• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

Christmas fun and memories

Enclave

Enclave

Well-Known Member
Retired Moderator
Messages
2,602
Location
Scotland
Type of diabetes
Treatment type
Diet only
as a response to a reasent forum joke thread .. http://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/threads/actual-call-center-conversations.69267/#post-713557
What's your first memory of computers .. The home versions
Mine is a Tandy with a big book of code .. The first joining of computers was a big box that you put your telephone hand peice in and hoped the computer the other end could hear it. There was no disk info was save to a cassette tape .. That would unravel as soon as you look at it. Happy days ... The printer was a huge .. And I mean huge dot matrix machine and the paper was on a big roll with holes punched along both edges .. It was so loud you needed ear defenders when it was printing ... I am feeling very old now :arghh:
 
My husband had a BBC computer in 1979,no e mail then.
We have three in the house now,mine is a laptop and I didnt become at all intrested until I retired.
I taught myself,never typed before.
 
Patricia21 said:
My husband had a BBC computer in 1979,no e mail then.
We have three in the house now,mine is a laptop and I didnt become at all intrested until I retired.
I taught myself,never typed before.
Click to expand...
Yes mine was early 70's as well !
We have 2 iMacs 1 mac book pro, iPad and iPhone along with a pc laptop !!! But the wife is editing her e publication on the two desk tops and the lap top.
 
A Sinclair ZX81 & Spectrum with programs like flight simulator on cassette. It had a 50/50 chance of loading. You could also write programs to make stick men walk about.
The first computer publishing program I worked with was a converted (badly) accounting system. It displayed text which you then had to measure on screen with a ruler to see if it would fit the page layout. Production then was still hot metal.
 
DeejayR said:
A Sinclair ZX81 & Spectrum with programs like flight simulator on cassette. It had a 50/50 chance of loading. You could also write programs to make stick men walk about.
The first computer publishing program I worked with was a converted (badly) accounting system. It displayed text which you then had to measure on screen with a ruler to see if it would fit the page layout. Production then was still hot metal.
Click to expand...
Never had a ZX .. I hear they were hard to code with .. Did have the amstrad the first model .. That was diffrent .. It's own screen and everything .. Lol .. Do you remember the directory of phone numbers and names of other people that had the telephone box attachment so you could connect with them ... You had to phone first so they could have their set up ready to receive your coding ... That was such fun ... Not !
 
Patricia21 said:
My husband had a BBC computer in 1979,no e mail then.
We have three in the house now,mine is a laptop and I didnt become at all intrested until I retired.
I taught myself,never typed before.
Click to expand...
I don't remember a BBC computer ! Did it have a screen ? Or was it just the box and keyboard ?
 
Enclave said:
I don't remember a BBC computer ! Did it have a screen ? Or was it just the box and keyboard ?
Click to expand...
"The BBC Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, was a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by the Acorn Computer company for the BBC Computer Literacy Project, operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation. Designed with an emphasis on education, it was notable for its ruggedness, expandability and the quality of its operating system." Etc etc (Wikepedia)
 
I learnt computer programming on a ZX81. I was then a chemist with a laundry equipment firm.

We were quoted £20,000 for a computer printer system for wash-proof laundry labels - garment rental & hospital. We had the labels already. Accepting that quote would have tied us to equipment supplied by the designer.

I offered to develop a system over the Christmas holiday period using commercially available equipment - the Tandy laptop (5K RAM) & a dot matrix printer. I learned 8085 machine code & a 3K program, charging £1,000 as overtime. The programs were loaded by cassette. The system was sold for £1,000 & we sold 60 in the first 6 months. I then moved on the NEC portable which had an EPROM option.

The system had to be easy to use by laundry personnel. Our European agents wanted it, so the translation had to fit - & was loaded en block into the text location.

Inevitably we migrated to the PC system, & a compiled BASIC

Happy days - but consultancy for that firm paid my wages for another 15-20 years & my pension I'm living on.
 
IanD said:
I learnt computer programming on a ZX81. I was then a chemist with a laundry equipment firm.

We were quoted £20,000 for a computer printer system for wash-proof laundry labels - garment rental & hospital. We had the labels already. Accepting that quote would have tied us to equipment supplied by the designer.

I offered to develop a system over the Christmas holiday period using commercially available equipment - the Tandy laptop (5K RAM) & a dot matrix printer. I learned 8085 machine code & a 3K program, charging £1,000 as overtime. The programs were loaded by cassette. The system was sold for £1,000 & we sold 60 in the first 6 months. I then moved on the NEC portable which had an EPROM option.

The system had to be easy to use by laundry personnel. Our European agents wanted it, so the translation had to fit - & was loaded en block into the text location.

Inevitably we migrated to the PC system, & a compiled BASIC

Happy days - but consultancy for that firm paid my wages for another 15-20 years & my pension I'm living on.
Click to expand...
I am very impressed ..
 
IanD said:
I learnt computer programming on a ZX81. I was then a chemist with a laundry equipment firm.

We were quoted £20,000 for a computer printer system for wash-proof laundry labels - garment rental & hospital. We had the labels already. Accepting that quote would have tied us to equipment supplied by the designer.

I offered to develop a system over the Christmas holiday period using commercially available equipment - the Tandy laptop (5K RAM) & a dot matrix printer. I learned 8085 machine code & a 3K program, charging £1,000 as overtime. The programs were loaded by cassette. The system was sold for £1,000 & we sold 60 in the first 6 months. I then moved on the NEC portable which had an EPROM option.

The system had to be easy to use by laundry personnel. Our European agents wanted it, so the translation had to fit - & was loaded en block into the text location.

Inevitably we migrated to the PC system, & a compiled BASIC

Happy days - but consultancy for that firm paid my wages for another 15-20 years & my pension I'm living on.
Click to expand...
Me too. Way to go!
 
Remember the BBC computer, the Tandy TRS 80, The Commodore 64 and the ZX 80 well. All had the computing power of a hairdryer but such fun. Dot matrix printers with tabs at the sides..endless fun of depleting the Amazon Rainforest. Alas fond memories.
 
Back
Top