Thread for discussing our personal computing histories?

[bibzgi]

Dear ChitChat,

I just posted my suggestion at TSA:

[snip]
Wouldn't it be great to have a special thread for discussing our personal histories with computing?

As a geezer, I would love to nostalgically yap about how I first met a computer, first got my own computer, used this or that OS, blah blah blah.

I'm thinking that such a thread should have some structure.

Maybe one of the moderators can list questions and limit answer space so us nostalgic geezers don't write long boring stories.

In the meantime, I'll post the concept to the chitchat forum and see what folks think.
[snip]

Did I explain the suggestion fair enough? Can TSA use such a thread and if so where should the thread be in the forums?

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

[Ritho]

My first computer was a AST Bravo II 386 with 1MB RAM and a 40MB hard disk the size of a house and a gray-scale monitor. (16 shades of gray! Sure beat the green or amber monochrome monitors that were so common then)

There was this program back then called Stacker. It was a hard disk compression program that could compress and uncompress data on the fly. Leading edge technology, it was! I put that on there and had upwards to 80MB of free space. Then I loaded my operating system Digital-Research DOS a.k.a Dr. DOS plus all my other software, and used up about 10MB of space. I remember saying once, after hearing about 200MB hard drives, "What could you possibly do with such large drives?"

I also had one of these. Tandy 102 I'll tell you I had this for years. It was one of the best early computers ever made, and at times I wish I still had it. It only ran basic of course, but the battery life was something like 40 hours or so.

[Jojoyee]

The first PC that I tried out was Apple II which my classmate bought one during my study time. It was amazing to see the PC solving some equations so fast. At a university at that time, I'd had a chance to use a stack of punched cards, (a card represents one line of commands ) to input programs to the main frame for compilation.

After graduation, I bought my first own PC running on DOS with a 20 MG harddisk, which was offered by a supplier for a free upgrade from 10 MG.

Now are we counting harddisk storage in TB?

BTW, this is a good article: A Brief History of Personal Computers

[Anupam]

Originally Posted by bibzgi

Can TSA use such a thread and if so where should the thread be in the forums?

The right place for this thread is here in the ChitChat forum only. So, carry on the discussion here please.

[tushR]

First 2 days in my college I tried figuring out whats Internet and how one can chat - how voice will go through glass (read monitor)and reach other person...
My rich friend - who had the luxuary to have internet at home helped me to create my first email account - he asked which email provider I want to use - hotmail or yahoo ?- being very decent guy, I quickly rejected hotmail (read hotMALE)...hence my first yahoo id surfaced .

[Jojoyee]

I used to like "double-sided double-density" pre-formatted 3.5" floppy disks with a storage capacity of 1.44 MB per disk and insisted then to throw away 5.25" floppy disks of lower capacity.

Still, I'm keeping a few boxes of 3.5" floppy disks mainly for good memory and my PC has a 3.5" floppy disk drive added, though hardly used.

Taking its place is a USB flash disk hooked to a keychain put in my pocket and SD cards for cameras, easily with a storage capacity in a few GB each.

[jim]

Back in the 60s I loved to read science fiction. Especially stories about these modern computers that suddenly developed personalities and took over the world. I worked for the Overseas Telegrams department of the Post Office and, slowly, computerised stuff was coming in. Because we knew how to input stuff and use a VDU, some colleagues and I were headhunted by a large American bank in London to assist with the implementation of their new suite of equipment. The technical boffins there showed me more and encouraged me to buy the latest up to date equipment available to the public - the ZX Spectrum. The new version, with a proper () keyboard and a MASSIVE 40K hard drive. With the advent of the new software in it, it enabled use of a cassette player to load a 10 or 15K program in not much more than 10 minutes or so. (Allowing, of course, for a couple of failures which could mean anything up to half hour or so). Then I was ready to play the latest games - Space Invaders, Breakout, or even PacMan. As my appetite grew, and I saw the machine my friend had (Commodore 64), I decided to go one better and bought the latest. The Commodore Amiga. If I remember rightly I paid £600 for it second hand. A real bargain. I actually managed to sell the Spectrum for £100 to help towards the cost. After that, of course, I went down the same route as everyone else with PCs running Windows 3 onwards. It was an interesting learning curve though. (And a bit expensive).

[Ritho]

At one point my family had an extra room in our house that they decided to rent out to have a little extra income. The Guy who moved in had an 8088. He was drooling over a 286 that had just come out, and I distinctly remember him saying that it was the fastest computer that you could buy and that they would probably never be able to make anything faster. He said, "Think about it. The thing is already making computations at the speed of light. There ain't nothing faster than the speed of light." LOL

[Awgeewhiz]

I remember my first set of sticks and rocks.

One stick would equal 1. One rock would equal more than one.

But seriously.

My first five dollars ever made programming was taking a manual
in a Radio Shack store and inputing a color changing banner display
on a TRS-80. The strore manager loved it.

I also played with TI-9900, Commodor 64's, APPLE I, (yes, there was
an Apple One, no hard drive, used a floppy and had all of 4k memory.
Yeup, 4k. Everything was done in machine code)

Then there was Atari, Sinclair, Amiga. *sigh*

[tushR]

Originally Posted by Awgeewhiz

I also played with TI-9900, Commodor 64's, APPLE I, (yes, there was
an Apple One, no hard drive, used a floppy and had all of 4k memory.
Yeup, 4k. Everything was done in machine code)

Then there was Atari, Sinclair, Amiga. *sigh*

These are computers ??? The oldest I have seen is Windows 95 .