A trip down memory lane

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ChiefM

ChiefM

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 1, 2011
Posts
570
Location
Georgia
Oh yes, the good old days, my first computer did not have a hard drive and I had to boot from floppies, the real big 5 1/2 inch floppies, the door with the lever. The cell phones that looked like bricks with an antenna or the infamous "BAG phone. I remember having to really plan a trip out on a map from wally word. We still had American Motors producing cars.

My daughter is 12 and has no memory of life without: WalMart, cable TV, internet, Microwave, DVD player or GPS.

There are places on the net that buy your old- dated electronics- bag phones etc. Who knew????

http://www.oaktreevintage.com/vintage_cell_phones.htm

I hate facebook; like me on face book, like us on facebook, to do anything you have log into facebook. Don't have one, never had one and never plan on having one.
 
ChiefM said:
Oh yes, the good old days, my first computer did not have a hard drive and I had to boot from floppies, the real big 5 1/2 inch floppies, the door with the lever. The cell phones that looked like bricks with an antenna or the infamous "BAG phone.
Click to expand...

The first computer I owned was a TRS-80 (trash 80 it was called) from Radio Shack - that had 8" floppies.

The first computer I programmed for the Burea of Reclamation was an IBM 650 vacuum tube machine with punched paper tape I/O until it was upgraded to punched cards. RAM as it is called today was a revolving drum. There was no random access (disk) storage in those days other than the IBM Ramac.
 
The first computer I owned was a TRS-80 (trash 80 it was called) from Radio Shack - that had 8" floppies.
Click to expand...

If you had floppy drives on the TRS-80 you added them after market or you had a model II.  The original TRS-80 model I had just a cassette interface for an audio cassette recorder.  When I added a floppy drive to mine it was a 5.25" after market (Pertec?).  But it could use both sides of the diskette if you flipped it over :)  I actually wrote software for those machines and got paid for it.
 
Ned..that sounds a little like the Adam I started with.

As far as facebook goes, since i signed in I now have a new 29 year old daughter, 2 new grandchildren, 3 nephews and a bunch of cousins. ;D If you want to keep skeletons in the closet :-X...don't open the door
 
IIRC my TRS80 came with 5.25" drive(s). Aye, you're right Ned, they were double sided, so we got a whopping 720K/disk instead of 360K. We'd economize by clipping a corner of a single sided floppy, allowing it to appear double sided.

I also recall working on the periphery of a computer with a rotating magnetic disk, a couple of decades before my first TRS80; I say 'on the periphery' because only the boss was allowed to touch it. If it went down in the middle of the night, he'd receive a phone call, arrive blind drunk, and would magically get it back online. Then he'd drive home without a care in the world.
 
Ned said:
If you had floppy drives on the TRS-80 you added them after market or you had a model II.
Click to expand...

While directing the Management Sciences Training Institute for the Office of Personnel Management in SF, I ordered the first programmable computer to be used in our seminars in the western region. We did an Intro to Micro Computers as well as a few programming courses.

I also bought one for myself - as I was about to start my own seminar business at the time. Yes, Ned, they were both TRS-80 II, with 8" floppy drives.

It wasn't too long after that Radio Shack introduced the first hard drive for the Trash 80 -- 5meg for $2995. And it was huge . . .

 
The Zilog Z-80 was the microprocessor of the day.
 
Several years ago Jerry sold our bag phone on ebay for about $60 and the acoustic coupler for about $45.  Not bad for outdated equipment!  The guy who bought the bag phone lived on the Mexican border and wanted something that would "reach out" when calling his family south of the border.  We were floored when the acoustic coupler sold at that price!

ArdraF
 
cp/m has special meaning for me. But none of this has any relevance to the intent of this topic, which was to talk about the history of our original host.

I've split several messages from this topic, and I'll probably split more. I should probably also rename the original topic to avoid further confusion.
 
The next generation for me began in the mid 80's with the Kaypro transportable computer. I bought 4 of them plus 4 other machines that had external monitors, an overhead projector, lotsa cables/power strips/wire, and a van. We advertised, Have Computer Seminar, Will Travel.

I could get SW for Wordproccessing, Spreadsheet, and  Database plus class exercises all on a single 5 1/4 diskette. My biggest contract was in Las Vegas - so those were fun times.

It was, as now, difficult to keep up with the technology -- not just for one machine, but for full classes. Clients wanted the latest hardware and software. I finally backed off and bid on classes for the State of CA - and let them supply the machines and SW.
 
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