lulu5kamz
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- Sep 14, 2015
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How I got the mailman to hate me 25 years ago....
- Thread starter sdkid
- Start date
Got my first personal computer in 1980, an Apple II+ with 48K RAM. Cost $1,200. Loaded & saved programs on a Panasonic cassette recorder. Wrote a Basic program that helped teach my daughter, also born in 1980, her alphabet!
Ex-wife worked in assembly for Shugart Associates in Sunnyvale, CA , home of the 5-1/4" mini-floppy. Al Shugart later left Shugart Associates and co-founded Seagate Technology in Fremont, CA. Apple drives were $500 but I bought a SA-400 drive from Shugart via my ex for $99 and with the help of an ill-gotten schematic, modified the drive to work with the Apple II .
Had a NEC 8023 dot matrix printer that also cost $500. Man, that thing was so noisy you almost needed ear protection. Jeez, that was A LOT of money back in '80, 81.
Ex-wife worked in assembly for Shugart Associates in Sunnyvale, CA , home of the 5-1/4" mini-floppy. Al Shugart later left Shugart Associates and co-founded Seagate Technology in Fremont, CA. Apple drives were $500 but I bought a SA-400 drive from Shugart via my ex for $99 and with the help of an ill-gotten schematic, modified the drive to work with the Apple II .
Had a NEC 8023 dot matrix printer that also cost $500. Man, that thing was so noisy you almost needed ear protection. Jeez, that was A LOT of money back in '80, 81.
GaryOkie
Pulling my weight
Hey Tony - same here - including first born daughter in 1980 soon teething on all the Apple II learning apps like Reader Rabbit and StickyBear. Taught her to spell her full name at a very early age - except she recited "space bar" as her middle name since that is how it was typed!
If you thought your dot matrix was loud, I'll raise you one Teletype terminal loaned from work as my first at-home remote terminal with punch paper tape input and 300baud modem. KaChunk, KaChunk, KaChunk as you pounded each key, then that was before it started printing. Loud MF.
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$6000 for a 13" laptop.
Wow what a deal.
Yep, ASR33. When I got to Sunnyvale, CA in '74 to work on traffic signals for a private contractor, the satellite office in No. Calif. had one to communicate work orders, invoices, payroll, etc. with the So. Calif. Home office South El Monte.
From those old teletypes I learned some ASCII, <STX>, <EOT> <CR>, <LF> and so forth that later helped me send alphanumeric messages to a Motorola Advisor Gold pager. We had a traffic signal system monitoring PC that watched 30 traffic signals and a DOS PC in the shop would receive a message via Hayes modem from the remote system master in the field when there was a malfunction. The local PC would print out the problem on a printer and unless you were standing there watching the PC monitor or the printer you'd never know it. The 2 of us were out in the field working. I wrote a Procomm command file that would intercept the printer text, parse it , then dial out, call the pager server, attach the name of the intersection, the nature of the malfunction and date/time and send it out to the pager. I would be notified via the pager with all that info in less than a minute, most of the time even before the police would discover it or be called. That was 1992 and as far as I know, it was the only one in that neck of the woods that had that feature.
I'm not much of a programmer, wasn't then and certainly not now, more of a hardware guy but I was kind of proud of that one single accomplishment.
I remember fighting a script like that! It was so good when it worked, so bad when it failed. I fought the TAP protocol for a long time.
I would get my alarm monitor working, then all of a sudden it would stop working. The paging switch would update the software
and some little thing would change. I would have to debug it again.
Ain't it the truth.
My '69 Boss 302 was only $4,500 new.....ah, those were the days.
Now the 69 BOSS would be worth a fortune, the laptop a paperweight.
Why do I have old laptops but not my old hot rods.
Mike A.
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- May 6, 2017
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And those old daisy wheel printers. So loud that they sold big-ass enclosures to put the things in. lol
Yeah, and the enclosures on wheels if you didn't lock 2 of the wheels, it'd take a step with each carriage return....in a few hours it would be across the room!
That's it! "TAP protocol"....I couldn't think of it until you said it. Man, it's been 30 years.....in the blink of an eye, it seems.
Some company with a symmetric name was big on it...like "OXO" or similar.
Thank you for posting! So many fond memories.....
My first pc was a Laser 486SX from Service Merchandise, and a Epson DotMatrix COLOR printer! WooooHoooo! I also put a sound blaster kit on layaway, took me 6 months to pay it off. Something like a 2x CDROM and a Sound Card. Freak'n awesome!
A couple more pics.....
the "accessories" page you could add to your Gateway computer order... Things like a RECORDABLE cd drive for only $429 MORE.... The "family" PC included "Mech Warrior 2" ..... oh the memories!
I really did not remember how INSANE the cost of a monitor was back then!! How about $649 for a 17" Sony??
And how many of you know the dot-pitch of your aperture grille? (Company was "PC Zone")
the "accessories" page you could add to your Gateway computer order... Things like a RECORDABLE cd drive for only $429 MORE.... The "family" PC included "Mech Warrior 2" ..... oh the memories!
I really did not remember how INSANE the cost of a monitor was back then!! How about $649 for a 17" Sony??
And how many of you know the dot-pitch of your aperture grille? (Company was "PC Zone")
That 17" Triniton was a CRT and probably weighed 35 lbs. Only $649.88!!!
Circa '98 I moved a 24" Trinitron that was used with a CAD system...that thing must have weighed 80 lbs...it was H-U-G-E and D-E-E-P !
Circa '98 I moved a 24" Trinitron that was used with a CAD system...that thing must have weighed 80 lbs...it was H-U-G-E and D-E-E-P !
IReallyLikePizza2
Known around here
With the chip shortage and inflation, we'll be back to a 200mhz CPU for $3500 pretty soon
Mike A.
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- May 6, 2017
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Palm Pilot. lol Still have one around here somewhere. Kind of pitiful compared to phones now but I thought that thing was great at one time. Then I got some kind of color HP pocket PC that ran Windows Mobile. Don't even remember what that was called.
And PC Card modems. Almost forgot about those too. I remember being in a hotel in Kansas City one night using one. Had to dial 9 to get an outside line and then you'd do 1 preceding the number for long distance. I'd already put the 1 into the stored number that I was trying to connect to so I was dialing 9-1-1 over and over like 50 times trying to get it to work. Police came and knocked on my hotel room door. lol
And PC Card modems. Almost forgot about those too. I remember being in a hotel in Kansas City one night using one. Had to dial 9 to get an outside line and then you'd do 1 preceding the number for long distance. I'd already put the 1 into the stored number that I was trying to connect to so I was dialing 9-1-1 over and over like 50 times trying to get it to work. Police came and knocked on my hotel room door. lol
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I saw that---caught my attention. Palm must have bought them out from USRobotics?? Or was Palm just a spinoff from USR? Or is it an ad typo??