Your computers and Operating systems

[lexon]

More information than you really need but seventy five and retired.
First using a computer was in 1972 as a NASA contractor at Wallops Island, Va.
PDP-8/I, ASR-33 TTY and paper tape. Two tape magnetic tape drives for data. It used PAL. As I recall, four numbers for each command. What a pain doing conversions.

Computer controlled a million watt S band long range tracking radar the we were converting to a Doppler radar to help develop a new generation of weather radars. Sixty foot diameter dish mounted ninety feet high. Rotated three hundred sixty degrees and about ninety five vertically. Nice to climb for maintenance not far from the Atlantic ocean.
Google Spandar Radar.

A trash 80 couple years later but don't remember what for.

In 1979 inherited a lightning detecting and tracking system from NASA in Florida that was built from cast off stuff after Apollo 12 was hit by lightning.
NASA wanted to see if nearby clouds had an electrical charge.
We needed it for a severe storm project.
Two mini computers but don't remember which ones.
NASA would fly a delta wing ex fighter plane, Convair F-106B, into thunderstorms to see how lighting would contact and leave the plane. Plane heavily shielded electrically. You can Google it also.
Our radar was used to see how intense the storms were.

In 1993, bought a 25 Mhz Clone from stepson for $850. Kept upgrading mother board.

Started working for a new company in 1995 that used desktop PC's with Windows 3.1 to run paper slitting machines. I had a tiny bit of PC experience and was considered an expert. lol.
Upgraded them to 95.

First Linux desktop was from Walmart, online with Lindows OS about 2003.
Finally switched to laptops around 2006 or 7.
Great career.
Today, iPhone and iPad get a lot more use.
L

[absque fenestris]

about the Apple ][ or Apple II: in German it was always spoken "Äppel zwei" means Apple two... was this incorrect?

[ralplpcr]

about the Apple ][ or Apple II: in German it was always spoken "Äppel zwei" means Apple two... was this incorrect?

Can't say for certain, but it sounds correct? In English, it was spoken as "Apple Two". It was written as "Apple ][" based on the logo....but I don't think anyone I know ever tried to pronounce it "Apple right bracket left bracket"

ap2plus.jpg

[absque fenestris]

Thank you! And I've eaten so much chocolate to win that...

[deleted]

...
A trash 80 couple years later but don't remember what for.
...
L

Because of this of course:

http://www.trs-80.com/wordpress/magazine-comics/

[absque fenestris]

A thing like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I is stored somewhere in the closet for old, broken and other things... Repair? The floppy disks should be ??? Where?

[absque fenestris]

It has not exactly to do with computers, but as Delta Wings and Superman come into play: I was very disappointed when my very first flight took place in a dull "Caravelle" instead of much, much more advanced delta wing designed aircraft - which for me was the measure of all things - in addition to Jaguar type E!

[Fred Barclay]

NASA...
Great career.

NASA? Okay, I'm officially jealous!
You wouldn't happen to know of any departments looking to hire, would you?

Hmm.. let's see. Not nearly as impressive as most of you, but my first computer was a TI 84 plus C Silver Edition calculator. The thing is (relatively) fast and well-documented and I had a lot of fun with it. I've still got it and I still do some programming on it occasionally.

My first exposure to Linux was a Kali Linux virtual machine, back when Kali was still at version 1.0.3 (or 1.3.0, I don't remember which).

My first "real" computer was an HP Pavilion Slimline s7410n - 1 GB RAM and a slooowwww CPU. I got it hand-me-down with XP and promptly wiped it and installed Mint 17 Cinnamon and Kali 1.7. I moved to LMDE (back before LMDE 2 existed) and played around with other distos, but that thing ran LMDE 201403 Cinnamon and LMDE 2 MATE until I got a laptop, after which I moved it to Manjaro. It's been offline for about 8 months now, but I've no doubt it will still run.

My first laptop was a horrible idea - overpriced and underpowered, but it did run LMDE 2 MATE pretty well (except for a tendency to overheat quickly). Currently I'm on another laptop that was given to me - it came with Windows 7 which I've kept just in case, but never used, and I'm currently running Arch on it.

[GreenLynx]

I got my first computer less than 10 years ago. (which I received brand new by accident ...long story). It was a Dell that ran Windows xp. All I ever did on it was occasionally look up stuff and play solitaire. That's still all I really do on computers - besides occasionally chat here and there

I have it in the closet along with another desktop I pulled out of storage that someone gave my sisters husband from a business. Neither of us seem to know if it works because we've never hooked it up. I definitely don't have any room to put a desktop right now....but when I move I was thinking I would hook it up and try putting the different operating systems on it just to mess around. Or maybe not...I don't care that much.

I have two laptops and two tablets as well. I put Linux on the other laptop but it died after a week. I haven't thrown it away because it might be easily fixable....IDK. It doesn't want to turn on so maybe it is dead.

Instead of throwing them all away I may give them to my friend the electronics collector.

I dont wanna look like a hoarder.lol


And there were no computers the school I went to. We had typewriters. It was old fashioned like that.

[MurphCID]

Keep it coming, this is a fun thread.

[absque fenestris]

Keep it coming, this is a fun thread.

We live in a crazy world: old father's new Mercedes I can not start, with very young niece I talk about music from the sixties...

[MurphCID]

I just added a 13" Macbook Pro to my list. In April or so I am adding a Mac Pro (2009) w/ 30" monitor to my stable of systems.

[trice001]

thanks

[Citizen229]

Computers are like... eh hem. You never forget your fist one. Mine was a Tandy 1000 EX. DOS........ Man I am getting old.

From Wikipedia:

Code: Select all

andy 1000 EX & SX

The Tandy 1000 EX was designed as an entry-level IBM-compatible personal computer. The EX was a compact computer that had the keyboard and 5.25" floppy drive built into the computer casing. The 5.25" drive was accessible on the right-hand side of the computer. The EX was marketed as a starter system for people new to computing, and sold for US$1,000.00 from RadioShack in December 1986. The EX and, later, the HX would be among the most popular of the Tandy 1000 line because of their (relatively) low price. The EX doubled the on-board memory to 256 KB.

The EX had a 7.16 MHz 8088 (capable of clocking down to 4.77 MHz) and one internal 5.25" floppy drive. An external drive could be connected to a port on the back. A useful feature for the EX and later systems was the ability to boot off either drive, as the drives could be logically swapped when the system booted, so that the drive that was normally drive B: became drive A:, and vice versa, and the drives remained swapped until the system was powered off or reset.

The Tandy 1000 SX was essentially an upgraded reissue of the original Tandy 1000 with the additional features of the EX. It used a 7.16 MHz 8088-2 processor, had 384k of memory (upgradeable to 640 KB on the motherboard), came with either one or two 5.25" internal floppy disk drives, had the light pen port (not a serial port) like the original Tandy 1000. Unlike the EX, it did not have a volume dial or headphone jack, but did have an adjustable potentiometer inside the system to control the volume of the internal speaker. The Tandy AX was a Tandy SX rebadged for sale in Wal-Mart stores. The SX/AX were drop-in compatible with NEC's V20 processor for a noticeable improvement in performance.

The 1000 EX came with MS-DOS 2.11 and Personal Deskmate on 5.25" 360kB diskettes. The 1000 SX came with MS-DOS 3.2 and Deskmate II on 5.25" 360kB diskettes. While Deskmate II used a text-based interface, Personal Deskmate used a graphical interface and also supported a mouse-like cursor using a joystick-mouse driver or a Tandy bus mouse. The MS-DOS was a version specialized for and only bootable on the Tandy 1000, as it would announce on the screen of any other PC-compatible one tried to boot with it; it included a version of BASICA (Microsoft's Advanced GW-BASIC) with support for the enhanced CGA graphics modes (a.k.a. Tandy Graphics or TGA) and three-voice sound hardware of the Tandy 1000.

The Tandy 1000 SX—and later the TX—were the first models in the Tandy 1000 line to have a built-in DMA controller. Adding the DMA chip improved the speed of diskette operations and IBM PC-compatibility of these earlier Tandy 1000 models and ensured that input from a serial port or keyboard would not be ignored during floppy drive access.

The SX was the first Tandy 1000 in which the built-in TGA video circuitry could be disabled via DIP switch. This was to permit the installation of an EGA or VGA video card in an expansion slot.

[Pat D]

1980 - Fortran, punch cards, large-telephone-handset-to-jam-into-modem-bracket. School directors absconded with the money after 3 months
1986 - DeVry for COBOL programming - before anybody had really figured DeVry out

Never could land good work because I've always been bad, bad, bad at interviews but did score a 2 year stint working with the Pick Operating System 1988 - 90 in sunny Spain in Torremolinos on the Costa del Sol The company was one of those high-flying-mostly-illegal Stocks-and-Futures boiler rooms. A bunch of illegal-aliens making fortunes off the "mooches" of the world. I discovered Carlsberg draft beer then; absolutely scrumpdiddylicious. Gibraltar was an hour away, a boat ride to Tangier in Morocco, where my friend was offered "50 White Camels" for his 14 year old daughter. To sheltered North Americans, that was a really strange experience. Even back then, the number of guns visible in public, and all the little private armies the rich people had, like seriously disconcerting if not seen before. Not like today, everywhere's like that now.
The Pick system had a real future, but they didn't have a Bill Gates to run with the ball. Oh, well. That left the new "Windows"

1996 - first attempt at Slackware and Red Hat - way too many hardware issues for successful flight
Now dual-booting Mint and kali - Windows has been exorcised. I figure kali's going to be lots of fun > the installed stuff is crazy!
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1990s - userfriendly.org - Microsoft = "Evil Empire" anybody know that comic? (Applied later to Apple, and I now use the name for Google)

[NChewie]

I started coding on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum and then a Commodore VIC20 (with an external tape-deck backup ). I invested in a massive 16k plug in memory module and used to spend hours copying basic from magazines and compiling. I then moved on to a BBC-B - mainly to play Elite
I completed a Computer Science degree from 87-91, where I learned Fortran, Cobol, C and Pascal+, and working on IBM AT and Texas Instruments boxes.
I went on to code DCL on dumb terminals (fishtanks) for DEC mainframes (with 8 inch reel tapes) [cloud computing?]. I maintained the mainframes... one of which had a teletyper interface (continuous paper feed) and they had to be kept in a chilled room.
Then: C++ on Sparkstations (Unix) and documented on Apple Macs and MSDOS boxes... but eventually used VirtualBox to run windows on the Sparcstation - where Word worked better than on a native PC because of the bigger memory.
My next home box was an IBM Compatible with an external 8" floppy drive and an external dial-up modem.
For fun, I ran an image processing program from college that had taken 5 days to produce one image, and on my new home box it took 4 hours
On the replacement box there was a maths co-processor and the image took ~4 seconds.
Over the years I migrated to smaller floppies, ZIP drives and finally USB drives!
I ended my coding career writing assembly language for telecoms exchanges, before moving into management and finally a different field altogether.

I would consider myself an ex-guru as I have not been deep into coding for many years... my second career got in the way.
In recent years, I was a Windows XP user until that PC died, then a Windows 7 user until that laptop fried, whereupon I took the hard drive into a newer Win7 laptop. When that ran into interminable Update cycles, I took the leap to dual boot with Linux Mint 13. Since then I have had a sequence of slightly improved laptops, with my latest still an old Toshiba running Cinnamon 18.1 on an SSD.
I have also set up Mint on several aging machines for relatives, who were slow to migrate from XP...

[Telyx]

I took Computer Programming in high school, 1979. We used Teletype terminals connected to a Honeywell mainframe to do BASIC programming and stored our programs on paper tape. Around that time, our local Olson Electronics store got a Commodore PET. My dad would go there to buy electronic parts and I would spend about 15 seconds typing

10 PRINT "HELP! I'M STUCK IN A RUT"
20 GOTO 10
30 END
RUN

then I'd walk away and let it scroll. The salesman would unplug the machine and plug it back in--until I showed him the BREAK key.

Our local Radio Shack had a TRS-80 set up near their entrance, and my older brother and I were allowed (encouraged?) to play around with it because it showed potential customers that "it's so easy a couple of teenagers can program it." We had even more fun when they got the Voice Synthesizer for it.

First home computer was a Texas Instruments TI99/4A that we connected to our TV set. My brother and I spent far too many hours playing "Tunnels of Doom" on that thing. Our characters became so mighty we could defeat the baddies even if we forgot (often intentionally) to select a weapon... the game would tell us, "YOU ARE USING YOUR HANDS!" and we would just slap them to death. The Commodore 64 was much more technically sophisticated with all those "peek" and "poke" commands, sprite graphics, and a floppy disk drive. There was a program called "SAM" that allowed the C64 to "talk" similarly to the TRS-80 w/Voice Synthesizer, and my little daughter knew we had to spell her name wrong so it would say it right. (About 11 years ago I ran a C64 emulator on my Tapwave Zodiac PDA and found that "SAM" program... Rachel and I had some good flashback laughs as I typed SAY "HELLO RAYCHEL")

Now I have 2 laptops and a netbook running Linux Mint 17.x (one with Cinnamon and the others with XFCE) and a desktop running Xubuntu. Unfortunately, we use Windows at work. Bah.

[russellz]

My introduction to computers was with an analogue computer for solving differential equations at university in 1964. The following year I learned Algol on an Elliot 803 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIxZ1i8pvZI and a couple of years later wrote assembly code programs for it to test a VDU we had built for it.

Then three years of pattern recognition research using an ICL 1903A which cost the university £3M and was less powerful than my present Android phone.

First home computer was a BBC model B which was programme using BBC Basic, a big advance on other flavours of Basic with its emphasis on structured programming.

Russell

[MurphCID]

Thanks guys, this is an interesting thread on our systems new and old. I am saving up for a new desktop build, and plan on adding a Ryzen 1800x to it with at least 32 gb of RAM, and dual boot.

[Pat D]

This is the thread where this link belongs!!

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/em ... d=19971117