Computing terms not heard any more

Dig deep into those memory banks...

[Essex_boy]

Micro computer- when talking about a home computer, I used to find his one very annoying for some reason.

[steve40]

CDC removable disc drives
we used to need a forklift to put them in and the storage was a massive 300mb

steve

[trillianjedi]

Core memory
Punched cards

;-)

TJ

[choster]

I still have a few diskettes, referring to 5.25- or 8-inch floppy disks. Nowadays it is more common for people simply to say "floppy," even though their successors are 1) less floppy, and 2) only 3.5 inches and more deserving of the "-ette."

I remember buying software which required VGA or EGA, not supporting CGA or Hercules (or Tandy) when in graphics mode. Running MultiMate Advantage in 132-character mode was a big benefit over ordinary 80-character mode. Lotus 1-2-3 worked with expanded memory but not extended memory. IIRC Falcon could run on any PC/AT- or PS/2-compatible running at least 8MHz and 0 wait states, although it had some problems with DR-DOS.

[Milamber]

Qbasic ;)

[sem4u]

Cassettes which took 5 minutes to load a game, rubber keys - yes the ZX Spectrum :)

[jim_w]

Bernoulli Boxes
V20 Chips

[edited by: jim_w at 4:55 pm (utc) on Dec. 13, 2004]

[SEOMike]

Optional Math Co-Processor
PS/1
Dot Matrix
Serial Mouse
8086
x kb of RAM
14.4 modems (remember the breif days of the 36.6?)

[ritch_b]

Microdrives, on the ZX Spectrum, naturally.

Not forgetting 3" floppy discs, that were about as floppy as a brick.

Aah...the joys of early 80's technology...

R.

[olwen]

Papertape, paper handling equipment like bursters and decollators, card sorters.

Did some-one say 14.4 modems? The first ones I used were 300. One had been home made (not by me), and used an audio coupler. That is the hand piece of the telephone sat next to a speaker and mike in a cradle.

Coming forward a bit I used to work on Revelation. After having paid $NZ14,000 (including 40% sales tax) for an IBM XT you then had to pay for a memory upgrade from 256mb to 384mb and an 8087 math coprocessor.

A bit earlier that that there were 8080 machines running CP/M. The only diskette format that worked on different brands of computer was a 128kb single sided/single density 8" floppy. Praise be to IBM for standardisation in the PC market place.

[edited by: olwen at 6:10 pm (utc) on Dec. 13, 2004]

[Essex_boy]

Math co processor! Id forgotten about them.

[richlowe]

ASR33 76 baud teletypes (yes, 76 baud)!

[Milamber]

ICQ

[iblaine]

Telenet/Tymnet
disk notcher for double sided disks
Mosaic
SVGA / XGA
FidoNET
Telix, which was much better than qmodem!

[lawman]

c-load, z80, trs-dos

That's right, I started out on a Radio Shack Model I - upgraded from cassette to two 5 1/2" floppies (with the right dos, those puppies could be made to read and write in double density. :)

[MattyMoose]

Mostly software:
DOSKEY ;)
QEMM - QuarterDeck Extended Memory Manager.
Stacker -- Ever try to compress your drive by 400%? I did! Hehe
Netware -- I know it's still around, and I love it terribly, but really now...
RemoteAccess and Renegade BBS Software and Telix. mmmm Telix & ANSI Art.
TheDraw ANSI Art creator
spinach green/CGA/EGA/VGA -- Wow... Crappy
Null-modems for playing games.
WORM drives. ;)
Fidonet. (Still around, I know...)
Door-based games (SRE,Tw2002,L.O.R.D, and of course the one and only BRE ;)

Hardware:
two-button, COM-port mouse
AT Keyboard
DX vs. SX
External 300-baud modems.
Keyboard locks (notice they don't have them anymore?)
Fanless-computing.

[lorax]

MLM drives
memory cards
phreaking

[RussellC]

Turbo Button on 486 Computers
Active vs. Passive Matrix Laptop Screens
ISA slots (no MB's have these anymore)
autoexec.bat & config.sys (dont have to mess with these anymore)
C:\win
BBS's

[willybfriendly]

C-64

WBF

[TheDoctor]

32kb mainframe
(Wrote my first program for one of these :))

Core dump

Note for the young: there are no typographical errors in this post

[olwen]

I actually remember an 8kb mainframe. Actually, I'm uncertain whether they were called bytes because that was 8192 x 6 bits. It was a B500 and had been upgraded from 4096. It was a very innovative computer which loaded object code from cards, and allowed program overlays. The computer would stop with a certain light sequence and the operator loaded another card deck.

[photon]

GEOS

Sorry Brett!

[g1smd]

Bootstrap loader cassette (for Research Machines 380Z)

Gopher.

Telnet.

Kermit.

Archie.

[edited by: g1smd at 9:53 pm (utc) on Dec. 13, 2004]

[olwen]

Telnet.

I still use Telnet every day, as do all my fellow employees in my day job.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

10Mb hard cards that after being shut down for more than five minutes had to be hit with a screwdriver to get them to start up again.

The chequered effect you used to get when you hit Ctrl+Alt+Del :)

The first IBM portable PC that was the size of a suitcase!

[steve40]

can anyone remember early defrag programmes

30mb hard disc all night to defrag hehe

steve

[mivox]

Vacuum tubes, anyone? hehe

Telnet: indeed, that one's not dead at all...

[HarryM]

Drum Storage (Memorex).

IMB 2Mbyte disks that stood 4 feet high.

Desk-top punched card readers.

Message switching.

Transistors.

Solid State.

Xedit.

WordStar

Basic.

6502 machine code.

Mind you I still have two BBC-B's, one with a second processor and Solidisk extra RAM, so I guess the last two terms are still current. :)

(If this had been 10 years ago I would have included 'wireless'...)

[Vampyre]

Having to park the hard drive before shutting the computer down.

Portable computers the size of a modern desktop computer.

[TheVisitor]

Getting up half an hour before going to bed, eating a lump of cold poison, working 29 hours a day down mill, and paying mill owner for permission to come to work, getting home, when our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah."

etc.