Nostalgia

b0b · Post by **b0b** » 7 Apr 2011 7:27 am

Anyone remember loading programs from cassette tape?

Bryan Daste · Post by **Bryan Daste** » 7 Apr 2011 7:36 am

Georg Sørtun · Post by **Georg Sørtun** » 7 Apr 2011 7:51 am

Sure...

-79 was a good year.

Andy Sandoval · Post by **Andy Sandoval** » 7 Apr 2011 8:14 am

You young whippersnappers got it too easy!

Peter den Hartogh · Post by **Peter den Hartogh** » 7 Apr 2011 8:45 am

Yes, in 1978 on a CPM computer called RoadRunner.
It had a one-line readout.

Post by **Brad Bechtel** » 7 Apr 2011 9:13 am

Nostalgia's not what it used to be. Here's my first computer, a Televideo TS-803.

Double floppy drives, running Multiplan and Wordstar under CP/M.

Bo Borland · Post by **Bo Borland** » 7 Apr 2011 7:23 pm

Classic Commodore 64 lives again

Commodore is making a Windows PC that fits inside a boxy beige shell that looks exactly like its original C64.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12997245

Dickie Whitley · Post by **Dickie Whitley** » 11 Apr 2011 2:39 pm

I've still got my Trash-80 and the two 460K floppy drives. I also have the Expansion Interface with the full 48K of memory. Yep, my first loading was done with the cassette. Had to scrape up the cash for the interface and the HDs. Those were the days (1976 I think).

b0b · Post by **b0b** » 14 Apr 2011 11:55 am

Then there was the 3 1/4" diskette:
http://img.thedailywtf.com/images/ads/1 ... yson-1.jpg

Blake Hawkins · Post by **Blake Hawkins** » 14 Apr 2011 1:14 pm

Had an "Ohio Scientific" it came standard with
2K of memory. Purcased the upgrade which took
it to 4K.
It had a cassette interface which would work with
any cassette recorder.
It is still packed away in my garage.
Blake

Joey Ace · Post by **Joey Ace** » 16 Apr 2011 1:10 pm

Blake, I also had an OSI.
6502 uP. 8 MB RAM.
BASIC

At the time I was on top of the wave.
The Apple II was released the next year.

Clete Ritta · Post by **Clete Ritta** » 17 Apr 2011 5:00 pm

I remember:
When floppy disks were really floppy and 5".
Punch cards?
PONG!
My first 286 processor IBM clone and Voyetra Sequencer+!!
Then came Apple Computer.
I think my very first was an SE.
Im getting nostalgic.

Clete

Tim Herbert · Post by **Tim Herbert** » 17 Apr 2011 5:06 pm

You guys are just kids. Here I am with my first computer...

b0b · Post by **b0b** » 17 Apr 2011 5:06 pm

My first floppy drives took 8" floppies. We used to punch extra holes in the disk jacket so that we could record on both sides. We called them "flippies".

The processor was a Z-80, of course, and the OS was CP/M. The modem was a Hayes 300 baud S-100 card, but the command set wasn't "Hayes compatible" - that came along later.

Am I geek enough yet?

Bo Borland · Post by **Bo Borland** » 17 Apr 2011 5:11 pm

I trashed my 8088 just last year.

Clete Ritta · Post by **Clete Ritta** » 17 Apr 2011 8:49 pm

I thought CompuServe at 14.4 was pretty cool in 1981.

Clete

Bob Martin · Post by **Bob Martin** » 18 Apr 2011 7:02 pm

Believe it or not I use to backup my MIDI sequences from my first hardware sequencer. I believe it was either a Yamaha or possibly the very first Roland sequencer. When you played it back through the speakers it was a long string of beeps short, long and all lengths.

Bob

Rich Paton · Post by **Rich Paton** » 4 May 2011 12:02 am

At the Rocketdyne rocket engine factory in Canoga Park, Ca., we had a Muitubishi Electro-Discharge machine, which machines metal parts by way of an electrical arc, the part being submerged in an oil quench.
When it would act up, we would have to begin an attempted fix by loading the "Exectutive" program. This entailed loading eight or so excruciatingly slow segments, (BORING!) each on cassette tape. When "done", the odds of sucess were typically slim.
If (often) we then had to call Muitubishi field service for help, we mere on-site techs were not allowed to be in that room whenever they were (by contract terms).
I don't think anyone at "The Rock" believed that the "Exectutive" program actually did or was intended to do anything meaningful, other than for Muitubishi field service.
I also remember some very, very expensive Hewlitt-Packlard "development sytems", with two data cassette drives. And a Tandberg telemetry recording system that used high quality "Elcassettes" which recorded in PCM format. Those worked very well, though limited in data capacity vs. the venerable Ampex FR-1600's that were the standard rig at that time (early 1980's).

Interesting thread. You might like this also...

http://itotd.com/articles/524/dead-media/

Clete Ritta · Post by **Clete Ritta** » 4 May 2011 12:57 am

Of course Apple and Microsoft have been partners for years, but remember NuBus cards before that?
They were required for some early video editing software called Premiere by Adobe which had not crossed platforms yet, and I had a number of them. Adobe was one of the early competitors of Avid (ProTools).

Years ago, I gave all the obsolete cards to my brother who is an artist, for a techno collage of some sort. Tubes, circuits and wires kinda stuff. I guess I am a hoarder, cause I still have boxes of connectors, wires and stuff that is OBSOLETE!
Any one need a Fast SCSI adaptor?...

I didnt think so.

Clete

b0b · Post by **b0b** » 22 Jul 2011 11:06 pm

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 23 Jul 2011 8:15 am

b0b wrote:

That was considered a high-tech setup, back in the day! OS2 Warp ... I'm insanely jealous! It was very impressive when I saw it demo'd at a computer trade show. It blew a lot of Windows 95 computers away, in late 1994 - early 1995.

b0b · Post by **b0b** » 23 Jul 2011 8:46 am

Not mine (I never had an acoustic modem), but I did a lot of work in OS/2 Warp back in the day. It came as a "brick" of 3.5" floppies. The company I worked for had a contract with IBM, so we had to install a new pre-release version of OS/2 every week or two. It was advanced at the time, but not really fun. My first www experiences were with OS/2 Warp's browser.

The picture came from The Daily WTF, one of my favorite web sites..

b0b · Post by **b0b** » 23 Jul 2011 9:00 am

Here's a picture of the software we developed for OS/2.