Do Any of the "CC Old Timers" Remember?

[babyher]

Does anyone remember the "ADAM" computer by Coleco ?

 

The Edsel of Electronics :)

[jhannah]

How about the Osborne? The first "portable" PC. Must have weighed 50 pounds!

[babyher]

How about the Osborne? The first "portable" PC. Must have weighed 50 pounds!

 

 

Oh God,

 

I had never heard of it. I just googled it and saw a pic of one.

 

"portable"???????? For who King Kong? *LOL*

 

looking this up I found an "old computer" site that is pretty cool. I saw an old Texas Instruments 99/4 I remember a friend of mine having and we used to play around with back in the day.

[ekerr19]

We had the "Pong" video game whne we were in HS and thought we were just the cat's meow! We spent hours hitting that stupid slow motion ball back and forth...

 

My kids think it's hilarious. :)

[jhannah]

I remember Pong when I visited the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry back when I was about 9 years old. I also remember playing Tic-Tac-Toe with a computer. Home use as yet unheard of in those days.

[HeatherInFlorida]

I used to love the smell of mimeo sheets. And then collating!!! Anyone remember laying pages and pages out on a huge table and walking around to collate them all? Then they brought in electric staplers and we thought that made it so much easier!!!

 

And I loved Pong!!! That was so addictive!!!!:)

 

Love all the little Selectric "balls" with the different types. That's when I became a really fast typist because the keys could no longer stick if you typed too fast.

 

Got me with the Osborne!!! I wonder why I never heard of it!!! 1981 isn't that long ago!:o

[RevNeal]

My first computer was an Apple II. :)

Here's a photo of it:

 

 

My Dad bought it for me in 1978. I cut my programming teeth learning BASIC and Fortran on this lovely old computer! Believe it or not, back then a 1 Mhz processor was an amazing thing, and that's exactly what the old Apple II had: a 1 Mhz MOStek 6502 microprocessor, operating with an 8 bit Data Path and a 1 Mhz Bus. It originally came with 4K of RAM and 12K of ROM, with integer BASIC hard-coded onto the ROM for easier programming, but that was later expanded to an amazing 64K of memory when, in 1979, we added a 48K RAM card. It originally came with a tape-deck for loading either purchased programs, or for saving and re-loading programs I had written myself (and I wrote a bunch of them). However, in 1978 we added an external "Disk Drive," and eventually added a second drive in 1980.

 

In 1980 I bought -- with substantial help from my Dad -- an Apple IIc.

 

 

As it's name suggests, this was a significant upgrade to the original Apple II. In addition to a somewhat faster 1.4 Mhz SynerTek 65C02 microprocessor, the IIc improved upon the Apple II by employing an impressive 32 kb of ROM and a then-utterly amazing 128 kb of RAM. In addition to having a somewhat faster processor and more than twice the memory, it was smaller than its predecessor, more portable (with a cool handle), and had a built-in 5.25 floppy drive. In short, it was the perfect computer for a dorm-cramped undergraduate student in that day and age, and that was exactly how I used her; I wrote 3 years worth of undergraduate papers on this baby before I had it upgraded (a mother-board and disk-drive swap-out which saved me a bundle over buying a new computer) to the guts of an Apple IIc Plus.

 

My first Macintosh was a Mac Plus.

 

 

She has an 8 Mhz 68000 processor, a 16 bit Data Path, 128 kb of ROM, an internal 3.5 "floppy" drive, no Hard Drive (I added an external 40 MB drive, which she she sat on), and 1 MB of RAM (which I soon upgraded to 2, and then 4, MB), and an Imagewriter for printing purposes. Believe it or not, that was a LOT of computer way back in 1990!

 

Since then I've owned a bunch of different Macs: a Performa 405, Powerbook 145b, a Performa 6400, a G3 "Blue and White," a G3 Wallstreet Powerbook, a G4 Titaniuum Powerbook, and G4 Aluminum Powerbook with a 17.1-inch display.

 

 

This computer comes with a 1.67 GHz 64 bit G4 processor with 512 KB onchip Cache, a 166 MHz Bus, 1.5 GB of RAM, an ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 videocard, 100 GB Hard Drive, CD-RW/DVD+-RW Drive, 56 kbps modem, Airport and Bluetooth cards, and 10/100/1000 BaseT Ethernet. This is an absolutely amazing computer.

[the2ofus]

Does anyone remember dittos? I'm thinking they were before mimeo and they smelled even stronger.

 

My very first job was as a summertime fill-in church secretary. It took me hours to type the mimeo master for the Sunday service bulletin.

 

When I went off to college, my aunt presented me with a little portable Ollivetti manual typewriter about the size of a ream of paper, which had an elite typeface and even was capable of spacing down 1 1/2 instead of 2 lines so I could fit more on a page. I remember a number of all-nighters typing term papers on that little thing. I still have it.

 

My first computer was an 8088 and cost $2000. I was dragged kicking and screaming into the computer age. Don't know what I'd do without one now.

[jhannah]

Greg, you forgot the ENIAC you built from a kit in your dad's garage! ;)

[HeatherInFlorida]

Speaking of smells, anyone remember the smell from the first fax machines??? Yuck!!! You had to be there to receive it and they were all curly!!!

[cruisinjudy]

Greg,

I also started with the Apple II and then we added the ability to have upper and lower case! My next computer was an Apple IIGS, then finally got a Mac. I had the Mac classic in my classroom, which looked like the Mac Plus. Now I have had a number of different Macs and we have three in the house at present.

[jtl513]

Speaking of smells, anyone remember the smell from the first fax machines??? Yuck!!! You had to be there to receive it and they were all curly!!!

The ones that gave all brown printing on damp paper? No, I don't remember those! :D

[Toad]

Can anyone say........ "THREAD DRIFT"?

[jtl513]

Can anyone say........ "THREAD DRIFT"?

The title said "Do Any of the "CC Old Timers" Remember?"

We're remembering.

Go away! :mad: :D

[Copper10-8]

We had the "Pong" video game whne we were in HS and thought we were just the cat's meow! We spent hours hitting that stupid slow motion ball back and forth...

 

My kids think it's hilarious. :)

 

Pacman for us, oh and Space Invaders!

[maxout]

Here is an updated version of pong... :D

 

http://www.liquid.se/pong/pong.html

[SharonN]

Just to add my .02 -- summer of 1970 card decks to the main frame at GaTech, followed by 110 baud teletype access to UGa and Ga State during the fall. In 1975 built the "Glass Teletype" kit from SWTP followed in 1976 by the Altair 8800A kit (the first commercially available kit) with 256 bytes of memory, expanded quickly to 4096 bytes of memory. This had to be programmed by switches on the front of the computer before it would send information to the "Glass Teletype".

 

Rich

 

 

A couple of years later than you but not much. I graduated with a CS degree in the mid 70's not ever seeing a computer. We had to use keypunches for doing all of our programming and turned in the decks at a desk and then picked up the printouts later. You could get 2 runs a day if you worked it right. If you got your cards in by early morning (9 or 10 I think) you could pick up the results at 5 and you had to have them back in by 6 to get the results at 8 the next morning. We did get a few teletypes my last semester which were great if you could get on one but there was always a long wait.

 

My first job out of college as an assembly language programmer used a mini computer with 64k bytes of core memory. We had to write our code on these large green coding sheets and send them to the Keypunch dept. We had to schedule time to actually get on the computer for debugging (1 hour every day or two) which was done by entering the bootstrap thru the control panel (in Octal) and then setting breakpoints thru the switches to check the register values etc. When the program was ready for use we'd create punched tapes of the debugged version. If you found a problem later you could patch the tape. Who'd have ever thought of the debugging tools now available or having the type of computers we have at home. Of course we don't have the confetti from the punched cards and tapes to use for fun anymore either (had to find something to keep us busy while waiting for our turn on the computer!)The kids I work with now don't have a clue of all the fun they missed. :D

[TedC]

Anyone remember quill pens?

[HeatherInFlorida]

The ones that gave all brown printing on damp paper? No, I don't remember those! :D

 

It was sort of damp, but I don't think it was brown, I think grey but who remembers?:) ... maybe brown was before my time;) .

 

Anyone remember quill pens?

 

Very funny;) .

[jhannah]

Anyone remember quill pens?

I sure do! I've used many of them. They do great custom imprinting work, and have good buys on office supplies.

 

[HeatherInFlorida]

Maybe I made a mistake! With the small "q", I thought Ted meant the original quill pens dating back to before any of us were born! I know they are still used for calligraphy and such. But I thought Ted was making a joke:D .

[jhannah]

I believe Ted was making a funny and referring to those old feather pens. I just turned it to refer to the pen company!

[gooselace]

Just caught up with the end of this thread - so many memories. My frist "computer" was a Trash 80 (TRS-80) no programs - just Basic. But you could cuff it to a phone receiver to communicate the text.

 

The quill pen reminded me of my first journalism job, in 1955. The newpaper editor's secretary, the ony staff member who could read his handwriting, was sick, so he dictated his editorials to me while I "hunt & peck" typed them, while he looked over my shoulder. If I made a mistake, he insisted on starting over. It's a wonder the paper came out every morning!

[TedC]

Maybe I made a mistake! With the small "q", I thought Ted meant the original quill pens dating back to before any of us were born! I know they are still used for calligraphy and such. But I thought Ted was making a joke:D .

 

Heather, you did not make a mistake - you win the Golden quill pen award.

[ekerr19]

Question: how big was your first cell phone? Mine was gigantic compared to what I have today - and it didn't take pictures, have color graphics (no graphics!), had a ridiculously long antenna that was prone to break and reception was awful - to top it off, it weighed a ton!

 

We were watching Modern Marvels or something like that and my kids were cracking up over the 70's & 80's "gadgets" - the first walkman, cell phone, 8-track tapes, etc.