Forum Moderators: open
AT-Turbo-286 12MHZ
80286 zero wait state motherboard
640K Ram
Socket for math coprocessor
42 Meg Hard Drive - autoparking!
1:1 controller
Paradise VGA System (640x480)
14" VGA Monitor
and it was 100% IBM compatible!
I thought I got the deal of the century because my in-laws paid $3,000 for their used IBM XT which had a 10 Meg drive.
On which I eventually installed GEOS, an early GUI created in part by our own Mr. Tabke.
the first one that was mine and soly mine was his office hand me down. secvond one was also a offcie hand me down (my favorit a gateway tower 90mhzx pentium tower). then he baught me another one around 1999 he spend near 2k on in. the one i have now which is the first one I have ever baught i paid i think $600 for.
Surfing the Web was sure was a lot different back then.
My own first, was a Vic20. I can't remember how much I paid for it, but under a couple hundred. In '87 I spent about $1500 for a smallish one - about 20MB HD, monitor and s/w included. In '89 I spent about $2100 on a Toshiba laptop - no color, that I could afford, so it was the blue and gray screen with 20MB.
Since then there have been a number of them and I want a new one again :)
No one ever had more fun with a machine than me with that one. I put in a Hercules card (increased the monitor's resolution), a Quadboard (to boost the memory and so the machine actually had a clock in it), and a hard drive (probably 10 Meg or so, back in those days you had to park the head of the hard drive before you turned the machine off). I think it ran on DOS 3.0? I think DOS included BASIC back then, although some where along the line I started using TurboBasic (Borland). I loved those years.
"Socket for math coprocessor" - OMG, totally forgot about stuff like that, to funny!
And a 720 x 348 monochrome screen .
For about 2000 Deutsche Mark (about 1000 EUR) I think
It came with MS DOS 3.2, and the graphical user interface GEM. GEM was much better than Windows, but unfortunately quality does not always win.
Found a picture on the internet.
[benser.net...]
I thought we were reaching back the other day discussing the good ole days of Viper and TNT video cards.
So you guys really ran the OS off of floppies?
That's crazy talk!
Radio Shack TRS-80 with worthless AUDIO tape drive. About $900 around 1978. A few years later added a pin-feed dot matrix printer for about $900.
TRS80 Model II came around 1982 for base price of $3599. You could actually do something with it.
Tandy 128
I think this was the same one I had. Tandy Color Computer, had a disk drive and keyboard, ran programs in BASIC and general binary, you had to attach a television to be your MONITOR!
Oh the days of if a$=inkey$ then awesome...
TRS80 Model II came around 1982 for base price of $3599. You could actually do something with it.
Like what?
I think I learned Fortran on one.
I opted for the less expensive 10meg HD, and the machine still set me back about 2 grand
The one that I am proud of is my twin-xeon rack-mount server (in 2003 and about 3,000 GBP). The reason that I am so proud is that, shortly before this, the company that then employed me got a single-cpu rack-mount server, and it cost them about 35,000 GBP. Also, about 7 years earlier I was helping to install 20+ Compaq Proliant NT4 twin-Pentium-Pro rack-mounts at a bank, which also cost 35,000+ GBP each. Just one of the differences between Linux and Windows.
But the first real (*cough*) computer I had was a PC-AT knockoff with an 8086 processor running at 10 Mhz (when most PCs were running at 4.77, and a few were running at 8), the aforementioned Hercules Graphics Card, which had both serial out and RCA video out (which I used primarily to run to my VCR, so I could record my games of Ancient Art of War, then play them back and try and figure out where it had all gone so woefully wrong), a 20Meg Hard Drive, 640K of RAM, DOS 3.2, a 5.25" floppy. Also picked up a Roland DG-PR1011 printer at the same time, and a 15" monochrome (amber) monitor, even though the graphics card could do color (color monitors just weren't as "crisp" as the monochrome ones at the time.)
The whole package came in at just under $3000 CDN in '87.
I loved that machine and kept it running until 1998, long past any usefulness. I kept it around out of sentimentality, and to go back and play AAW every now and then, until the hard drive finally imploded. (This was the first, and hopefully last, time I have ever heard the banshee wail of the read/write head coming into contact with a platter at full spin.)
Piles of machines since. And no, I'll never again be able to rattle off the stats of any machine like I can for that "first golden baby" - including the one I'm sitting at right now.
I had bought some golf programs to play on it.
Unfortunately the salesman obviously didn't know any more than I did and sent me off with only 4mb of ram. In those days Windows needed 3½mb to run leaving nothing for the golf game. It used to take about 5 minutes for the golfer to complete his swing.
As there was no other way to do it in those days I jumped on a flight to Miami with no luggage, raced to the OD store, bought 12mb of ram for a ridiculous price ($400 seems to stick in my mind) and raced back to the airport in a taxi and caught the same plane home.
Now it worked!
First real usable computer I got was for $100 from my friend, it was a little one piece Mac 512Ke with a printer! Neat computer, I really liked it!
Glad to see that just about everyone here agrees with that view.
PS: Does anyone actually keep kitchen recipes on their home computer, even now? That was the Killer App of 1977 LOL.
Did anyone else ever play the Dr. Brain games? We had the first (and best) one - Castle of Dr. Brain - and I remember being amazed at the graphics. Actually, from what I remember, I'm still amazed at the graphics. Not that they were really that great, by today's standards, but how on earth did they manage to get the entire code and graphics for the game on the single installation floppy? Or maybe it had two disks, but either way, it seems like a ton of data to get into a maximum of 3MB or so.
Oh, I forgot, we did have a Kaypro something-or-other back in the '80's. Black, with a tiny screen that would only display that hideous lime-green, and the monitor built right in to a lunker of a case. That goes back a long ways, and the only thing I ever did on that one was play "Wumpus." Then there was also the Commodore 64, which was given to us, and had the tape drive built right in to the back of the hugely-thick keyboard.
I recall the sales staff (thats me as well) getting a ticking off from the business owners for slating these machines.
My first machine cost £49.95 back in 1981 must have been a fortune a good weeks wage was £150 then, how times change.
First Pc was circa 1997 impulse buy really, oh did I want a modem as well? why not at tleast I look and laugh at this new internet thing which is bound to fail....
I was scared to death to touch it because I was afraid I would "break"it. LOL
Went through 2 more used ones until I bought my first new one for about 1000 dollars, about 2 computers ago. :)
I wear them out!
P.S.
The monitor still works well, been through the family and still in use.
Am I the oldest here?
Radio Shack TRS-80 with worthless AUDIO tape drive. About $900 around 1978. A few years later added a pin-feed dot matrix printer for about $900.TRS80 Model II came around 1982 for base price of $3599. You could actually do something with it.
I don't think you're quite the oldest one.
In 1972 I bought a calculator with a memory function for $210. It used three D batteries. In 1970 during Chemstry I class, we had to walk down the hall to use the calculator, so having your own that was the size of a small telephone directory was realllly cutting edge.
So, in my first job in 1974 some marketing VP comes walking down the hall passing out TI calculators with this little memory card on plastic and all of these buttons--wow!
Someone in the building bought a Radio Shack computer in and thought we should sell them to farmers. In the beginning there was a lot of discussion of "What would you DO with a computer?" A "personal computer" was a weird idea.
Bill Gates really did have real vision.
I remember mechanical calculators, costing about $1,000 in the 1950s. Could add and divide. Like adding machines only vastly more complex. Very loud.
Dad bought an office digital calculator sometime in the early 1970s for about $250. No print out.
I remember mechanical calculators, costing about $1,000 in the 1950s.
[xnumber.com...]
As I recall, the big selling point for electronic calculators was their quietness. A large room full of mechanical machines could be deafening.
--
Some mechanical calculators were powered by hand crank like the Burroughs above. The one I played with as a kid had an electric motor.
