Allan´s Weblog

Wow

Wow, these are really old
First computer I ever put my hands on was ZX Spectrum 48K and first PC was IBM 80286 with 640kB of RAM and about 1MB hard disk
It was so long ago....

yet another adventure with Allan (this time reminding me how old I really am.) fun.

Fun post Allan. I never touched a computer till I was 50! That was ten years ago. I bought one so I could teach myself to use it and get a better job. It was an e-machine and I used it (dial up) till June of last year when I bought a Dell and, finally, had high speed internet. Whooo Hooo!

What's funny is that I took my old one completely apart, put the plastic parts into recycle and have saved all the inside parts (do you call them components? the motherboard?) for yet another art project...even the old hard drive. Or maybe put them in a painting. Some of the things look like mini futuristic cities.

Excellent. I had three Commodore VIC-20's. They were awesome. One was modified by my uncle and was in a wooden case, as opposed to the plastic casing you'd usually see. It had extra slots for RAM and multiple game cards. It was genious.

Ah, those were the days. I used to play it on my black and white tele which just had one power button and a dial for tuning.

Hardcore.

What fun. My first computer was a Sinclair Spectrum with a staggering 16K of RAM and programs that took 15 minutes to load from an audio cassette player!

But I loved it at the time, and was amazed at what it could do.

The first one I remember us having was a Radio Shack "CoCo".
What a dinosaur!

NAME Color Computer 2
MANUFACTURER Tandy Radio Shack
TYPE Home Computer
ORIGIN U.S.A.
YEAR 1983
KEYBOARD Full-stroke keyboard, 53 keys.
Arrow keys, BREAK, CLEAR, SHIFT (x2)
CPU Motorola 6809E
SPEED 0,89 Mhz (1,8 Mhz by programming the clock generator)
RAM 16 KB, 32 KB or 64 KB, depending on models
ROM 8 KB (Color Basic), but later models had 16 KB (Extended Color Basic)
TEXT MODES 32 x 16
GRAPHIC MODES 256 x 192 (2 colors), 128 x 192 (2 and 4 colors), 128 x 96 (4 and 2 colors), 32 x 64 (8 colors)
COLORS 9
SOUND 1 voice (6-bit DAC)
SIZE / WEIGHT 9 x 35 x 37,5 cm
I/O PORTS Expansion/Cartridge connector, two analog joystick connectors, cassette interface (1500 bauds), RS232 serial port, TV RF connector
OS OS9 Level 1 with disk-drives

this is a memory lane ....
my first was an American Airlines PC in 1981,I was wonking on Sabre those days, only at the tender age of 17 and eager to take over the world .....
thanks for reminding me how far we have come!

In the early 80's, my dad gave me a VIC20. With the extended, expanded memory, it would hold a whopping 1/2 page of text on a cassette tape. It was a challenge to find your files, you had to play the tape and listen for the change in tones that indicated you had come to a new file.
It was awfully cold in Canada and heat was expensive, so I installed this great machine in the attic and worked on it there. I didn't have any pre-made programs (not sure if any were even available), so I got a book called, "Programming Primer" and learned to program it.
Oh, how far we have come!

My first computer was a pencil and some paper. A very versatile system -- and highly portable -- but not very accurate! -- LOL.

1988, Packard-Bell 286, 40 Meg drive, running a very early version of DOS -- I think it was 2.0.

*wonders how did he got upgrades for that one*

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrfMFhrgOFc
a 2000 year old computer recreated.

Or there is always the fingers