Found this interesting picture from I Love Science and an image search brought me to some pretty incredible pictures which I'll post later.

https://scontent-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/t1.0-9/1964924_783221585032188_1665362460_n.jpg

My first computer was a 386SX/8Mhz with 1MB of RAM, MS-DOS 4.0, 40MB hard drive and a 5 1/4" floppy drive. It had a VGA video adapter capable of 256 colors but no more. The thing didn't have the juice to run Windows 3.1. I threw the computer in the trash in about 2001 but now I wish I could have kept it. I have a picture of it I'll post later.

Omigosh, what a throwback advertisement. 10MB hard disk. 8-bit CPU that I'd bet was the 4Mhz 8080...

I may have at least a handful of my old Creative Computing magazines I had when I was a teenager. Source code listings of interesting programs. Arguments about why CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers) should be the defacto OS for small computers. That was part of a golden age of computing that we've passed, obviously, but wow, that's neat stuff.

Our 10th grade computer lab had one Apple II and one TRS-80 - (a Radio Shack computer for the uninitated), and if you were accepted into the lab program you got a pass to come in early and spend maybe 30 minutes on whichever one you liked. It wasn't much in today's terms, but it was huge back then, and it gave me a drop-kick into a career. Unreal how things have changed.

Oh I so sharing this on Facebook!

My first computer was a 386SX/8Mhz with 1MB of RAM, MS-DOS 4.0, 40MB hard drive and a 5 1/4" floppy drive. It had a VGA video adapter capable of 256 colors but no more. The thing didn't have the juice to run Windows 3.1. I threw the computer in the trash in about 2001 but now I wish I could have kept it. I have a picture of it I'll post later.The first PC I ever used was when I was at Kerr-McGee. It was an IBM PC-XT with a green monochrome monitor. I don't remember what DOS version or how much (little) memory it had. I'm sure it wasn't enough memory to make one graphic on a modern PC.

I learned CAD on a similar system as the one in the ad with a green on black monochrome monitor. To this day I still set my status bar and text screen in my CAD software to green on black.

I also remember having to take out a loan to afford my first home PC which was a 286 with a 20 meg HDD and 2 3.5 LDD floppy drives.

Our first home computer was an IBM PCjr (1986). We had a real keyboard, not the little "chiclet" keyboard that was so roundly hated at the time. It had 128KB of RAM, no hard drive, one 5 1/4" floppy drive, and 2 cartridge slots. For the latter, we had a cartridge that allowed us to write rudimentary programs in BASIC (mostly drawing cartoonish pictures in 16 colors).

In 1973, I brought a Texas Instruments calculator to my advanced high school math class at PCHS. The kind with the small red led display. I had just got it for Christmas. You would not believe the reaction it got from my teacher Mrs. Moon and all the other kids in the class. Everyone was amazed at what it could do. I think it cost my parents around $100 which was a lot of money in 1973.

As for my first computer, I can remember playing around with a Timex Sinclair computer at the then AT&T plant in the early 80s. It had a Z80 microprocessor. The first computer I bought was a Radio Shack TRS 80. You saved and loaded programs with a cassette tape recorder. Here are some pics of the Timex Sinclair and the calculator.
714771487149

I learned CAD on a similar system as the one in the ad with a green on black monochrome monitor. To this day I still set my status bar and text screen in my CAD software to green on black.

I also remember having to take out a loan to afford my first home PC which was a 286 with a 20 meg HDD and 2 3.5 LDD floppy drives.
My first CAD system was a Computervision CGP-200X mainframe system, Benham first started buying those in 1983 and then migrated to the Sun based Computervision CADDS4X system. Most of the monitors were those big green monochrome and it had its own desk and a digitizer that was about 18x24, they only had a few with color monitors and they were about a foot deeper. When I started in 1988 I was on a 200X for a few months and then onto the Sun (color) systems which ran on Unix.


Our first home computer was an IBM PCjr (1986). We had a real keyboard, not the little "chiclet" keyboard that was so roundly hated at the time. It had 128KB of RAM, no hard drive, one 5 1/4" floppy drive, and 2 cartridge slots. For the latter, we had a cartridge that allowed us to write rudimentary programs in BASIC (mostly drawing cartoonish pictures in 16 colors).
We had one as well, it was bought as a package with all sorts of extras when IBM ended the program. My first home computer was an Atari 400 when Buttons closed.

In 1973, I brought a Texas Instruments calculator to my advanced high school math class at PCHS. The kind with the small red led display. I had just got it for Christmas. You would not believe the reaction it got from my teacher Mrs. Moon and all the other kids in the class. Everyone was amazed at what it could do. I think it cost my parents around $100 which was a lot of money in 1973.
We had one of those too....We believed at the time that our family was the first in our small town to have a calculator.
My math teachers wouldn't let me use it though.

I can still remember when our rotary phones were replaced.
We had a FM radio before we had any FM stations in our area.
But in the mid 60's we were one of the first one hundred communities in the USA to have cable TV.

Where I went to high school, we had a computer terminal that was linked to the Denver and Rio Grand railroad mainframe. It was this big brown box and it ran on punchtape. We were supposed to write programs to solve Algebra II problems that I had no clue how to solve simply on paper with a pencil. It was such a bad experience that I resisted even touching a computer until about 1993.

I took an Introduction to Computers class out at the Choctaw Vo-Tech. We used these little Apple Computers that didn't even have hard drives and ran on floppies. Real floppies. The big ones. The "Part II" class was taught by a guy who hated Windows. He believed in DOS only.

My first computer was put together by a local company called Uptime Computers.
It cost me about $2,000. Two years later, you could get a computer about 10x better than the one I bought for about $1,000 or less.

When I was in high school we have the most technological typewriters in
the world. The manufacturer was Royal. I'll never forget trying to replace
the ink ribbon.

I once asked my typewritting teacher if he could type worth a damn and
he did. I was amazed.

My first computer was a 386SX/8Mhz with 1MB of RAM, MS-DOS 4.0, 40MB hard drive and a 5 1/4" floppy drive. It had a VGA video adapter capable of 256 colors but no more. The thing didn't have the juice to run Windows 3.1. I threw the computer in the trash in about 2001 but now I wish I could have kept it. I have a picture of it I'll post later.

Was that maybe circa '90 or '91 or so? My first was a really similar machine; 386SX/33Mhz with 4MB RAM (later doubled it to 8!!!) with 40MB HD (later doubled to 80!!). It did run Windows 3.1, but probably saw more use in DOS. That was early '92. It cost about $2500, which would probably be about four grand today..?

When I was in high school we have the most technological typewriters in
the world. The manufacturer was Royal. I'll never forget trying to replace
the ink ribbon.

I once asked my typewritting teacher if he could type worth a damn and
he did. I was amazed.
The typing teacher at my parents high school (Altus) had only one arm, he could type faster than any of the students with both hands.

My first computer usage was at Putnam City High school in the early 70's. We had a model 33 teletype with paper tape reader connected to a mainframe via phones lines( 300 baud?) using an "Acoustic modem"( ie you placed the telephone handset into a cradle with rubber cups for the mic and speaker part. ). I had some previous introduction to computers from by father who was an engineer at Honeywell( previously General Electric ).

Anyways, I still have my original IBM PC XT with a 10 megabyte( yes, megabytes ) winchester hard drive, a green monochrome monitor with a Hercules graphics card and 640K ( yes, kilobytes ) of memory. It also had a floppy drive next to the hard drive. I even have all the original software and manuals in their boxes. I got all of that, coupled with an Epson dot-matrix printer, from the IBM store for about $4000! Yep, I had to finance it, but it was worth every penny for the career boost it gave me. While the other guys at work were left to trying to use the secretary's pc, I was developing software at home. The best investment I ever made.

I still have it and it still runs. It's all steel and has a power supply you could weld with. It's now over 30 years old.
I'll give it to my nephew and he can take it to Antiques Roadshow in a few years!

The 80's! Software engineering at it's peak as far as I'm concerned. Nothing has been as exciting since.

I'm about as far from a Techie . . . or Technogeek, or whatever . . . as one can get, but that was a great little story, jmpoke!
(hell . . . i'm not even sure i spelled "Techie" right . . .)

I think I seem to remember stopping in at Contemporary Sounds when they were still over on May Avenue for some stereo-related thing or another. I remember marveling at these giant, shiny Video Disks that were for sale (along with the players). I think there were about three titles available: Laurence of Arabia, Fiddler on the Roof and Funny Girl. Still being gun-shy due to the death of the 8-Track, I didn't jump on the bandwagon. (come to think of it maybe there was a fourth title . . . "The Music Man" . . .?)

RM stop that. I still mourn the Betamax. So young when the evil vhs overlords declared its death.

I'm about as far from a Techie . . . or Technogeek, or whatever . . . as one can get, but that was a great little story, jmpoke!
(hell . . . i'm not even sure i spelled "Techie" right . . .)

I think I seem to remember stopping in at Contemporary Sounds when they were still over on May Avenue for some stereo-related thing or another. I remember marveling at these giant, shiny Video Disks that were for sale (along with the players). I think there were about three titles available: Laurence of Arabia, Fiddler on the Roof and Funny Girl. Still being gun-shy due to the death of the 8-Track, I didn't jump on the bandwagon. (come to think of it maybe there was a fourth title . . . "The Music Man" . . .?)

I was one who DID, in fact, jump on the video disk (laserdisc) bandwagon. It was great. Expensive, but great. High quality transfers were absolutely the name of the game, and Criterion was a company that made these collector releases that were meticulously transferred/mastered to laser. Only problem was the players were awfully expensive, highly mechanical, and prone to failure. Pioneer made the best laserdisc players of that era, and I had a high-end "flipper" model that would automatically switch sides. Got quite a collection built up, and then the "leading edge" of this thing called "DVD" started up, and it didn't take long for lasers to fade into the sunset. My second player, which also died, is sitting in my attic, and my laserdiscs are still sitting in the closet. Some of them are actually worth a few bucks....most aren't.

Kevin,
Betamax like Apple refused to allow all manufacturers to produce their product. There were only 3 companies that made Betamax and you can't fight a war against many companies if you can't provide the product. It was much better than vhs but... The same with Apple, but they survived and are doing pretty well now (I am a recent convert).
C. T.
RM stop that. I still mourn the Betamax. So young when the evil vhs overlords declared its death.

I'm still peeved that just as linear-tracking turntables were moving in the direction of affordability, those danged ol' CD's sneaked onto the stage. =)
(still got a stack o' vinyl I don't know what to do with. =)

(and an iPod on the charger i never listen to . . . since the novelty wore off)

say! I think I was at "Contemporary Sounds" to pick up an new magnetic cartridge for my tonearm! (when i didn't buy into the laserdisc of the daze of future passed. =)

I was one who DID, in fact, jump on the video disk (laserdisc) bandwagon. It was great. Expensive, but great. High quality transfers were absolutely the name of the game, and Criterion was a company that made these collector releases that were meticulously transferred/mastered to laser. Only problem was the players were awfully expensive, highly mechanical, and prone to failure. Pioneer made the best laserdisc players of that era, and I had a high-end "flipper" model that would automatically switch sides. Got quite a collection built up, and then the "leading edge" of this thing called "DVD" started up, and it didn't take long for lasers to fade into the sunset. My second player, which also died, is sitting in my attic, and my laserdiscs are still sitting in the closet. Some of them are actually worth a few bucks....most aren't.
It was still way better than the RCA format CED which looked like a vinyl record in a cartridge.


Kevin,
Betamax like Apple refused to allow all manufacturers to produce their product. There were only 3 companies that made Betamax and you can't fight a war against many companies if you can't provide the product. It was much better than vhs but... The same with Apple, but they survived and are doing pretty well now (I am a recent convert).
C. T.
Sony waited too long to allow licensing of Beta, JVC was much smarter in widely licensing VHS.

I have both Blu-ray and HD-DVD now, two HD-DVD players and a Blu-ray/HD-DVD/DVD-R on my desktop computer. I bought most of my HD-DVD discs on closeout at Fry's (for around $3.00 each) when Toshiba announced they were ceasing production. I still have all my 8-track tapes as well....

I like the sound reproduction of vinyl because it has warmth.

CD's are so brittle in comparison. However, CD's sound good. I'd rather
have the warmth of vinyl.

Every time I go into Ginger's Tag Agency on 39th in Bethany and see them look up your vehicle information on those green screen monitors I can't help but think TRS-80. :)

Every time I go into Ginger's Tag Agency on 39th in Bethany and see them look up your vehicle information on those green screen monitors I can't help but think TRS-80. :)

Hey, one of the science advisors to the 2nd Star Trek Move (Wrath of Khan) had a TRS-80 and wrote up a bunch of graphical animation programs that were actually used as effects in the movie. I subscribed to a magazine that actually published the source code he wrote for them. The effects were interspersed throughout the movie as displays on the bridge monitors, but the most prominent one was in the climactic scene where Spock sacrifices himself to get the warp engines back online, and the bridge display screen shows a series of vertical bar graphs and suddenly the word "NOMINAL" shows up in big, block letters. The unnamed ensign (?) watching the screen says, "Sir, the mains are back online!"

Just a bit of TRS-80/computer/Trek convergence trivia for ya :)

But why are tag agents still using computers with that type of monitor in 2014. I'm sure the OTC has something to do with it.

I remember when 4 track tape players were the rage. I had both tapes and
Super Session.

8 Track drove me crazy. I couldn't stand the fade out in order to change
tracks.

Oh, then there was Quadraphonic. A friend of mine spent thousands on his
set up and had both recordings. Later there was some Brazilian chick who
put out a quad recording.

My first computer was a 386SX/8Mhz with 1MB of RAM, MS-DOS 4.0,
40MB hard drive and a 5 1/4" floppy drive. It had a VGA video adapter capable
of 256 colors but no more. The thing didn't have the juice to run Windows 3.1.
I threw the computer in the trash in about 2001 but now I wish I could have
kept it. I have a picture of it I'll post later.
I'm still running the super charged version with Windows 3.1. Hey, I've got
a 2600 baud modem phone cradle. I'm definitely a tech nut! I'll tell you
about my 512 Mac when I have the time. I love technology.

Drool fool!

Traffic Management Technology. Remember the lights strung across Robinson that showed what lanes were going in what direction? In the late afternoon, all but one of the lanes would be northbound and then reversed in the morning. They looked something like these.

http://i.imgur.com/A3RTk1Z.jpg

When I helped with a little radio show, back in the day, all of the commercials, and music, and etc. were on what looked like looping 8-Track cassettes.
Some of them were labeled "Donut". This meant that there was a pre-recorded spiel, followed by some blank tape that you could talk over to personalize the message, then more pre-recorded stuff at the end. I think the teeth marks on some of the plastic indicated that some of the staff didn't get that "Donut" was, like, metaphorical or whatever. This was back when Jim Traber and Al Eschbach were getting established as on-air personalities, but I'm not saying nor implying that there was a direct connection to the bite marks on the plastic. They also had a bunch of vinyl with sound effects (and a non-linear tracking turntable) in the production room so you could create your own spots.

It was called a cart (short for cartridge), and was used for half a century, until radio stations switched to fully digital in the early aughts or so. They were still using them when I worked at KATT/KYIS/sports Animal/Jazz Station in the late nineties.

Was that maybe circa '90 or '91 or so? My first was a really similar machine; 386SX/33Mhz with 4MB RAM (later doubled it to 8!!!) with 40MB HD (later doubled to 80!!). It did run Windows 3.1, but probably saw more use in DOS. That was early '92. It cost about $2500, which would probably be about four grand today..?

Yours was a little bit better than mine. Mine was mid-range in early 1990. 4MB was the max my motherboard could handle. Later in its life, I upgraded it to 4MB of RAM and used DOS 6.22's Drivespace in order to squeeze Windows 3.1 onto it but it didn't run well at all.

Here is a picture.

http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o214/bchris02/010119_0003_zps234b329c.jpg

We had one of those too... We believed at the time that our family was
the first in our small town to have a calculator.
My math teachers wouldn't let me use it though.
I side with your teachers. I'm not opposed to calculators but there are
some things in academia that should require brain power. Students
should know how to perform math, geometry and algebra on paper. Not
because it's hard but because it uses logical steps in problem solving.
The same goes for learning Latin.



I can still remember when our rotary phones were replaced...
I still have a black rotary dial phone.

True story...
My grand daughter wanted to use the phone and I told her she could
use the (rotary) phone on my night stand. She looked at the phone
and picked up the receiver. I told her to dial the number.

DIAL-the-number.

She stuck her finger in the holes corresponding to the numbers she
was trying to call but didn't realize she needed to rotate each number
to the right.

I about died laughing. So much is taken for granted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN-eCBAOw60&index=75&list=FLO8tx46Kpo2WQASjJbQxldw

I side with your teachers. I'm not opposed to calculators but there are
some things in academia that should require brain power. Students
should know how to perform math, geometry and algebra on paper. Not
because it's hard but because it uses logical steps in problem solving.
The same goes for learning Latin.

I vaguely recall once reading a science fiction short story about two countries (or planets) that were always at war. The war was being completely managed, automatically, by computers. Neither side ever got the advantage, or won, because the computers were running things. Then, one day, someone on one side or the other got the bright idea to unplug the computer and start planning using their brains for the strategy or tactics or whatever. Of course, human ingenuity--in The Art of War--triumphed. I read this story way back in the 60's, just as computers were really beginning to be developed and come into their own.

Sometimes, today, it shocks me to see barely post-infant children grabbing and crying for their parent's cellphone--and how nearly 100% of the time the parent hands it to the kid to shut them up. We are, indeed, on the cusp of a Brave New World.

Btw: Arithmetic or Math was never my strong suit, but I do know how to do all of the basic, functional, number-juggling on paper with a pen or pencil. I've actually had younger people look shocked that basic arithmetic can be done that way. I can also read an analog clock. However, I can't read the clocks that use a binary display. =)

But why are tag agents still using computers with that type of monitor in 2014. I'm sure the OTC has something to do with it.

Bit of thread necromancy here. But there's a pretty simple reason: They work, and it's expensive to change. The computers you see at the tag agency probably aren't even full blown PCs, but "dumb terminals", just a front end for the mainframe. At work, the core ERP system we use for our business is an old unix-based terminal system. We don't use dumb terminals(Emulators running on PC), but it works fine aside from trying to make it interface with more modern systems. We've looked at trying to replace it, but it would be years of work and many millions of dollars. I imagine OTC has a similar issue, which is why IBM's mainframe division still does good business.

Plus, once the operator gets practiced at using the system, getting around a terminal based system like that is way, way faster than using a GUI.

This is pretty cool!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpSfgusep7s

This is pretty cool!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpSfgusep7s

Brings back so many memories.

The seed drill.

Jethro Tull's seed drill, 1701. - - Science Museum (http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects/agricultural_engineering/1955-289.aspx)

Every time I go into Ginger's Tag Agency on 39th in Bethany and see them look up your vehicle information on those green screen monitors I can't help but think TRS-80. :)
I was in Ginger's Tag Agency in Bethany last month and I noticed they finally got rid of their TRS-80 looking green screen 13" (or smaller) tube monitors and have really modern looking flat screen terminals now. It's about time.

Every time I go into Ginger's Tag Agency on 39th in Bethany and see them look up your vehicle information on those green screen monitors I can't help but think TRS-80. :)Dunno how I managed to miss this before!

I went through not one but three TRS-80s -- one Model 3 and two Model 4's -- before finally surrendering to the PC-clone tidal wave and taking the 5-year backward leap into the MS-DOS world. Why so many? My home office had a static-prone carpet and it took me a while to learn that the static discharge was killing them.

Fortunately I was in a joint venture with a fellow who wanted to develop a program for them that would replace Scripsit and even WordStar; I provided the energy, having already learned programming on mainframes at work, and he provided the hardware. He even flew the last one to me from his offices in Cushing.

We never did finish the venture; every time I was ready to start beta testing, he would come up with some additional requirement to be included. "Creeping Featureitis" and "software bloat" are not at all new.

As for those green-screen monitors, most banks were still using them in the early 90s, long after Windows 3.1 had made the PC viable for business use. That was a major reason for the failure of "Norick's Paperless Office" and consequent shutdown of Ron's software development corporation. The program required higher resolution than the Hercules Graphic Adapter card could provide.

Incidentally, all my TRS-80s had white-on-black displays. The PC clone, however, did have a green screen, and it took several years before color became available.

I was in Ginger's Tag Agency in Bethany last month and I noticed they
finally got rid of their TRS-80 looking green screen 13" (or smaller) tube
monitors and have really modern looking flat screen terminals now.
It's about time.
LOL! Ray's still uses them and I laugh every time I go there. The
truth be known, all I care about is not getting ripped off.
by the system.

Whoa! This isn't a put down! Not at all!

http://sandbox.yoyogames.com/extras/image/name/san1/89/168089/etch-e-sketch001.jpg

http://www.seriouscraft.com/files/images/spirograph[1].jpg

http://www.msichicago.org/fileadmin/blog/msi/2012-10/2005_044_01.jpg

http://www.soundexchangetampabay.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/turntable-parts-record-player-technics-sl1200-sl-1200.jpeg

http://www.peeblesoriginals.com/vintage/cub-scout-crystal-radio.jpg

Dunno how I managed to miss this before!

I went through not one but three TRS-80s -- one Model 3 and two Model 4's -- before finally surrendering to the PC-clone tidal wave and taking the 5-year backward leap into the MS-DOS world. Why so many? My home office had a static-prone carpet and it took me a while to learn that the static discharge was killing them.

Fortunately I was in a joint venture with a fellow who wanted to develop a program for them that would replace Scripsit and even WordStar; I provided the energy, having already learned programming on mainframes at work, and he provided the hardware. He even flew the last one to me from his offices in Cushing.

We never did finish the venture; every time I was ready to start beta testing, he would come up with some additional requirement to be included. "Creeping Featureitis" and "software bloat" are not at all new.

As for those green-screen monitors, most banks were still using them in the early 90s, long after Windows 3.1 had made the PC viable for business use. That was a major reason for the failure of "Norick's Paperless Office" and consequent shutdown of Ron's software development corporation. The program required higher resolution than the Hercules Graphic Adapter card could provide.

Incidentally, all my TRS-80s had white-on-black displays. The PC clone, however, did have a green screen, and it took several years before color became available.

OMIGOSH, a kindred spirit!!! I KNEW there was something I liked about you, Jim!! :) Here's a fellow TRS-80 nut for ya. I went through each and every step in the line (well, almsot): Had an original TRS-80 LI with 4K of RAM; got a birthday upgrade to LII and 16K of RAM and the upper/lower case character conversion ROM. I got *this close* to getting the "Expansion Interface" until the TRS-80 Model III came out, with its 48K of RAM and I actually paid serious cash for a third-party shop here in town to put in TWO floppy disk drives!!! That was TALL COTTON back in those days, back when a box of 10 360K floppies ran about $50. I did a bunch of work on that one, writing a genealogy package that I actually sold to few folks (and had I the connections to folks who could have helped, I think I could have made that program a serious hit in that era, because it did EVERYTHING - generational charts, familiy groups, searches, you name it). Migrated to the slick looking white Model 4, which was my last of the "TRS" series until I succumbed to PC-Clone fever...and bought a Tandy 1000 LOL because the IBM "real" variety were just too danged expensive and the "clone" market just hadn't quite matured yet. Didn't realize at the time all the proprietary junk RS had done to the basic IBM architecture to make you beholden to RS add-ons, but realized how to overcome them, too :). Learned a lot about hard drives, head crashes, landing zones, interrupts, the whole bit :) Put in a third-party 20MB hard drive (that was MEGATONS of space back in the day) and did my bit with TurboPascal, Quick C and Quick Basic, migrated my genealogy software to the PC platform..

There was so much great *learning* to be done in that era that I just loved, and I think in this "next generation" that's largely been lost. I remember been a somewhat snotty teenager who waltzed into the old Computerland on S. Western and asked them for a bunch of very specific RAM chips, and a chip puller, and they looked at me like I was nuts because I knew what they were and they didn't (but their tech guy in the back did and sold me what I needed). Very happy to have cut my teeth in what I think will eventually be viewed as a "golden era" in personal computing (even though they haven't called it that in a long time). I think a longing for that "golden era" is an understated element of why Linux has had such a profound influence in the next-generation computing era, but I guess that's another thread entirely.

Great stuff, Jim :)

http://www.seriouscraft.com/files/images/spirograph[1].jpg

I HAD THAT!!! I HAD THAT!!! I HAD THAT!!! They were INFURIATING because the PINS could never secure the outer rings to the cardboard surface tightly enough to make your designs "fluid"; the wheel would go ever-so-slightly out of round and make your designs look like you were either a) drunk, b) epileptic, or c) both.

They've got a "next generation" Spirograph I saw not too long ago on some toy commercial, I think.

Wow. Serious nostalgia run here.

http://www.soundexchangetampabay.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/turntable-parts-record-player-technics-sl1200-sl-1200.jpeg

While I don't necessarily agree with the assessment, there are plenty of audio types who would much rather have a linear-tracking turntable with that speed calibration capability than a good CD player. That speed calibration wasn't on every model - that was usually reserved for the more audiophile-centric (and expensive) ones. My mom had a German-made Dual 1257 turntable that had that tracking capability and it was really fascinating to watch - exactly like a timing light on a car engine...

Found this interesting picture from I Love Science and an image search brought me to some pretty incredible pictures which I'll post later.

https://scontent-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/t1.0-9/1964924_783221585032188_1665362460_n.jpg

My very first "computer"...

8086

I got *this close* to getting the "Expansion Interface" until the TRS-80 Model III came out, with its 48K of RAM and I actually paid serious cash for a third-party shop here in town to put in TWO floppy disk drives!!! That was TALL COTTON back in those days, back when a box of 10 360K floppies ran about $50.

There was so much great *learning* to be done in that era that I just loved, and I think in this "next generation" that's largely been lost. I remember been a somewhat snotty teenager who waltzed into the old Computerland on S. Western and asked them for a bunch of very specific RAM chips, and a chip puller, and they looked at me like I was nuts because I knew what they were and they didn't (but their tech guy in the back did and sold me what I needed). Very happy to have cut my teeth in what I think will eventually be viewed as a "golden era" in personal computing (even though they haven't called it that in a long time).I think I went you one better on those floppy drives. I worked for Magnetic Peripherals Inc. in those days and we made a quad-density drive; it was full-height, but had 80 tracks instead of 40 and recorded on both sides of the disk. I bought two of them, for $350 each, through a local shop that was a side venture of one of the MPI engineers, built an external housing and power supply for them, and hacked TRSDOS to drive them properly. That gave me over a megabyte of on-line storage, via four floppies -- two normal and the two quads.

Parts of that power supply are still in a junkbox in my garage, more than 30 years later. I gave the drives away just a couple of years ago, rather than tossing them into the trash.

Were those memory chips the 4116s? The first MS-DOS machine I had (before I bought my own) used them. It was an 80286 CPU with a huge 20-MB hard disk. My very first home computer, though, began its life as an RCA Studio-II game machine, with a type 1802 CMOS processor. I bootlegged an EPROM at work and burned an operating system into it, then wire-wrapped a breadboard for the game machine. It had a full 256 bytes of RAM, which I programmed to be a clock. I was working on adding more RAM when the opportunity for the word-processor joint venture arose...

I agree fully that many if not most of today's enthusiasts have no inkling of the great fun we had in those early days, breaking trails that their mentors have forgotten ever existed. And I still have fun today on the Xubuntu (Linux) forums, following lots of those trails with another crop of youngsters!

I think I went you one better on those floppy drives. I worked for Magnetic Peripherals Inc. in those days and we made a quad-density drive; it was full-height, but had 80 tracks instead of 40 and recorded on both sides of the disk. I bought two of them, for $350 each, through a local shop that was a side venture of one of the MPI engineers, built an external housing and power supply for them, and hacked TRSDOS to drive them properly. That gave me over a megabyte of on-line storage, via four floppies -- two normal and the two quads.

Parts of that power supply are still in a junkbox in my garage, more than 30 years later. I gave the drives away just a couple of years ago, rather than tossing them into the trash.

Were those memory chips the 4116s? The first MS-DOS machine I had (before I bought my own) used them. It was an 80286 CPU with a huge 20-MB hard disk. My very first home computer, though, began its life as an RCA Studio-II game machine, with a type 1802 CMOS processor. I bootlegged an EPROM at work and burned an operating system into it, then wire-wrapped a breadboard for the game machine. It had a full 256 bytes of RAM, which I programmed to be a clock. I was working on adding more RAM when the opportunity for the word-processor joint venture arose...

I agree fully that many if not most of today's enthusiasts have no inkling of the great fun we had in those early days, breaking trails that their mentors have forgotten ever existed. And I still have fun today on the Xubuntu (Linux) forums, following lots of those trails with another crop of youngsters!

DId those guys from MPI who ran the "side venture" have their shop just a bit north of the old Shepherd Mall by any chance? If so, that's *exactly* where I got my drives put in!!!

I can't remember the number with certainty, but the 4116's surely rings a bell - and that first round I bought went into *exactly* what you described - a 286 CPU that I splurged and put in a 40MB disk. That was back when RLL drives were starting to edge out MFM drives because you could get half-again (or was it double? memory fades LOL) the capacity out of essentially the same hardware. I also remember being one with my home-brew 286 machine with its 40MB hard drive that, one day, simply wouldn't spin up. Think the drive was a Seagate ST-255, but I won't swear to that. Anyway, I learned that it would, in fact, finally come up after maybe three or four power-ups...and in that pre-Internet day, digging up info was really hard...but I came across a BBS that had some anecdotal info about an unacknowledged defect in the seagate drive hardware known unaffectionately as "stiction" - where the drive head would park itself properly and safely on power down, but would stay "stuck" on the landing zone such that the next power-on cycle couldn't/wouldn't engage it to lift and start operating again. The "fix," which sounds ghastly (because it was) was to take the front edge of your computer, lift it up about a half-inch or so, and then let it "drop" - and the "bounce" would supposedly unstick the head.

I won't say if that was a "kosher' fix, but it worked every time for my situation, and I had that little 286 homebrew box for a long, long time....

DId those guys from MPI who ran the "side venture" have their shop just a bit north of the old Shepherd Mall by any chance? If so, that's *exactly* where I got my drives put in!!!The engineer's name was Charles Dahlem, and his original location was in fact on N Villa between NW 30 and NW 36 on the west side of the street. He later moved to a shopping center at the SW corner of NW 23 and Rockwell.

When the Model 4 came out, I created a hack that would increase its clock speed to double that it originally had, and discovered that the floppy disk controller chip then would not settle down quickly enough to be reliable. Chuck Dahlem told me about that little quirk in the controller, and I managed to find a few bytes in the driver code that I could replace with other commands having the same effect but taking more clock cycles to do so. That fixed the controller package, so I put both hacks together with a little Basic program to install them, burned the whole thing to a floppy, and sold the result by mail order via a classified ad in one of the early TRS-80 magazines as "Fast4" for $7.95 each.

Rather quickly, I abandoned TRSDOS itself in favor of LDOS, the Logical Disk Operating System. I also tried NEWDOS but did not like it. Years later, I ran into the creator of NEWDOS on CompuServe, where I was sysop for Computer Language Magazine forum, later known as Software Development Forum, for 15 years... Some of the old SDForum crowd still hangs out in a semi-private news group; only about half a dozen of us are still active, though.

Wasn't Magnetic Peripherals on 39th and Tulsa? We were using CDC disk drives which I believe were made by MPI in some of our test sets at the AT&T manufacturing plant here in OKC. They had removable 14" platters. I remember touring the MPI plant and I think I may have attended a maintenance class there on repairing the drives. The wife of one of my co-workers worked at MPI. I can remember changing the heads on those disk drives after a head crash. Computer Automation in Irvine CA was the brand of the test sets that were using them.

I think I went you one better on those floppy drives. I worked for Magnetic Peripherals Inc. in those days and we made a quad-density drive; it was full-height, but had 80 tracks instead of 40 and recorded on both sides of the disk. I bought two of them, for $350 each, through a local shop that was a side venture of one of the MPI engineers, built an external housing and power supply for them, and hacked TRSDOS to drive them properly. That gave me over a megabyte of on-line storage, via four floppies -- two normal and the two quads.

Parts of that power supply are still in a junkbox in my garage, more than 30 years later. I gave the drives away just a couple of years ago, rather than tossing them into the trash.

Were those memory chips the 4116s? The first MS-DOS machine I had (before I bought my own) used them. It was an 80286 CPU with a huge 20-MB hard disk. My very first home computer, though, began its life as an RCA Studio-II game machine, with a type 1802 CMOS processor. I bootlegged an EPROM at work and burned an operating system into it, then wire-wrapped a breadboard for the game machine. It had a full 256 bytes of RAM, which I programmed to be a clock. I was working on adding more RAM when the opportunity for the word-processor joint venture arose...

I agree fully that many if not most of today's enthusiasts have no inkling of the great fun we had in those early days, breaking trails that their mentors have forgotten ever existed. And I still have fun today on the Xubuntu (Linux) forums, following lots of those trails with another crop of youngsters!

And all of this time I have been sort of laboring under the illusion that You, Sir, were a Journalist (as compared to) a primitive computer geek. =)
(or a semi-techno Luddite, like me. the sort that used to pile coins on the tonearm of the record player to avoid skips in the flow of musical "perfection")

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I HAD THAT!!! I HAD THAT!!! I HAD THAT!!! They were INFURIATING because the PINS could never secure the outer rings to the cardboard surface tightly enough to make your designs "fluid"; the wheel would go ever-so-slightly out of round and make your designs look like you were either a) drunk, b) epileptic, or c) both.

They've got a "next generation" Spirograph I saw not too long ago on some toy commercial, I think.

Wow. Serious nostalgia run here.

Apparently, you--or your mentor--used inferior/sub-standard cardboard for the backing required to create the ArtWork? =)
The Interface between the transition from Etch-[a/e]-Sketch to SmartCellPhones loses something in translation.
(well . . . don't it? =)

Edited to Add (just for the fun of it):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirograph
note the complicated mathematics involved in the toy.

I, for one, am sort of relieved that Spirograph Technology is no longer with us in the real world.

My very first "computer"...

8086Well, technically wasn't your brain the computer? All of this new smart technically is allowing us to be dumb haha :)

Well, technically wasn't your brain the computer? All of this new smart technically is allowing us to be dumb haha :)

Well, technically you would be correct, Sir. Let's just say it was the very first "Word" program I had to learn.

And all of this time I have been sort of laboring under the illusion that You, Sir, were a Journalist (as compared to) a primitive computer geek. =)
(or a semi-techno Luddite, like me. the sort that used to pile coins on the tonearm of the record player to avoid skips in the flow of musical "perfection")A little bit of each. All of this recollection has gotten me started on putting together what will be, if I ever finish it, my 23rd book -- but back in the 60s and 70s I graduated from hi-fi and ham radio into the world of computers by trying to teach the machines to do my job of writing. These days I describe myself as a semi-retired software developer, but actually I doubt that any single label is a snug fit...