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New Appreciation for Old Computers
Reuters ^
| Wednesday, January 1, 2003
| Richard Chang
Posted on 01/01/2003 2:06:42 PM PST by Willie Green
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To: Willie Green
the Apple 1 -- designed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in a California garage and sold as a kit in 1976 for $666.66 Interesting price...I always knew that Steve Jobs was the devil, but Woz too???
To: Willie Green
Still lhave our old Apple 2C sitting around collecting dust.
3
posted on
01/01/2003 2:11:12 PM PST
by
OldFriend
To: Willie Green
Wish they's come pick up all my old dead printers and monitors so I wouldn't have to sneak them out to a secluded dumpster some night.
4
posted on
01/01/2003 2:12:43 PM PST
by
Semper911
To: Willie Green
I still have the originial 128K Macintosh I purchased in 1984. I've had many computers since then, all of which I've sold, but I will never part with that original Macintosh. I don't care about the monetary value, which I'm sure is negligible. Its got sentimental value to me. Back in those days, getting that Mac was really special. Nowadays, computers are practically throwaway items, but not back in the mid-80's.
Incidentally, from time to time I turn it on and boot up System 1.0 and MacWrite. It still works, and I could still compose a letter on it.
5
posted on
01/01/2003 2:30:24 PM PST
by
Astronaut
To: Willie Green
There's probably a lot to be learned by studying the evolution of The Machine.
As for me I still have in working order and sometimes use:
At least one greaycase COCO with RGB monitor, periphs and TONS of software.
An Apple 2c
A Mac SE - On the desk in my bedroom. It has a Grateful Dead stix on it's side, and I still use it for word processing and a few other apps. I am considering taking it apart and using the shell for one of those new ITX mini boards.
A couple of TRS80 8088 asnd 8086 machines in various states of neglect but would boot up.
a couple of Time-Sinclairs - Actually they're MIA most likely buried under the COCO software in my closet.
And of course the usual assortment of MB's, game consoles and other parts a geek like me holds on to way too long.
FWIW some of my fav software was for the old Tandy machines including ROXANNE.EXE - a nekkid gal done (poorly) in ASCII and WEFAX which could read sattelite weather info and display it on a monitor. Oh and some BASIC horse racing game Wife and Kids and I typed into the COCO. It had graphics and let you bet on the horses. We spent many hours of family time on that one and had lots of fun.
prisoner6
6
posted on
01/01/2003 3:37:56 PM PST
by
prisoner6
To: Willie Green
I guess this means I should've hung onto the old 16KB Atari 400, with cassette drive and ATARI BASIC cartridge, not to mention PacMan and Star Raiders.
7
posted on
01/01/2003 3:50:42 PM PST
by
Marauder
To: Willie Green
Meet
my first computer:
Visual Commuter 8088 4.77MHz CPU:
- two 5" floppy 360K drives
- DOS 2.11
- a whopping 512K of RAM
- NO HARD DRIVE
- Amber monochrome monitor
- Silver Reed daisy-wheel printer (text only, no graphics)
- Extremely crappy bundled software
Couldn't have made it through grad school without it!
To: Willie Green
I still have my TI-99.
To: RadioAstronomer
ping ;)
To: Willie Green
thanks for posting...
I think I have a few "vintage computers" that I'll hold onto...for awhile!
11
posted on
01/01/2003 4:12:36 PM PST
by
VOA
To: Willie Green
I have a bunch of old 'puters setting around. Maybe I can get some money for them now. LOL
To: Willie Green
I have two TIMEX-SINCLAIR computers. Sold as the "every man" computer in the early 80s under $100. One still in the box w/nomenclature. Next stop...E-BAY!
13
posted on
01/01/2003 4:39:17 PM PST
by
jaz.357
To: Willie Green
I still have my IMSAI 8080 computer which I bought in 1975 in a box in the garage. It should be a real kick to fire it up at some point in the future.
Each of the four 8kbyte memory boards cost $300. Gee, if I had invested that money in MS stock, I would be retired already. Oh,well...
To: William Tell
I miss my C-64. There were games on that computer that have never been matched for the PC--SPACE TAXI! That was so cool. Seven Cities of Gold! Maddening that the power supplies, encased in epoxy resin, were so prone to overheating, and were not repairable. There probably aren't that many working C-64s around anymore. How far we've come since using a cassette tape to store data!
My dad built us an H-89 when I was a young'un and I spent many an hour glued to Wumpus Hunt and Zork....
To: ChemistCat
There probably aren't that many working C-64s around anymore. I've got a box buried somewhere in the bowels of my workshop with ten C-64 power supplies (I threw out the C-64 boxes after cannibalizing them but kept the power supplies for some reason). I bought them as a case lot at an auction a few years ago. All of them still work (confirmed with a meter).
As others have noted, it might be time to do the EBay thing ...
16
posted on
01/01/2003 5:50:01 PM PST
by
strela
To: strela
Heck who wants DOS? I hated that black screen with the creepy blinking cursor waiting for you to type something. And no help menu, no clue how to get about to work on it!!!
To: Willie Green
Willie:
I still have a couple of Amstead computers, and they both still work. Wait, one of them is a word processor. In fact I still have some of the disks for them too, and they were of a odd ball size. My second computer was an IBM 5100 with the tape drive. Long time ago.
The very best to you and yours.Semper Fi
Tommie
18
posted on
01/01/2003 5:57:08 PM PST
by
Texican
To: goldstategop
Your reply set me to thinking a bit. I started with a homebuilt MITS Altair (the plans were in a Popular Mechanics magazine in the 70s), and now have a system I can use to watch DVDs and TV programs, listen to and store music, scan print and fax documents, communicate with darned near anybody else on the planet, and play games with graphics that would have looked like something out of Star Trek to anyone 30 years ago. Any one of the computer chips in my car has more memory than my old Altair.
19
posted on
01/01/2003 6:01:29 PM PST
by
strela
To: Astronaut
I have a 512 from 1985, plus a couple of early powerbooks.
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