Do you remember this.......

[jfmorris]

This is what I learned to program on.

Good old Trash 80 (TRS-80)! I would always leave them running little BASIC programs every time I was in a Radio Shack. Never had one though. My first computer of any sort was a TI-99/4A, with a cassette deck to store and load programs and data:

While working at IBM, I progressed to an IBM PC/XT, with 640KB RAM, a Hercules monochrome graphics card, amber monochrome monitor, and TWO full height 5.25" floppy drives! I remember having a single floppy disk that booted DOS, had my word processor (Wordstar) on it, and I did all my college papers and stored them - all within a 360KB disk. Later I replaced one full height floppy drive with a full height 30MB hard drive, and filled the first bay with half height 3.5" and 5.25" floppy drives. I was LIVING LARGE!

Interesting side bar - my first printer was a Panasonic KX-P1091i dot matrix printer, which had "Near Letter Quality" (NLQ). I turned in a ton of college work with that bad boy. It has moved many times, and is the only thing I still have from those days, and I pulled it off a high shelf in the garage, found ribbons for it, along with a USB to parallel printer cable and a box of tractor feed paper, and I have it setup in my home office as a curiosity. I send it plain text copy every once in a while to keep it happy... that printer was probably purchased in 1985, making it 35 years old and still working...

 

[papadan]

1976, My bride and I remember fondly.

 

[Northbound]

How about these

 

[papadan]

I remember having one of these, mine was yellow.

 

[Annihilator]

Here you go.......

 

[10mmLife]

Anyone remember this?

This was on a job site recently.

 

[SMSgtRod]

Looks like an old Bally game system.

Yup, it's the Bally Home Library Computer or Arcade..... installed is the Basic Programming module.
I did my first ever Basic Programming on this using 1.8Kb of RAM.... Yes, 1,800 Bytes.... did not
allow any sloppy writing of the code...... "Every Byte Counts" so to speak.

 

[10mmLife]

Here you go.......
View attachment 5267
View attachment 5268

The Indian in the cupboard?

 

[Annihilator]

The Indian in the cupboard?

Nope

 

[HanzKrickstein]

Good old Trash 80 (TRS-80)! I would always leave them running little BASIC programs every time I was in a Radio Shack. Never had one though. My first computer of any sort was a TI-99/4A, with a cassette deck to store and load programs and data:

View attachment 5256

While working at IBM, I progressed to an IBM PC/XT, with 640KB RAM, a Hercules monochrome graphics card, amber monochrome monitor, and TWO full height 5.25" floppy drives! I remember having a single floppy disk that booted DOS, had my word processor (Wordstar) on it, and I did all my college papers and stored them - all within a 360KB disk. Later I replaced one full height floppy drive with a full height 30MB hard drive, and filled the first bay with half height 3.5" and 5.25" floppy drives. I was LIVING LARGE!

Interesting side bar - my first printer was a Panasonic KX-P1091i dot matrix printer, which had "Near Letter Quality" (NLQ). I turned in a ton of college work with that bad boy. It has moved many times, and is the only thing I still have from those days, and I pulled it off a high shelf in the garage, found ribbons for it, along with a USB to parallel printer cable and a box of tractor feed paper, and I have it setup in my home office as a curiosity. I send it plain text copy every once in a while to keep it happy... that printer was probably purchased in 1985, making it 35 years old and still working...

I don’t remember Wordstar! Who was the developer?

 

[SMSgtRod]

How about these:View attachment 5244

Computer course I took I had to use the one on the left!!

 

[HanzKrickstein]

Easily one of my favorite toys ever. I think it came from Radio Shack.

 

[papadan]

How about these, I wasn't allowed to use them, but I ran the maintenance on the "room"

 

[Annihilator]

Here you go.......
View attachment 5267
View attachment 5268

Marx Toys, Johnny West & Chief Cherokee

 

[HanzKrickstein]

How about these, I wasn't allowed to use them, but I ran the maintenance on the "room"View attachment 5272

Not the faintest clue what that is.

 

[HansGruber]

Not the faintest clue what that is.

I/O punchcard for early computers.

 

[papadan]

Not the faintest clue what that is.

Precursor to the floppy, these are the punch cards used to enter information into the mainframe computers. Special typewriters would punch the holes according to the letters typed and the person then inserted the card into the computer to enter the information. Cards were saved, because the hard drives were only about 512 bits. Not MB or GB, just single little bits/ letters.

 

[Annihilator]

I remember having one of these, mine was yellow.
View attachment 5263

I had the funny car version, one race and boom, wrecked it.....lol

 

[RIIID]

How about these, I wasn't allowed to use them, but I ran the maintenance on the "room"View attachment 5272

My dad ran an IBM 029 card punch machine, when I was 10 he taught me how to use it. He used to bring home the used cards and sold them to a paper recycler. That paid for numerous quail hunting trips that was almost 50 years ago.

 

[HanzKrickstein]

Precursor to the floppy, these are the punch cards used to enter information into the mainframe computers. Special typewriters would punch the holes according to the letters typed and the person then inserted the card into the computer to enter the information. Cards were saved, because the hard drives were only about 512 bits. Not MB or GB, just single little bits/ letters.

Ah. Of course. I thought the holes were lights. It looked like some sort of Star Trek bridge readout or something if you thought the holes were lights.

I feel dumber. ;(