1. Feeling old...
- Posted by ChrisB (moderator) Mar 10, 2016
- 2536 views
Just had to post this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ucCxtgN6sc&feature=em-hot
Chris
2. Re: Feeling old...
- Posted by tbohon Mar 11, 2016
- 2406 views
I don't just feel old, I feel ancient. Remember when Win95 came out? I was so excited.
Time for my Metamucil and morning nap ... :)
Tom
3. Re: Feeling old...
- Posted by EUtoolsSmarty Mar 29, 2016
- 2261 views
hate win10: never of my life !
rather go back to my 1985 sinclairQL (with 3 floppydrives 1.4 Mb) or even the primitive TRS80 1980 with cassettetape; writing machinecode on paper, translating it to decimal, typing it in BASIC to poke it in memory, that was so very promising and saving it 5 times on a small tape and if you got lucky the 3th or 4th could be reloaded. A very good solutions might also be the FIGnition: https://sites.google.com/site/libby8dev/fignition to really building it with your own hands !
winXPpro and euphoria 3.1.1 are still my favourites.
I try to revive some old matrixprinters: the Seikosha (sinclairQL-version) should listen to simple euphoriacoding via USB to SER to centronics QL-converter, and the NCR may need a new controller. Very cheap ink!
You have no idea how it was to start programming in 1980.
Eric (65+)
4. Re: Feeling old...
- Posted by jmduro Mar 29, 2016
- 2245 views
You have no idea how it was to start programming in 1980.
Eric (65+)
I do. A month and a half salary for six months' use: my first computer in 1982 was a TRS-80 Model I Level II with 4 KB RAM. Same cost relative to work for the floppy disk which I bought with the second one, an Oric Atmos with 64 KB RAM in 1984. The floppy lasted only 2 weeks and the company went bankrupted once I sent the floppy to be repaired. I didn't get it back.
Jean-Marc
5. Re: Feeling old...
- Posted by ghaberek (admin) Mar 30, 2016
- 2222 views
I do. A month and a half salary for six months' use: my first computer in 1982 was a TRS-80 Model I Level II with 4 KB RAM. Same cost relative to work for the floppy disk which I bought with the second one, an Oric Atmos with 64 KB RAM in 1984. The floppy lasted only 2 weeks and the company went bankrupted once I sent the floppy to be repaired. I didn't get it back.
My first home computer was an Apple IIc that my parents got at a garage sale. Shortly after that I got 33 Challenging Computer Games for TRS-80™/Apple™/PET® from a resale shop. This was probably around 1994.
-Greg
6. Re: Feeling old...
- Posted by petelomax Mar 30, 2016
- 2192 views
- Last edited Mar 31, 2016
Oh what memories.. My first computer was the exquisitely beautiful Sharp MZ721, with jaw-dropping(ly awful) 25*80 8-colour ascii graphics! Probably 1985
7. Re: Feeling old...
- Posted by SDPringle Mar 31, 2016
- 2170 views
It seems to me an twenty year old matrix printer is more likely to work today than a new five year old printer. Where I live, the matrix printers are popular in government offices. the fact that they are still there is a testament to the quality of these printers.
cartridges for ink have been getting smaller and smaller in ink capacity and I have given up on buying printers. when I need to print, I pay someone else to print the document for me.
8. Re: Feeling old...
- Posted by petelomax Mar 31, 2016
- 2195 views
It seems to me an twenty year old matrix printer is more likely to work today than a new five year old printer.
Yeah, but back than, the printer would cost more than the cartridge!!!
The last printer I purchased, with one black and one colour cartridge included, was actually cheaper than those same two replacement cartridges... so I use a bottle of ink and a syringe and replace the whole thing on average every 5 years or so.
9. Re: Feeling old...
- Posted by SDPringle Apr 02, 2016
- 2111 views
the bad news is the cartridges that I had to use in this printer I gave up on were engineered to thwart refills. It was not functioning properly anyway. I am charged these days the price of seven cents a copy. A $200 printer is going to be used by myself less than one hundred times in a whole year. It is cheaper for me to hire it out.
sdp
10. Re: Feeling old...
- Posted by SDPringle Apr 02, 2016
- 2093 views
the bad news is the cartridges that I had to use in this printer I gave up on were engineered to thwart refills. It was not functioning properly anyway. I am charged these days in kiosks the price of seven cents a page for printing. A $200 printer is going to be used by myself less than one hundred times in a whole year. It is cheaper for me to hire it out.
Shawn
11. Re: Feeling old...
- Posted by fizzpopsoft Apr 03, 2016
- 2051 views
Agreed on those cartridges...
They say that the cartridges will print x thousands of pages, but in practice maybe only half a ream at normal quality
I sure wish that those BS artists could be fined to the degree that the BS would be more expensive to them than honesty.
Similarly, if you want a replacement power supply for the printer, a new printer is cheaper!
My first computer was a Sinclair ZX-81 with a whole 1K of ram, of which 256 bytes was used for the 1Mhz processor stack, so you had 768 bytes for your program. Some genius actually wrote a working chess program with that; it was easy to beat but it shows what can be done with minimal resources.
Moved on to Commodore VIC, 64 before starting with Intel 386DX and 4Mb ram.
12. Re: Feeling old...
- Posted by unsteady Apr 06, 2016
- 2058 views
How about writing in Basic and running a "Biorythm" software on a 64 K (not 64 mb) Cromemco using a Z80 processor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromemco
And I still do not feel old, as I write using Euphoria (occasionally)with wxEuphoria and also writing in VB6 and dotnet. The basic concepts of computing do not change unless one insists on using fancy words, and unworkable concepts.
13. Re: Feeling old...
- Posted by jmduro Apr 06, 2016
- 2023 views
How about writing in Basic and running a "Biorythm" software on a 64 K (not 64 mb) Cromemco using a Z80 processor.
As far as I remember (I may be wrong), there was a Biorythm software on my TRS-80 Model I with 4 K. The most difficult part was to render a sine wave with 6 pixel chars as there were no graphics mode.
Jean-Marc
14. Re: Feeling old...
- Posted by unsteady Apr 06, 2016
- 1990 views
The most difficult part was to render a sine wave with 6 pixel chars as there were no graphics mode.
Jean-Marc
My biorythe programm gave a screen display of dates of highs and lows of the three parameters. No graphics.
15. Re: Feeling old...
- Posted by jmduro Apr 06, 2016
- 2031 views
The most difficult part was to render a sine wave with 6 pixel chars as there were no graphics mode.
Jean-Marc
My biorythe programm gave a screen display of dates of highs and lows of the three parameters. No graphics.
I'm not sure for mine. It may have printed sine waves on an external printer instead of the screen. I found a lot of source programs for TRS-80 here: http://www.classiccmp.org/cpmarchives/trs80/Software/Model%201/B/
16. Re: Feeling old...
- Posted by irv Apr 06, 2016
- 1993 views
I think I've got you all beat. In 1978, I built a Netronics Elf (original article in Popular Electronics) which had a whopping 256 bytes (bytes, not meg or kilo, just plain 256 x 8), and wrote a 68 byte program that, with the addition of a optical relay, was used for years as a digital enlarger timer in my Gov't. job.
You probably couldn't do that with a Windows 10 machine. Certainly not in 68 bytes.
note: no program storage. Eventually I could reload the program from memory. (Mine, that is.)
17. Re: Feeling old...
- Posted by jmduro Apr 07, 2016
- 1956 views
I give up. Sure, Irv, you're the best! 
When I started working, in 1981 in the steal industry, I was sad not to know which program our Westinghouse Prodac (1963) ran. It was hardcoded and drove a rolling mill. I repared some NAND gates based on physical modules with resistors, a Germanium transistor and some capacitors. It was outdated since a long time but still in use. It got additional silicium-based memory before it retired about 1983.
I remember when I saw the "beast" the first time. The second surprise was an level-regulator based on a valve (triode) that was working without interruption for more then 20 years, full of dust but no-one was authorized to clean the dust because we didn't know if it would still run after being cleaned.
In the same factory we had the most recent technologies for quality control, so there was a wide range of technologies to maintain. I loved the job event if it was dangerous.
Jean-Marc
