places you will find me hiding'...These are the places I will always go." (Down in the Valley by The Head and The Heart) "Sometimes you're happy. Sometimes you cry. Half of me is ocean. Half of me is sky." (Thanks, Tom Petty)
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