# Antique Computers



## FHBOY (Jun 15, 2010)

conorkilleen said:


>


5.5" dual floppies, built in keypad. VGA monochrome monitor - WHERE CAN I GET ONE?!?!??!

:ranger: Does anyone, any computer nerd, know which computer Itzy was sitting at?

I have to agree - the world is way to beautiful to sit at our keyboards and argue. You who are in Mexico, go out and enjoy and explore. WE who are still not, continue to dream and enjoy yourself.


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## TundraGreen (Jul 15, 2010)

FHBOY said:


> 5.5" dual floppies, built in keypad. VGA monochrome monitor - WHERE CAN I GET ONE?!?!??!
> 
> :ranger: Does anyone, any computer nerd, know which computer Itzy was sitting at?
> 
> I have to agree - the world is way to beautiful to sit at our keyboards and argue. You who are in Mexico, go out and enjoy and explore. WE who are still not, continue to dream and enjoy yourself.


Looks like a TRS 80 (Originally Tandy, then Radio Shack). It took me three tries. My first guess was Osbourne, then KayPro.

TRS 80










PS My first home computer was an LNW 80, which was a kit version of the TRS 80. It used a cassette tape for storage and loading the operating system. The one in the picture must be later, because floppies had come along by then.


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## mickisue1 (Mar 10, 2012)

TundraGreen said:


> Looks like a TRS 80 (Originally Tandy, then Radio Shack). It took me three tries. My first guess was Osbourne, then KayPro.
> 
> TRS 80
> 
> ...


Mine was a Commodore 64. WOW so much memory!


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## pappabee (Jun 22, 2010)

TundraGreen said:


> Looks like a TRS 80 (Originally Tandy, then Radio Shack). It took me three tries. My first guess was Osbourne, then KayPro.
> 
> TRS 80
> 
> ...


It is a Trash 80 but with a b/w screen not the original green one. I thought I was great stuff when I longed into a site with my 800 baud modem and got a green blog. And then it wanted me to do everything in DOS. I still know most of the commands.


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## conklinwh (Dec 19, 2009)

Not sure whether this old computer link or crime & violence.
[Comment left on Security Thread]
As to old computers, I was fresh out of the Army and an IBM sales trainee in 1970 when I had opportunity for 1st large sale, a System 360 model 40. With the associated I/O, it took almost a floor of an NYC skyscraper and required enough air conditioning to support a small town. I spent almost 3 months with the customer working out the applications so we could size the memory as customer was concerned that he needed more than 64K(yes not Mb or Gb, K).


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## joaquinx (Jul 3, 2010)

In 1984 or was it 1983, I bought an IBM PC with two floppy drives and 128k of memory. Cost - 3,600 usd. I was also the Tech Manager for HP/3000's where three disc drives totaling 1.2 GB of storage cost nearly 20,000 usd.


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## pappabee (Jun 22, 2010)

conklinwh said:


> Not sure whether this old computer link or crime & violence.
> [Comment left on Security Thread]
> As to old computers, I was fresh out of the Army and an IBM sales trainee in 1970 when I had opportunity for 1st large sale, a System 360 model 40. With the associated I/O, it took almost a floor of an NYC skyscraper and required enough air conditioning to support a small town. I spent almost 3 months with the customer working out the applications so we could size the memory as customer was concerned that he needed more than 64K(yes not Mb or Gb, K).


Did it have a raised floor so that the wires could go between computers? Did it use the verrrrrry wide green bar paper? Did it have punch cards or had it progressed to tape?

I remember taking my A+ test two weeks after they added Windows to the test. What a mess, no one understood the questions let alone know the answers.

I also remember that my first hand held calc was a TI that cost $135.00US. The current calc that does the exact same thing you can get at WalMart for $5.99US.

Those were the days. It took me weeks to understand what a GUI was. I was low even back then.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

In the late 1960s when I was a graduate student in Spanish at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, one semester I had a part-time job at the university computer lab. I knew nothing about computers, but that wasn't a problem. I was just a clerk at the reception desk and was accepted programmed punch-cards from computer science students, to be be loaded into the very large computer in the room, by someone else, of course, to see if they would function as promised.


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## conklinwh (Dec 19, 2009)

pappabee said:


> Did it have a raised floor so that the wires could go between computers? Did it use the verrrrrry wide green bar paper? Did it have punch cards or had it progressed to tape?
> 
> I remember taking my A+ test two weeks after they added Windows to the test. What a mess, no one understood the questions let alone know the answers.
> 
> ...


Yes, required a raised floor where wires and much of cooling ducts were. It used punched card I/O but had both tape and removable disk storage(2314s).
Isla, my university in 1962 did not have a Computer Science degree, it was a minor in the Industrial Engineering department. I can remember very well the long nights on the keypunch and submitting hopeful that didn't make a keypunch error that would abort the program. A bad sign when the decks came back was that they were wrapped in very little printer paper. Wow, 50 years ago!


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## joaquinx (Jul 3, 2010)

The day before I had submitted some coding sheets to be keypunched. The following day, I was running them through a card reader and during the compiling of the program there was an error. The keypunch room was at the far end of the long building and I didn't want to walk down there just to punch up one card. I took out my trusty pocket knife and cut out the necessary punches to make the correction. I worked and I was placed in awe by the other programmers in the data center.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

conklinwh said:


> Yes, required a raised floor where wires and much of cooling ducts were. It used punched card I/O but had both tape and removable disk storage(2314s).
> Isla, my university in 1962 did not have a Computer Science degree, it was a minor in the Industrial Engineering department. I can remember very well the long nights on the keypunch and submitting hopeful that didn't make a keypunch error that would abort the program. A bad sign when the decks came back was that they were wrapped in very little printer paper. Wow, 50 years ago!


I remember looks of glee or despair on the faces of the students when I returned their stacks of punched cards to them after they had been run through the computer.


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## conklinwh (Dec 19, 2009)

You are lucky, cutting out is a lot easier than try to glue in mis-punched holes or some combination thereof.


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## TundraGreen (Jul 15, 2010)

Isla Verde said:


> I remember looks of glee or despair on the faces of the students when I returned their stacks of punched cards to them after they had been run through the computer.


We are definitely showing our age here. As an undergraduate I worked as an aide for a computer class. The college didn't have its own computer. I would bundle up the card decks for students and mail them off to the computer center at MIT. When the output came back (yes, 132 column with horizontal green stripes) again through the US Postal Service, I would separate the output, wrap it around the appropriate card deck, and put it out for the students to pick up. The turn-around was about 4 or 5 days to get one run. Debugging was more of a challenge in those days.


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## conklinwh (Dec 19, 2009)

TundraGreen said:


> We are definitely showing our age here. As an undergraduate I worked as an aide for a computer class. The college didn't have its own computer. I would bundle up the card decks for students and mail them off to the computer center at MIT. When the output came back (yes, 132 column with horizontal green stripes) again through the US Postal Service, I would separate the output, wrap it around the appropriate card deck, and put it out for the students to pick up. The turn-around was about 4 or 5 days to get one run. Debugging was more of a challenge in those days.



Luckily we had our own GE 425 so we got the good or bad news the next morning.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

TundraGreen said:


> We are definitely showing our age here.


If you don't ask my age, I won't ask yours.


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## RVGRINGO (May 16, 2007)

Hmmm. University in the 50s was so simple with real pens and pencils. However, the slide rule could be a challenge at times. Fortunately, though, we weren't distracted by TV; just beer and that newfangled snack; pizza.


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## conorkilleen (Apr 28, 2010)

I know nothing of these slide rules and punched cards. What is this sorcery you speak of? Are they compatible with my Macbook Air and iPad2?


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

RVGRINGO said:


> Hmmm. University in the 50s was so simple with real pens and pencils. However, the slide rule could be a challenge at times. Fortunately, though, we weren't distracted by TV; just beer and that newfangled snack; pizza.


I was in college the first time in the middle and late 1960s when paper and pens and even pencils were still the way we took notes and wrote papers. I was a lousy typist, so I made ample use of white-out and erasable bond paper. I never got the hang of using the slide rule, so when pocket calculators came into general use, I was very happy.


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## conklinwh (Dec 19, 2009)

RVGRINGO said:


> Hmmm. University in the 50s was so simple with real pens and pencils. However, the slide rule could be a challenge at times. Fortunately, though, we weren't distracted by TV; just beer and that newfangled snack; pizza.


I went to basically an engineering school so "uniform" included a belt loop for the slide rule and a plastic pocket protector. Calculators were coming out but very expensive. I remember that we had an exchange student that could do calculations faster on an abacus.


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## chicois8 (Aug 8, 2009)

E BAY has a couple for sale from $500 to $1000.......


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## conklinwh (Dec 19, 2009)

Assume that you mean slide rule and not pocket protector. I'm such a pack rat that I may have one stashed in an attic somewhere.
I should have added to earlier post that my college years were 1962-66 so we had a lot of Kennedy marriages and Johnson babies.


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## Guest (Jun 18, 2012)

My first computer class was Fortran, and we used punch cards for our programs. We would then hand in our deck to the CDC 3400 computer attendant. There were usually stacks of boxes filled with punch cards waiting to be run. Your results would normally take 1-2 hours to get back, so everyone would camp out in the hallway.

During slow times, some enterprising CompSci students would program Playboy centerfolds and then sell the greenbar printouts for $1 to the early form of geeks/nerds.

At the end of the semesters there would be the normal jam of last minute projects/work, and results would sometimes take 24 hours to get back. Some scheming students would switch one card in other decks in front of them in the queue so the other program would get an error or get stuck in a DO loop. The computer would kick out that deck and get on to theirs. This would reduce the wait time to get results back.

Later, our house with 70 guys bought one of the first IBM PCs with 64K of RAM for everyone to share ($3000?). I would sometimes start running a program at midnight, hoping that it would be finished in time for my first class in the morning. Somebody else would come home late, see the computer running with no one there, ignore the note stuck on the screen and shut it off thinking they would save energy.



-


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

GringoCArlos said:


> My first computer class was Fortran, and we used punch cards for our programs. We would then hand in our deck to the CDC 3400 computer attendant. There were usually stacks of boxes filled with punch cards waiting to be run. Your results would normally take 1-2 hours to get back, so everyone would camp out in the hallway.
> 
> During slow times, some enterprising CompSci students would program Playboy centerfolds and then sell the greenbar printouts for $1 to the early form of geeks/nerds.
> 
> ...


Was that in the Dominican Republic?


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## FHBOY (Jun 15, 2010)

Man - you guys are OLD!!! I mean my first interface on that computer in high school was punched tape. The computer was the size of a desk and had a drum memory. I am racking my brain to remember who made it. The I/O was an IBM typewriter, not a selectric, but one with a carriage. When I went to high school ('65-'68) I went to a college interview. I wanted to be a per-engineering major. I remember the interviewer looking at my HS transcript and asking why I hadn't opted for AP calculus instead of "wasting [my] time with the computer" courses.

First calcuator? It was a TI with four functions, with sculpted case that I bought at Macy's for $79 I borrowed from my mother. It was as big, almost, as a telephone receiver in those days.

Slide rule - still have mine in my night table - don't know why, still can;t figure out how to make it work.

Oh yeah, in junior high school, I "wasted" a whole year taking typing on typewriters that had keys with no letters. I was one of the only boys in the class. I don;t know how I would have gotten through school erasable bond paper and the little white out strips. Was I amazed when typewriters came out that had the self correcting tape on a little orange spool next to the ribbon.

You want a walk down memory lane? I was managing editor of my college newspaper and remember being at the printer every night (weekly) before delivery, working with the guys who used the linotype machines, setting hot type and laying out the type in frames. That's old, especially now when those old linotype machines are now in museums.

Gotta go, the 21st century is calling!


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## pappabee (Jun 22, 2010)

I was a mid-termee so my college years were Jan 62 to June 67, I was in a 5 year program with nothing to do with computers. I just enjoyed them. My trash80 was a joy. Log onto the Prodigy web site with it's green background and type a message at 300 BD. Wait 20 minutes (OK so it didn't take that long but it sure felt like it) for a response then remember the DOS command for whatever I wanted to do.

Over the years I got my A+, got certified in Office, NT, networking and a bunch of other programs. While all the time being an operations manager for different companies. 

I must share with you my major success in the IT field. I was working for a day labor staffing company that had 54 offices from Calf to Fla. I was promoted to be the IT manager for Texas, Washington State and Fla. It was Christmas and being Jewish they felt it was OK for me to spend a few days at the home office in San Diego Calf. 

I was walking through the department when a big confusion broke out. The corp IT manager, the programmer, two techs and a few other people were gathered around a computer and a phone trying to help this poor asst. manager in Fla. He had to close out the week and print his reports before he could go home. For some reason he couldn't get the reports to print. The group had spent almost a hour trying to get the reports to print. They had three different kinds of remote access and none of them could get the 4 different printers to work.

I listened for a while and then asked a typical newbie question. What color is the light on his printer? The answer came back, What light? The IT manager told him to turn on his printer and tell us what happened. The final result was that he ran out of paper after printing 18 sets of his reports. 

I told them that even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while.:ranger::clap2:


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## TundraGreen (Jul 15, 2010)

pappabee said:


> ...I was walking through the department when a big confusion broke out. The corp IT manager, the programmer, two techs and a few other people were gathered around a computer and a phone trying to help this poor asst. manager in Fla. He had to close out the week and print his reports before he could go home. For some reason he couldn't get the reports to print. The group had spent almost a hour trying to get the reports to print. They had three different kinds of remote access and none of them could get the 4 different printers to work.
> 
> I listened for a while and then asked a typical newbie question. What color is the light on his printer? The answer came back, What light? The IT manager told him to turn on his printer and tell us what happened. The final result was that he ran out of paper after printing 18 sets of his reports.
> 
> I told them that even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while.:ranger::clap2:


That reminds me of a, probably apocryphal, story about a call that a support tech got.

Someone called and said his computer wouldn't work. The tech asked what the symptoms were and the caller just said it doesn't do anything. After a lengthy exchange of questions and answers about what was on the screen or not, the technician finally asked the question you asked, "Was it turned on?". The user said it wouldn't turn on, so the tech asked if it was plugged in. The user said he couldn't tell. The tech asked why not. And the user said it was too dark, there was a power failure and he had no lights at his house.


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## pappabee (Jun 22, 2010)

TundraGreen said:


> That reminds me of a, probably apocryphal, story about a call that a support tech got.
> 
> Someone called and said his computer wouldn't work. The tech asked what the symptoms were and the caller just said it doesn't do anything. After a lengthy exchange of questions and answers about what was on the screen or not, the technician finally asked the question you asked, "Was it turned on?". The user said it wouldn't turn on, so the tech asked if it was plugged in. The user said he couldn't tell. The tech asked why not. And the user said it was too dark, there was a power failure and he had no lights at his house.


had a few similar calls like that over the years.


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## sparks (Jun 17, 2007)

Mexico thread --- yayayay

I just wrote a semi-long history but hit 'refresh' rather than spell check and message boards don't save drafts.

Short story:: Artist, hippie, working for a living until my dad gave me his old RS Color computer in early 80's. Built an IBM clone from Heath Zenith. Joined FidoNet when I could afford a hard drive and distributed some of the first Linux OS's in the early '90's. Qualified for CNC and various MS tech stuff ... but always ended up a sysadmin situation. Did it for the last 15 years before retiring. Turned out t be my retirement


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## stilltraveling (May 7, 2012)

mickisue1 said:


> Mine was a Commodore 64. WOW so much memory!


Mine too . . . and it still works!


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## mickisue1 (Mar 10, 2012)

conorkilleen said:


> I know nothing of these slide rules and punched cards. What is this sorcery you speak of? Are they compatible with my Macbook Air and iPad2?


Probably not, Conor.

I had to use a slide rule for both Chem 1001 and Chem 1002, prereqs for the nursing program, back in the early 70's.

The wealthier students had calculators, SO amazing that you could add, subtract, multiply, divide and even get percentages so quickly!

Unfortunately, at the time such a calculator cost well north of $200, and that was four months rent for me, in the apartment I shared with three other girls.


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## stilltraveling (May 7, 2012)

conorkilleen said:


> I know nothing of these slide rules and punched cards. What is this sorcery you speak of? Are they compatible with my Macbook Air and iPad2?


There's an app for that! 

App Store - Slide Rule


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## conorkilleen (Apr 28, 2010)

stilltraveling said:


> There's an app for that!
> 
> App Store - Slide Rule


Hahahaha. Awesome.


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