Posted on 12/02/2023 10:27:55 AM PST by Signalman
Computer Chronicles was a show on PBS back in the 1980s. This episode features, among others, an interview of Gary Kildall, the inventor of CP/M, an 8-bit operating system which preceded QDOS and MS-DOS, both of which were based on CP/M. Kildall was the founder of Digital Research Inc. (DRI).
If I remember this right you could buy a hardware module that plugged into the back of the C64 to run CP/M.
My S-100 box was equipped with those “more reliable” North*Star hard sectored floppy drives! Z-80 of course and full static memory, a handful of serial ports and a bunch of ham radio specific hardware. 20 slots filled up fast!
My Dad was a VP engineer at Burroughs, later at Computer Associates
He bought us the Commodore 64 and Texas Instruments TI99.
He explained that computer “code” was simply a language like French, Spanish, English and we only had to speak it’s language, as it were , to get it to what we want.
I didn’t use them as I found them a waste of time.
When GUI became the human interface I found computers useful, much like the introduction of the IPhone. Before it showed up i hated cell phones and now I love then because they are useful ...
Built my first PC out of floor sweepings in 1982. It was a Z80 machine.
Still have it stored.
I even had a flight simulator for it. Keyboard control, not joy stick.
Forgot to tell you the OS, it ran NewDOS80.
Did your Dad ever talk about the Burroughs OpSys references in the original TRON movie?
Zilog came out with the Z80 processor to 'out-do' the Intel 8080 - which it definitely did.
Then many years later Hitachi introduced the HD64180 which outdid the Z80.
I actually bought a single board computer based on the HD64180 and
mounted it in a wooden box - along with drives, a power supply etc.
I hooked the thing up to a high-end Televideo dumb terminal and ran
ZCPR3 on it (Z80 Command Processor replacement version 3) which was
the last and most advanced (IMO) incarnation of CP/M. It was fun.
Those were the days, eh? LOL.
Like many others here, my first computer was a Commodore 64. It was actually my older brother’s before he passed. I still have that machine and several other models besides (I collect them, and my prized version is a great condition SX-64).
What’s interesting is there are still folks out there making games, utilities, and even new hardware for the thing. There’s still a lot of life in it yet! And what’s more, you don’t have to worry about the issues that plague modern computers, either. Sometimes old tech has its advantages.
I remember the 5-in floppies came in two flavors. Some with one hole per rotation, the others with 10 holes.
Those ramdisks used dynamic memory so had to be refreshed even if your box was down. Sort of had separate batteries just to keep the ramdisk alive.
Other Z-80s used the IBM 8-in disk standard. Had some Dynabyte models with dbl density, dbl and double sided too.
Got up to 1 meg per 8-in floppy.
First hard drive for North Star was 15 meg at $5000. Too heavy for ups. Took 3 minutes to ‘warm up’
Yes, I’ve done some work in industrial automation, HMI, human machine interface, press a button on the touch screen and the assembly line moves. Fascinating field of study, TAKT time, process time requirements, etc. Latest project I’ve been involved with have been with SVP’s, support vector machines, machine learning, AI. We’ve been studying the proclivity of breast and uterine cancer in women ages 30 to 65. In a nutshell why did these ladies contract cancer? Genetics, lifestyle, food, drinking water? Hope we can help science and medicine.
I started on the Big Iron BAL in ‘82 and did MSDos and Windows ‘C’ on the side. Never got into PC Assembly Language. After that there were just too many languages, compilers, and other tools to count.
They really are all about the same deep down.
Never liked Managers much.
What’s the only thing dumber than an End User???
Two End Users..
dBase II. I preferred Paradox.
lol!
it talked to the dec VAX’s at work from home, so...
😆
Yup....
I later bought a Kaypro 2000+ clamshell "laptop" in 1988.
I used my Kaypro PC until it died in 1993. I continued using WordStar for DOS until the late 2000s, when I switched from XP to Win 7, which no longer recognized an external 3.5 drive with my WordStar discs, or my parallel port printer which WS insisted upon. I was unable to get WS to recognize my USB printer, so I had to switch to Open Office Writer.
I had bought WordStar for Windows in the 1990s, but I never used it.
I still have a Toshiba 1200xe (a 286) purchased in 1990, that still runs. It has WordStar for DOS and Stratego. I haven’t looked at it in years, but it ran the last time I checked.
I prototyped an RCA 1802 motherboard board in 1976. I was an RCA industrial/military distributor salesman. I got lotsa free samples. It had great easy sensor ports and DMA dump access. Anyone here go to the first Computer Conference in San Francisco?
Been in ‘data processing’ back before ‘information systems’ became a thing, LMAO, yep I’m old. First PC was a Tandy TL1000. I wanted to get more memory, went to the Radio Shack (remember them?) where I bought it. The manager did not want to sell me a hard drive because he told me they were too complicated to install and that one of their male technicians should do it. I caused quite a scene because he basically came out and said that women couldn’t understand the technology. Yeah, my job was working with IBM mainframes and peripherals in a room bigger than his store, but I didn’t know technology, riiiight. Needless to say I did walk out of the store with my purchase which was successfully installed. Kept that machine running for about 8 or 9 years, then moved on to something newer.
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