O how times have changed....

[crokett]

25 years ago today

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4780963.stm

I remember my dad's 8088. The first PC we had. It had an 8mghz processor. I also remember it was a big day when he brought home a 286 that he got used. He got it from a woman who was a programmer who had just gotten a 386

[MilDoc]

Learned programing in Fortran and other languages on an IBM-360/67 in the sixties. Punch cards.

Built my first "home computer" out of parts in 1970. A huge 8K (yes -- K) of memory, programed in binary from front panel switches. Turn it off and all was lost! Then came the Radio Shack TRS-80. Had fun with that.

Now, a 4GHz Dell with 1G memory, 2 250 HD in raid 1 array, etc etc etc. Fast, but not nearly as much fun!

[LCHIEN]

Learned programing in Fortran and other languages on an IBM-360/67 in the sixties. Punch cards.

Built my first "home computer" out of parts in 1970. A huge 8K (yes -- K) of memory, programed in binary from front panel switches. Turn it off and all was lost! Then came the Radio Shack TRS-80. Had fun with that.

Now, a 4GHz Dell with 1G memory, 2 250 HD in raid 1 array, etc etc etc. Fast, but not nearly as much fun!

Don't think it was 1970... the Intel 8008 did not come out until 1972 unless you built something based on an 4004... even that wasn't introduced until 1971. The 8008 was the first chip that made it halfway practical for a homebuilt PC.

In 1974 we (my lab partners and me) built a 4-bit processor based around 74181 ALUs and a bunch of 7400 logic.

I built my first home computer in 1976 - based on a Z80 S-100 card set from Technical Design Labs. I soldered the 20-slot motherboard - 2000 solder connections for that, plus one and eventually 2 more 8K static memory boards based on 1K static RAMS with about 1500 solder connections each before I finally designed a wire-wrapped 32K memory card based on 16k dynamic RAMs, really hot stuff in those days. I had a teletype for I/O - hard copy plus paper tape punch and reader. Then eventually I assembled some CRT kits. Eventually added a North Star Floating point board and Disk I/O for two DSDD floppy drives with a stunning 360K capacity.

Eventually built some more systems on S-100 with the switches and lights, 8" DSDD drives with 1.2MB capacity and even solid state memory drives (512K). CPM was king in those days.

All this way before 1982 when the IBM PC supposedly introduced PCs.
Maybe they made then acceptable or legitmate, I won't dispute they changed the world.

I ran a CP/M-based bulletin board in Houston up until about 1986.

[TB Roye]

My first PC was a Tandy 1000 with 640k of memory a color monitor and Dot Matrix printer cost a whopping $2800 with a desk and some books. Learned to program in Basic. Bought a modem, I think it was 1200 Baud went on line and ended up with a $300 long distance bill the first month. It was fun and learned a lot with it. Whis I still had it but it was passed on to a kid who need a computer.

Tom

[gjbivin]

Like MilDoc, I started programming in Fortran in 1969, except the mainframe I used was a Univac 1108 (University of Utah). I later worked for Univac -- later Sperry, later Unisys -- for nine years; mostly programming on their 1108.

My first home computer was a Z-80 kit by Digital Group. I went that way rather than S-100 bus because D.G. had the first Z-80 based system. 2K of RAM on the CPU board -- I later bought a 16KB memory card, and for a while couldn't figure out what to do with all that room! Program and data storage was on audio cassettes. I adapted an old baudot teletype for hard copy.

My current system is a homebrew 1.8 GHz AMD w/ 1 GB of RAM and a couple of hard drives totalling 120 GB. My programming is now in C and C++. Times certainly have changed!

[bigsteel15]

My first computer was a Commodore 64 with all the bells & whistles. Dad spent around 2K on it in '83. He also bought a top of the line BETA VCR for about 1200 around that time...should have seen it coming.
I remember telling a friend his Apple II was a POS because my C64 had colour.
Anyways, I learned Basic and machine language. got so good at ML that the local cable company hired me to make a program to run the scrolling news/time on a channel. So there was my 15 minutes.

Now, my dad maintains 3 or 4 websites and I have troubles just reading all my e-mail at work.

What is wrong with that picture.

[crokett]

All this way before 1982 when the IBM PC supposedly introduced PCs.
Maybe they made then acceptable or legitmate, I won't dispute they changed the world.

I don't doubt people had home computers before IBM's PC. For this discussion I am not counting TRS80s, Ataris or Commodore. What IBM did do was make it possible for people who didn't want to or couldn't solder 2000 connections to have a computer at home. And IBM created a standard.

[gsmittle]

I remember reading about the Altair in 1976 or thereabouts. And didn't the two Steves start selling the Apple 1 around then?

AFAIK, the Apple IIe was the best-selling PC ever. Certianly had the longest production run. I remember setting up new ones in 1988.

g.

[cabinetman]

OK all, this may date me, I can remember the IBM 1401, and the RCA 301-501. Somewhere around there was a Burroughs 3000 or a 3300, I can't remember the actual number. Someone here will no doubt have all the details.



"I'M NEVER WRONG - BUT I'M NOT ALWAYS RIGHT"

[Wood_workur]

My computer is almost as old as my youngest- from 1998. An it still runs fine.

[BadeMillsap]

Oh deary me ... I've worked for IBM for 32+ years now ... my first programming experience was on a Wang programmable calculator and I was a Junior in Highschool (must have been about 1969)... it could read 2 (count them 2!!!) 80 column cards and besides arithmetic and logarithms could make 3 (yes 3 total!) branching decisions ... they were if I recall correctly ... skip 1 step if zero, skip 1 step if negative result and skip 1 step if positive ... on that platform I built a functional and entertaining blackjack game and a fairly crude roulette game. The display on this 'machine' was a row of 'nixi tube' filament lights that could display up to I believe 12 digits.

When I went to college (Trinity University) we had a dual complement of IBM mainframe processors (a rarity in those days for small schools)... a 360/44 and a 360/40 ... learned the finer points of FORTRAN, COBOL and relished the joy of APL. We had what now passes for "instamt messaging" (IM) in 1970 across those systems to a campus wide 'network' of selectric typewriter terminals (2741 maybe??) and that's how I was introduced to my wife of 33+ YEARS .. across the 'network' !!

My first 'personally owned' PC was an IBM PC jr ... and with a 300bps modem I occassionally merrily worked from home doing my VERY TEXT BASED email.

I remember well when we introduced the IBM PC ... the joke was "can the elephant dance??? " .... guess it could indeed!!

Bade

[BobSch]

My first PC was a TRS-80 in '78. 4K of RAM and an audio casette recoeder for storage. I'm looking at a June '84 issue of Byte magazine and the ads in the back are a hoot. "Disk Drives" normally referred to floppies — anywhere from $150-400. And a 10MB (that's MB not GB) hard drive was going for $1295!

How times have changed.

[bmyers]

Well no one else has mentioned it so..

My first computer was a VIC-20, with cassette to store programs. My family had to love me because I would steal tapes and use them for the computer but not label them. Then they would stick the cassette into their player and out came DIGITAL HEADACHE SPEAK at a very loud volume instead of whatever 80's music they might have had on there. Great fun.

I quickly moved up to the C-64 with a modem (300 baud) and signed onto Compuserve.

Then I went Amiga. Blew the doors of any PC as far as sound and graphics. I eventually broke down and started using Intel based processors instead of Motorola at around the 386 level.

In my career, I've worked on things like the IBM 3090 series at a contractor down to the 80C51 at Intel.

Bill

[scorrpio]

First PC I owned was a 486 33MHz - had to really stretch the budget to make a jump from 386 - bought in 1992.

They sure evolved. Just assembled a system for a relative: Dual core Athlon 64 4600+, 800MHz front bus, 2GB of DDR2-800 high speed RAM, 500GB of HD space and a 7900GT/256MBvideo card. Under $1400 for all parts delivered....

[scmhogg]

In late 1979, I bought an early Tandy Color Computer. It had 4k ram and cassette tapes as storage media. I loved my CoCo and spent more money upgrading it than I have on the three new computers in my house.

CoCo users became a cult, not unlike the BT3'rs. We were a tight knit group, we had a couple of magazines, a convention in OC, and we chatted on Compuserve with our 300 baud modems. We wrote show-off programs, in basic, using less than 4k. Try writing a basic program for word-wrap in 4k. In 1986, when they upgraded to CoCoIII with 512K, I ran my law office with it, word processing and accounting, with a huge bi-directional daisy wheel and one slow disk drive.

My son now uses all my old CoCo stuff like we use antique tools. He writes basic and machine language like we use an old wood bench plane to smooth a board, when we have an electric planer. His young friends are astounded by basic, it's like he is writing using hieroglyphics or Latin.

Steve