Old farts talking about nerdy stuff. NO TROLLS OR SNOWFLAKES ALLOWED

Phones, Internet, Computers and such.
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Kuroneko
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Re: Old farts talking about nerdy stuff. NO TROLLS OR SNOWFLAKES ALLOWED

Post by Kuroneko »

In around 1989 I bought my first portable, it was the Macintosh Portable 5120, if I remember correctly it had some quite advanced programming features for the time.

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Forgot about this one I got around 1980, AFAIK it was the first pocket calculator programmable in Basic.

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Sharp PC-1211 Pocket Computer

Technical details:
Display - 24-digit alphanumeric dot matrix Liquid Crystal Display, with yellow filter.
In calculator mode it can display in scientific format 10 digits mantissa and 2 digits exponent.

Functions - Calculator and 1424 step BASIC language programmable computer.
26 Fixed memories.
Up to 178 Flexible memories (shared with program memory).
Battery back-up of CMOS memory.
A cassette recorder can be connected using an adapter cradle, allowing programs to be saved to audio cassettes. Also a printer & and cassette adapter was available, see photograph below, thus providing the full needs of a pocket computer.
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Re: Old farts talking about nerdy stuff. NO TROLLS OR SNOWFLAKES ALLOWED

Post by StroppyChops »

I played with Microbees at high school, but my first actual PC was a beige box, cost $6000 (I took out a four year loan) and had twin floppy drives but no hard disk. Monochrome, no sound except system beeps. I bought my first colour graphics card and SoundBlaster sound card to play Commander Keen.

Edit: In my early twenties I worked on an IBM mainframe as a tape loader and printing/bulk mail grunt at a government installation. The mainframe still had a legacy card reader attached and originally used 8 inch floppy disks to initialise. The site was a concrete block that was disguised as an unrelated retail store that was never open. Weird days.

Image
Last edited by StroppyChops on Thu May 10, 2018 12:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Old farts talking about nerdy stuff. NO TROLLS OR SNOWFLAKES ALLOWED

Post by that genius »

I had this desktop, available long before Apple/Windows, complete with inkwell

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Re: Old farts talking about nerdy stuff. NO TROLLS OR SNOWFLAKES ALLOWED

Post by pauladams »

Inkwell? I thought it was the place to put the power cords!
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Re: Old farts talking about nerdy stuff. NO TROLLS OR SNOWFLAKES ALLOWED

Post by Heng Heng Heng »

that genius wrote: Thu May 10, 2018 12:36 pm I had this desktop, available long before Apple/Windows, complete with inkwell

Image
Inkwell? That was for the printer wasn't it?
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Re: Old farts talking about nerdy stuff. NO TROLLS OR SNOWFLAKES ALLOWED

Post by Arget »

chkwoot wrote: Thu May 10, 2018 11:47 am Image
Wouldn't the disk be fucked after being stuck to the fridge with a magnet? =@
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Re: Old farts talking about nerdy stuff. NO TROLLS OR SNOWFLAKES ALLOWED

Post by chkwoot »

Arget wrote: Thu May 10, 2018 6:23 pm
chkwoot wrote: Thu May 10, 2018 11:47 am Image
Wouldn't the disk be fucked after being stuck to the fridge with a magnet? =@
There's the rub. :Bravo:
I am sooooo very sorry if you can't understand or appreciate my sarcastic facetiousness.
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Re: Old farts talking about nerdy stuff. NO TROLLS OR SNOWFLAKES ALLOWED

Post by that genius »

Chewing gum
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Re: Old farts talking about nerdy stuff. NO TROLLS OR SNOWFLAKES ALLOWED

Post by phuketrichard »

am reading a very interesting book ( well at least for me)
talking about the first nerdy hackers starting with phone hacking
Katoe Hafner, John Markoff-

"Cyperpunk,outlaws and hackers on the computer frontier"

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/369966.Cyberpunk

http://www.libgen.io/book/index.php?md5 ... A3D9BD99B8
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Re: Old farts talking about nerdy stuff. NO TROLLS OR SNOWFLAKES ALLOWED

Post by stevenjb »

chkwoot wrote:Maybe a mod could move the pc posts here? Please!



My first hard drive was an IBM 5.25" full height 10lb SCSI monster. A friend gave it to me, but I had to buy an Adaptec ISA SCSI controller and really expensive cable. The hard drive held a full 5 (YES FIVE) MEGABYTES (no, not bits, 8x more! Not kilo, 1024x more!) of data!
I could boot and run some programs WITHOUT swapping 3.5" 1.44MB floppies. It was heaven!
I built my first PC in 1988 - IBM DOS - was a challenge getting all those memory chips on the motherboard. First ever 3.5 inch hard drive, 20 meg by Seagate. Thought I was cool running a V20 processor.
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