My New Desk Top Computer

[JDgreen227]

Last Gateway I purchased was their premium model that used Windows 98...and it still works great...lol.

Love Dell for desktops, current one is a modded 530 with many, many upgrades (Vista 64 bit)and an Asus 24 inch monitor, machine is going on 3 1/2 years old now, has never given me any problems. Modded the Dell 4700 I purchased for my wife back in 2004 (!!!) XP, bigger power supply, 4 GB ram, 320 gb HD, 1 GB video card, has the same Asus 24 inch monitor, has never given us any problems either. Both still have nothing but OEM cooling, I always wonder why people say their desktops are troublesome. Maybe I have just been lucky?

 

[hawkeye08]

Having been in the computer service business for over 30 years, I can tell you that there are reasonably safe ways to securely erase the data on your computer hard drive. It is done all the time with very good results.

There are free and commercial applications, I tend to use the free one for home use.

DBAN - Darik's Boot and Nuke. You can download the image, burn a CD (most computers will boot from CD nowadays). When you boot from the CD, it has a menu to select from. You select the disk you want to erase and the method. The DoD often uses 5220M (I think that is right), 3 pass is fine for most of us, 7 pass is better. Darik's Boot And Nuke | Hard Drive Disk Wipe and Data Clearing

Another free one for Windows systems is eraser. Eraser :: Downloads

Another (if your hardware supports it) is the erase program from UCSD.
CMRR - Secure Erase

If you are really paranoid, you can set up an encrypted file system to store your data on (just a portion of your harddrive). Truecrypt is one that I use for home. TrueCrypt - Free Open-Source On-The-Fly Disk Encryption Software for Windows 7/Vista/XP, Mac OS X and Linux

If you want to use commercial software, Blannco has some products that work also. Data Erasure - Secure Data Destruction - Erase Data - Blancco Software

The important thing is, do not just give/throw/sell your old computer without taking care of your personal data that might be on it.

 

[two_bit_score]

A 3/8 drill bit to the hard drive in a couple spots might work?

 

[jinman]

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 )

Brin, I bought one of those Timex-Sinclair TS-1000 computers with the 16k memory pack that plugged into the back of the circuit board. Unfortunately, the computer was made so cheaply that the pins for that add-on were solder coated instead of gold. Any vibration made the memory module lose contact for a millisecond and the computer crashed. I remember programming in basic and waiting 15 minutes for programs to load or save to the cassette tape drive.

The first "real" computer was an IBM PCjr I bought for my kids with a color monitor and Epson JX-80 color dot matrix printer. That set me back around $4500 dollars. I had word processing software on it and spreadsheet software that came bundled with the computer, but all my ex-wife ever let them do with it was play games. I was really miffed because it was a fine little computer system.

When I was working at the University of Texas at Dallas in the Geosciences Department, they had Osborne portable computers with 40 column screens. Then they added on 80 column cards that worked by scrolling the screen left and right to see the whole line of text. It was a hoot, but with built-in Wordstar, they were word processing powerhouses. Can you imagine typing a Doctoral Thesis on a mainframe terminal using a line editor? That's what they used before getting the Osbornes.

 

[KubotainNH]

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.

Bluetooth keyboard/mouse? Interesting.

A tablet is bigger than I would want at this point. I love the Ipod touch and what it can do but am not the type to keep upgrading when the latest model comes out. I typically buy this type of thing used. My HP desktop I bought used in the summer, dual core processor and it screams with a fresh XP image. The kids use our old Dell that's 7 or 8 years old and it was a refurb. The electronics are getting pretty amazing but my wallet won't allow too much for upgrades at this point.

 

[Gizmo2]

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?

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

You are old,,,,, Like me! Let's thank God.
We loaded off of mylar punch tape.
I am sure I had to learn the boot program but don't recall it. I do remember loading a small tape sometimes before the OP.

Check this out, "page 9"

UNIVAC 1219 COMPUTER REPERTOIRE OF INSTRUCTIONS
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/univac/military/1219/1219_Brochure.pdf​

 

[Gizmo2]

Yo jinman,
After a program load and letting one rip.

 

[RobertN]

After years around high tech, more working on failure analysis of microprocessor and eeprom then flash memory, I usually build my own.

It can be hard to start from fresh, and match prices of the bundles available out there.

I spent years at Intel; I tend to stick with their processors and boards. In-Win has some chassis that have good thermals and acoustics. There are nice 80+ Bronze and Gold power supplies out there that give good energy performance.

I came in late; first computer I ever worked with was a Vax 11-780. End user, not admin.

 

[nap61]

My first computer was a Tandy 2000 from Radioshack. It didn't have a hard drive; only two disk drives. One for the application and one for the data files. It had the old "green screen" monitor - no graphics. The printer was the size of a large microwave oven and was so loud that when you hit "print" it was best to leave the room. It used a rollerball head like the IBM Selectric typewritter. I used it mainly for word processing (early Wordperfect, I think). It did have some games such as Pirate, but without graphics you had to type each direction line by line. If you got fustrated and typed in a curse word, it warned you not to use such language. I found out that it had a fairly large vocabulary of curse words. I paid about $2,500 for it.

Norm

 

[k0ua]

Jinman my first computer was a TI 99 with 16k of memory and a television for a moniter. by the way ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, and that is from memory not looked up. I have spent many an hour behind a Digital Decwriter 300 buad termiinal. And I can remember some of the ASCII charaters, numbers like space is 32 and A is 65 I think so I guess B would be 66 and so on. I think the escape sequence was ascii 127. but I am not sure of that. We also used a small thermal terminal made by Texas Instruments called a "silent 700". It was not really silent, but it did not make a lot of noise, and no where near as much as a dec-writer. Sure brings back some memories. Oh I also had a complete Teletype set at one time I used for a while, a Teletype model 15, with typing reperferator and the Transmitter Distributer (TD). of course these machines were from the 1920's and all run in a 20ma loop in series, and used a 5 level code called baudot not a 7 level or 8 level code like ASCII. I had a lot of paper tapes of "teletype pictures" and such things. So in rambling on, here I think I have owned and used some of the oldest "iron" on here.

James K0UA