unhinged said:
That was 1979 or 80 I think. It was cack btw.
25 years of computing!!!!
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That was 1979 or 80 I think. It was cack btw.
nleader
Guest
Only 25 years?
My first personal computer (1975) was an IBM 370/135. 256K of RAM, several very large 3330 dismountable disk drives (dunno how big they were) and a 1403 line printer. You see, once the night shift workload was finished, we could do what we liked with the b**gger until 8am when the day shift arrived. I learnt Cobol and 370 Assembler like that until I could get someone to pay me to do it.
Scary that such a little specification actually ran the corporate systems of a major retail products business.
Norman
My first personal computer (1975) was an IBM 370/135. 256K of RAM, several very large 3330 dismountable disk drives (dunno how big they were) and a 1403 line printer. You see, once the night shift workload was finished, we could do what we liked with the b**gger until 8am when the day shift arrived. I learnt Cobol and 370 Assembler like that until I could get someone to pay me to do it.
Scary that such a little specification actually ran the corporate systems of a major retail products business.
Norman
I think it's a poor reflection on the software of today that it's so huge and requires such hefty hardware in order for it to run. People are less inclined to spend time optimising their code because they don't have to when they've got 1Gb of ram and also because in most business's, time constraints don't allow it. For the cynical, an ever increasing demand on hardware resources keeps the hardware companies in profits. I think it's not unfair to say most programmers these days have never touched any assembly and probably a lot of them wouldn't even know what it was.nleader said:
I remember the first home x86 based PC we bought was a 486 DX4-100Mhz with 8MB of RAM.
At the time we could have had a 512MB hard-disk (I think) or an 850MB hard disk. We decided to go for the 850MB hard disk option my dad's words being: "wow, we'll never run out of hard disk space now!"
My current home PC now has a 3Ghz proccessor in it, 1GB of RAM and 600GB of hard disk space, oh how technology has moved on
At the time we could have had a 512MB hard-disk (I think) or an 850MB hard disk. We decided to go for the 850MB hard disk option my dad's words being: "wow, we'll never run out of hard disk space now!"
My current home PC now has a 3Ghz proccessor in it, 1GB of RAM and 600GB of hard disk space, oh how technology has moved on
Shep
Shep of the Dessert
My fiirst PC, a twin floppy amstrad from the mid 80's still works nowadays, it can still run an engraving machine, no problem at all 
I've used pc's for work ever since then and still don't know anything about how it all works
Shep
I've used pc's for work ever since then and still don't know anything about how it all works
Shep
The only other computer I remember having before the DX4-100 was an Atari 1040STe, had over 600 floppy disks at 720KB big each with several games on them, ah the days of pompey pirates 
Although apparently we did have one of those computers that ran off tapes before the Atari
Although apparently we did have one of those computers that ran off tapes before the Atari
Fanum
Toubab
Just came across these adverts which are quite amusing now....look at the prices !!!!
I've got just over a terrabyte of space here....by the prices in the ad above, that's $2.7 million's worth
I've got just over a terrabyte of space here....by the prices in the ad above, that's $2.7 million's worth
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Gecko said:I still use an HP12 calculator today because it is the best for the job. Any financial calculations to do with time/money the HP12 is the dogs bollox. They've been around since the dawn of the microchip. Sometimes less is more
I visited the 'production line' of the HP 12C in Corvallis in 1982. Actually it was a large table with four chairs round it! I got my 12C in 1983 when I organised a bulk supply as speakers' gifts for a conference. The thing I really love about it is people's faces when they pick it up and tried to fathom how to use RPN (reverse polish notation).
The real breakthrough was the HP-35 scientific calculator that obsoleted the slide rule. This came in 1972 just after Apollo 13 mission. The name was because it had 35 keys.
Going further back, my first exposure to computers was in 1968 using Fortran: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDF9
Tim
bustupbiker
Registered user
Fanum said:How scary is that!!!!
I came across a link tonight to the old BBC 'b'....my first computer...1981!!!
Back then I learnt how to programme in Basic....and it was the best thing in the world 'cos it had an enormous 32kb of RAM.......FFS!!!!!
We had a 5.25 inch floppy drive..curn churn churn...my favourite game was 'Elite'.
According to the specs I've just looked up, it had a 1.8ghz processor........woot!!!!
Doesn't Moore's law says that the speed of processors doubles every 24 months?????....hmmmm, let's think......
1.8
3.2
6.4
12.8
25ish mhz after 8 years???
That's wrong then.......
I had a second hand ZX81 for a while
But then came (for me anyway) the first x'86 PC.....a 25 mhz monster IIRC.....with an internal 5.25 flopy drive then one day me old man (a scientist, so he was well up for it
But back to the point....it was only 4 years after the BBC that we got the motorola chipped 25mhz machine.....that's twice as fast as it should have been
IIRC, the machine ran windows 1.0, and practically every game I got I had to write a dos batch file to get to run
WTF was that all about then!!!!
Whoaa feck me...I've just Googled it to find a timeline and the memories are flooding back.....who remembers loading 20 odd floppies to install windows!!!!
Sorry about this...it's very sad and very geeky, but cider and a lack of fags has an odd effect
Type 'win' to enter windows
I have all of them and more in my Attic, Dragon 32 any 1.
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