First computers or pre PC computer history

[KathyLauren]

The built in tape drive was witchcraft
...
where a 2 megabyte hard drive was cutting edge.

What I would have given for 2 megs of disk!  Or even *any* disk.  When I first got my H11, it had 8 K of memory and *no* disk, not even a floppy.  It used punched paper tape for storage.  You wouldn't believe how that affects your program development cycle!  You made sure your programs worked right the first time, second max.

I did eventually max it out at 56 K of memory, added a 64 K 5.25" floppy, a dual 8" (2x 256K) floppy, and eventually, a 14" disk platter that held 10 megs.

[Sephirah]

Show off! Spectrum 128k where I had the 48K, Amiga 600 when I had the 500 lol! Spoilt cow ha ha!

Haha, I got my 600 off a car boot sale, for like 20 quid. The 500 had the full keyboard. The 600 was like an Amiga laptop.

[EllenW]

I pre-date PC's. The first computer I used was my high school's main frame. The Terminal was a telex machine. We typed in our program into the telex machine and produced a tape. We then dialed up the main frame and ran the tape to load the program and the data. Kept our fingers crossed that there were no typos.

FYI, this class helped me get my first full time job with Maersk Line. Where the terminals weighed about 60 pounds.

Ellen

[ChrissyRyan]

Do you keep your older computers, if so, do you use them?

Are they considered obsolete?

[Dawn Kellie]

Most of the computers I have that are or were old didn't boot up

[Lori Dee ✅]

If the hard drives are not corrupted, I reuse them for extra storage.

I repurpose the power supplies and fans. The rest gets torn down and scrapped after I dismantle the motherboards, memory, video, and other cards. Those get stripped separately to recover the gold. There is very little in them, but I would rather keep it than give it away.

[EllenW]

I have on old PC. It is a Paquet PC. It is just a little larger than todays cell phones when closed up. Runs on four AA batteries with Dos 3.0 in RAM. It uses early versions of SD cards for memory and addtional programs.

Ellen

[Dawn Kellie]

I have on old PC. It is a Paquet PC. It is just a little larger than todays cell phones when closed up. Runs on four AA batteries with Dos 3.0 in RAM. It uses early versions of SD cards for memory and addtional programs.

Ellen

And it still operates? Most electronics have a definite life cycle

[ChrissyRyan]

Someone said his dad still keeps an old PC to play floppy disk based games.  It cannot connect to the Internet as there is no home telephone to connect an old modem to.  He keeps the PC as is just to play old games.  No software or hardware updates.  Wired mouse and keyboard.  It has a big tube monitor.  It has a sprocket paper printer but it is not used.  No USB no SATA no wireless no Bluetooth no card readers.

[Lori Dee ✅]

Someone said his dad still keeps an old PC to play floppy disk based games.  It cannot connect to the Internet as there is no home telephone to connect an old modem to.  He keeps the PC as is just to play old games.  No software or hardware updates.  Wired mouse and keyboard.  It has a big tube monitor.  It has a sprocket paper printer but it is not used.  No USB no SATA no wireless no Bluetooth.

Being isolated like that also means no need for anti-virus or any of the non-essential crap that bogs down modern PC performance. I had a lot of software that functioned perfectly as it was. Then some yahoo decided that it needed more, and more, and more.

I miss DOS 5.0.

😁