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The Old Guys threak

rnoldh

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Originally Posted by RSS
^^^ My first PC accommodated two six inch floppy disks ... and had NO hard drive. Remember MS-DOS? The program I used most often was PSF File ... and I still use it ... in an MS-DOS window.

Originally Posted by Bradford
My parents met working at IBM in the mid-60's and have always been somewhat involved with computers. I remember my dad bringing home the dumb terminals where the telephone handset went into the acoustic coupler and you could link into the mainframe that way.

Also, one of my friends in junior high had a TRS-80 computer and we used to spend hours programming in BASIC and saving the programs on the cassette tape drive.


I remember "punch cards" and data entry clerks.

Like this:

5404PH13.jpg
 

Mark from Plano

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Originally Posted by rnoldh
I remember when PCs were far in the future. My school, Rice U., had a huge main frame and a "computer lab". It was one of 5 schools that were part of Arapanet ( a precursor to the internet ). One of the guys in my dorm was a nerd and he always was telling me to "get into computers"!.
My first computer class in college was COBAL. We programmed **** you could do on a spreadsheet today. It usually took a stack of punchcards (if you don't remember those you shouldn't be posting in this thread) a foot high and if one of them was wrong you played hell trying to find the error.
 

gnatty8

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lol, my big brother dropped 2 large on a TRS-80 with the cassette drive. That was in the mid-80s, and with inflation, that's damn close to paying $3,000 for something with the computing power of the average scientific calculator I can buy for $40 today.

Pack rat as he is, he still has it in his basement..

I remember the Christmas my parents got us Colecovision. Man, were we popular for about 6 weeks.
 

RSS

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Originally Posted by rnoldh
I remember "punch cards" and data entry clerks.
I remember those too ... but never considered them my very own PC or Personal Computer.
 

rnoldh

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Originally Posted by RSS
I remember those too ... but never considered them my very own PC or Personal Computer.

Nah, I don't think of them as PCs either.

I really think of true PCs as coming of age with Compaq.

It was a trio of TI guys from my college generation that started Compaq right here in Houston.

Legend has it that they drew up the original PC plans on a House of Pies ( Houston restaurant ) placemat. The House of Pies is still there.

This was in the early 1980s. I don't remember what crazy scheme I was working on in Houston at the time.
 

RSS

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Originally Posted by rnoldh
Legend has it that they drew up the original PC plans on a House of Pies ( Houston restaurant ) placemat. The House of Pies is still there.
I had a project in River Oaks a few years back. I remember the House of Pies ... it's not too far off Westheimer as I recall ... just don't recall the street.
 

zippyh

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Originally Posted by Mark from Plano
My first computer class in college was COBAL. We programmed **** you could do on a spreadsheet today. It usually took a stack of punchcards (if you don't remember those you shouldn't be posting in this thread) a foot high and if one of them was wrong you played hell trying to find the error.

That's COBOL.

I remember programming BASIC using punchcards in high school.
We had an ancient even then punch card puncher thingie which jammed every 10th card.
Our teacher would drop off our cards every night at the school district data center and then pick up the printouts in the morning.

My university had retired the punchcard readers the year before I started.

I had an Atari computer for "school" but really it was mostly to play Robotron and Defender.
 

lefty

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Enough with the nerd talk.

inside_seka.jpg

Desiree-Cousteau.jpg

http://www.blog.newsweek.com/photos/levelup/images/original/Poster-for-the-1978-Appreciation-film-_2200_Debbie-Does-Dallas_2C002200_-courtesy-idave.com.aspx

lefty
 

RSS

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About twenty years ago for a reunion of old college friends ... we invented our own version of Pictionary ... and one the phrases was "Debbie Does Dallas."

I'm sorry to say that all I could come up with was "Debutante with a big dick from Texas."
 

Piobaire

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Originally Posted by Bradford
My parents met working at IBM in the mid-60's and have always been somewhat involved with computers. I remember my dad bringing home the dumb terminals where the telephone handset went into the acoustic coupler and you could link into the mainframe that way.

Also, one of my friends in junior high had a TRS-80 computer and we used to spend hours programming in BASIC and saving the programs on the cassette tape drive.


I remember when our high school Computer Club got a TRS-80 after a year of fund raising. It was in a little room in the library, and you could sign up for time. Was so special then.
 

Connemara

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My uncle did his biochemistry Ph.D. in the 70s and early 80s and remembers punch cards. Says they were the devil.
 

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