My New Desk Top Computer

[Gizmo2]

Old Fart!



Hee hee!

First computer I was paid to support had 64K of torodial core memory, and it was programmed in octal from a maint panel (no keyboard).

I had a PDP 11 in my basement for years.

How about you?

David

"Old Fart" now that was funny! My wife said "what are you you laughing at" Payback is a *****.
I must be cause 64K core memory sounds like a lot to me.
Octal or really binary? Programming by setting a flip-flop with a push button was real programing. And today...........
..
Installed 2 PDP 11's back in......can't remember!

What about those 12" floppies now they were a PITA.
Punch tape and you had a real bit bucket that had to be emptied.

 

[EddieWalker]

Interesting methods to protect your hard drive.

This is my method for most everything.

Eddie

 

[MossflowerWoods]

"Old Fart" now that was funny! My wife said "what are you you laughing at" Payback is a *****.
I must be cause 64K core memory sounds like a lot to me.
Octal or really binary? Programming by setting a flip-flop with a push button was real programing. And today...........
..
Installed 2 PDP 11's back in......can't remember!

What about those 12" floppies now they were a PITA.
Punch tape and you had a real bit bucket that had to be emptied.

Gizmo2,
I meant for it to be funny! Glad it was recieved as such. :thumbsup:

Paper tape and punch cards, checked the bit bucket - Yup.

300 MB HDD the size of a DishWasher and we alighned the heads with an O-Scope - Yup

64K is all you will ever need, yeah right! The key was "torodial core memory" do you remember how that was made? Really it was programmed in binary, but the buttons were 3 white, 3 black, 3 white, 3 black with an [Enter] to load the values into register and execute. AN/UYK-20 by Univac...

The Old Old days...

Be well sir!
David

 

[KubotainNH]

Like mentioned, IBM pushed their desktop/laptop business to Lenova. They are decent machines. The T series laptops are high in the business realm and are very sturdy. My company has used them for years but is now switching to HP. The solid state drives are really fast and battery savers.

As for cleaning a hard drive, you can download Killdisk and burn the ISO to a bootable CD. The free version will only do so much but it will write all ones to the drive so nothing is readable when done. Good stuff.

Someone mentioned printers too, a year ago I bought a Brother laser printer for $150. It's now under $100. The thing is great, it does duplexing, wireless and is very fast and cheap to run. You can buy a refill kit for the toner cartridge for under the price of one inkjet cartridge and all the PC's can easily print to it. We have an inkjet for the now and then color printing but it's not used often.

 

[JB4310]

Someone mentioned printers too, a year ago I bought a Brother laser printer for $150. It's now under $100. The thing is great, it does duplexing, wireless and is very fast and cheap to run. You can buy a refill kit for the toner cartridge for under the price of one inkjet cartridge and all the PC's can easily print to it. We have an inkjet for the now and then color printing but it's not used often.

My first printer was $1,000. and my first PC was $3,000 in year 2000.

You couldn't give either of them away today, I tried

The printers are the prime example of higher quality/ greater capability and lower cost, more so than the chips/PCs

JB

 

[buck12]

We don't even have a home computer anymore. My wife and I use our iPhones for most things at home (posting this). We both have laptops we can bring from work when needed. Last year I bought my daughter a refurbished Dell laptop but she mostly uses an iPod touch. Eddie is right about the quality of Dell slipping. I buy multiple computers at a time for work and until a couple of years ago had almost no trouble with Dell. The last two sets of Dell laptops have been plagued with problems.

 

[KubotainNH]

We don't even have a home computer anymore. My wife and I use our iPhones for most things at home (posting this). We both have laptops we can bring from work when needed. Last year I bought my daughter a refurbished Dell laptop but she mostly uses an iPod touch. Eddie is right about the quality of Dell slipping. I buy multiple computers at a time for work and until a couple of years ago had almost no trouble with Dell. The last two sets of Dell laptops have been plagued with problems.

The ipod touches are great for the most part but tough for my kids to write a paper with.

 

[buck12]

The ipod touches are great for the most part but tough for my kids to write a paper with.

That is why we bought my daughter a cheap laptop. School work is about all it is used for. If she is playing a game or just looking something up on the Internet she uses the iPod touch. I don't miss having a home computer in that it is much quicker to check TBN, email, etc on my phone than to login and wait for a computer to boot.

 

[two_bit_score]

Really like my IPad 2. If I ever need a new laptop it will be a MacBook air.

 

[buck12]

Really like my IPad 2. If I ever need a new laptop it will be a MacBook air.

I keep thing about a iPad but I am too cheap.

 

[two_bit_score]

I'm pretty cheap. I have not regretted the iPad.

 

[ultrarunner]

I've owned 3 computers...

Apple //e was my first with a Qume Letter Quality Printer... set me back about 3k in 1982... that was a lot of money at $10 and hour...

Have to say, in 29 years, never had a failure or glitch... I'm holding onto it till I get my money's worth.

In 98 I bought a Dell... had one problem that eventually Dell made good on when they sent me a check for what it cost me to have it repaired... I had in office repair and they refused to sent someone out to make the repair... insisted that I had to send it in even though the in office repair said otherwise. Like the //e, the WIN98 Dell is still kicking.

Sixteen months ago, I saw a back to school sale for a WIN7 notebook ACER for $199. Only 2GB Memory and 250GB HDD with Card Reader and HDMI...

So far, it has been OK... the family computer guru chastised me for not getting the $1300 Lenovo he recommended... he swears by them and not at them.

So far, so good.

I tend to keep things a long time or until I feel I got my money's worth... at $199... I imagine I won't have it as long as my Apple //e

Really thought about a new Apple... went to the store and priced them... even with a discount... the one I wanted would have been about 2k when all was said and done...

Eddie... I think you will be happy with your purchase...

With inflation at every turn... at least the home computer market offers more for less.

 

[KubotainNH]

"Old Fart" now that was funny! My wife said "what are you you laughing at" Payback is a *****.
I must be cause 64K core memory sounds like a lot to me.
Octal or really binary? Programming by setting a flip-flop with a push button was real programing. And today...........
..
Installed 2 PDP 11's back in......can't remember!

What about those 12" floppies now they were a PITA.
Punch tape and you had a real bit bucket that had to be emptied.

Ha, I guess I'm a bit younger seeing we had do do programming on these when I was in college. Set all the toggle switches and hit the insert toggle, set the next line and do it again. What a pain but we thought it was pretty cool. Also had a VAX there for basic and pascal. We've come a long way in a short amount of time. I thought the Commodore 64 was a huge leap. I think I've been in the computer & network business for too long.

 

[KubotainNH]

That is why we bought my daughter a cheap laptop. School work is about all it is used for. If she is playing a game or just looking something up on the Internet she uses the iPod touch. I don't miss having a home computer in that it is much quicker to check TBN, email, etc on my phone than to login and wait for a computer to boot.

Yep, the touch is perfect for the quick check but the laptops are getting better. The new HP's with the SSD are all the way up in under a minute and come with something called Webnow (I think that's what it's called). You hit a certain button and it boots into a micro version of Linux in 10 seconds which gives you basic web and e-mail. If I could attach a bigger monitor and a USB keyboard to an ipod touch then you'd have me.

 

[two_bit_score]

Yep, the touch is perfect for the quick check but the laptops are getting better. The new HP's with the SSD are all the way up in under a minute and come with something called Webnow (I think that's what it's called). You hit a certain button and it boots into a micro version of Linux in 10 seconds which gives you basic web and e-mail. If I could attach a bigger monitor and a USB keyboard to an ipod touch then you'd have me.

Wait about six months and it will probably be available.

 

[BigE_]

If I could attach a bigger monitor and a USB keyboard to an ipod touch then you'd have me.

Many of the Android based tablets you can do that right now. HDMI cable for the monitor, and Bluetooth for the keyboard and mouse. Actually, I use a Bluetooth keyboard on my Android cell phone when I'm using it out in the shop. I can hook a monitor to it, but I haven't tried that yet. Works great if I want to type up a longer email or if I'm inventorying new purchases.

Even this is from my cell phone.

 

[ronjhall]

Just replaced my desktop last month with a HP. With similar specs as what Eddie purchased. Windows 7 seems to be the best feature of the computer. Works well. Transfer all my data off old XP computer with programs built into W7. I have a HP notebook that also has W7. Took awhile to get used to the difference between XP and W7. But I had it over a year to get up to speed on it before getting the desktop.
Best is I like is to be able to sync both computers, printer and iphone without being a super techie.
I also bought a new HP printer that does every thing that I will never need.

 

[Gizmo2]

but the buttons were 3 white, 3 black, 3 white, 3 black

You're right, forgot about that.

 

[jinman]

You're right, forgot about that.

Gizmo, did you ever learn the boot program sequence for the Univac 1218/1219 computers? As you and I discussed the MK152 computer earlier, it was a Univac 1219 with 32k of iron core memory. The OP program was loaded from open reel magnetic tape, but to get the computer to load the tape, it had to have the "loader program" input from paper tape. Before the loader program could be loaded, you had to load the bootstrap program into memory from the front registers in octal code. Every computer technician I knew had that bootstrap program memorized. Actually, the computer had the bootstrap code in non-volatile memory as I remember. Entering by hand was a backup method. Our output device was a teletype printer. How many people today know what ASCII code is or what A-S-C-I-I stands for?


My first computer job (prior to the military) was as a controls clerk in the data processing department of Texas Instruments in Dallas. My job was verifying sales and billings figures for the entire Semiconductor Division. Everyday, I'd take the sales receipts and get them punched into Hollerith code cards. Then, I'd pull the cards out of tub files that matched the billings. It was my job to tally the paper sales and billings receipts and make sure they matched exactly to the penny the cards punched. Many times I'd discover up to a dozen cards out of several hundred that were punched wrong. Does feeding cards "12-edge face down" sound familiar? How about the notch on the punch card? Was it on the 12-edge or the 9-edge? If you can answer those questions, you are truly an old mainframe IBM guy. Our computer complex at TI used an IBM 1401 Computer complex.

All of a sudden, I'm feeling very old. . .

 

[brin]

Jim - you are feeling old...The first computer I bough my son was a Sinclair...remember that one ? It plugged into the TV...he did some of his math homework on it and played some games( he was 10 yrs, old )...The first computer I bought for our company was an " Altos " it was ...get this > 5 Meg. hard disk and used floppies and cost us $15,000.00 and we paid about $3,500 for a dot matrix printer as I recall , not to mention the custom software we had to have written...and that was all in 1980 dollars..just imagine if I had bought Microsoft stock instead...another story...LOL --Yeah I feel old too.