Moderators Augeas Posted July 19, 2014 Moderators Share Posted July 19, 2014 Whilst clearing out my shed I came across an old newspaper dated May 1994 (I don't clear out my shed very often). In there were a couple of adverts for PC's, being: Packard Bell 486 Intel 486sx-25 processor 4MB RAM expandable to 36MB 3.5” 1.44MB floppy drive Massive 250MB IDE hard disk 32-bit local bus 1024x768 SVGA graphics Superb 1024x768 SVGA colour screen (14”) Serial, parallel and mouse ports Keyboard and Microsoft compatible mouse Four free 16-bit expansion slots MSDOS 6 and Windows 3.1 preloaded £961.15 inc delivery and VAT (CD multimedia models £249 extra) Vtech 486sx25 Preloaded Lotus software Intel 486sx-25Mhz processor 4MB RAM memory – sufficient to run most Windows applications and upgradable to 32MB 128k cache memory 1MB video card 107MB hard disk 1.44MB floppy drive 6 ISA expansion slots (5 free) 14” MPR11 colour monitor Microsoft compatible mouse Microsoft Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS 6 preloaded, including all documentation, manuals and disks £821.33 inc VAT plus delivery How little we knew just how much power, storage and memory we would need in twenty years. All up by a factor of 1000, except the price, which has more than halved, bearing in mind that £1,000 in '94 is worth about £1,700 today. What did we manage to run on these things? An 107MB disk? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators hazelnut Posted July 19, 2014 Moderators Share Posted July 19, 2014 Wow they were really expensive then weren't they? Top of the range floppy disks, those were the days (glad to hear you are at last cleaning out your shed) Support contact https://support.ccleaner.com/s/contact-form?language=en_US&form=general or support@ccleaner.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Andavari Posted July 19, 2014 Moderators Share Posted July 19, 2014 What did we manage to run on these things? An 107MB disk? Small efficient programs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Nergal Posted July 19, 2014 Moderators Share Posted July 19, 2014 Yes but neither of them has an integrated math coprocessor (FPU) on their CPU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/486SX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating-point_unit ADVICE FOR USING CCleaner'S REGISTRY INTEGRITY SECTION DON'T JUST CLEAN EVERYTHING THAT'S CHECKED OFF. Do your Registry Cleaning in small bits (at the very least Check-mark by Check-mark) ALWAYS BACKUP THE ENTRY, YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU'LL BREAK IF YOU DON'T. Support at https://support.ccleaner.com/s/?language=en_US Pro users file a PRIORITY SUPPORT via email support@ccleaner.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators rridgely Posted July 20, 2014 Moderators Share Posted July 20, 2014 I think the oldest computer I ever interacted with was an old Macintosh that had a green screen with a black background. No idea what it was but my aunt owned it. The oldest computer I remember growing up in my house had windows 3.1 but I dont remember much else about it specifically. I just remember that in 3.1 there was a weird grid interface. I just googled it and this is what I remembered: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hav0c Posted August 4, 2014 Share Posted August 4, 2014 To think some "bad boy" ROCKED this 10.7 kg (23.5 lb) baby. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_1 Every line of code written by man can be undone by man . "A loser in the real world is still a loser in the net!" - .hack//SIGN . Getting old is inevitable, growing up is optional !! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators mta Posted August 5, 2014 Moderators Share Posted August 5, 2014 And that baby ran on the Z80 which was the first chip we programmed on in Uni with Assembler. Ah, the glory days of computing. I've still got my Programming the Z80 manual on my bookshelf. All these things are a forgotten world to the kids of today with Pacman right there on their phones - on their phones for god sake, how cool is progress. No more asking Mum to drive you down to the arcade. Backup now & backup often.It's your digital life - protect it with a backup.Three things are certain; Birth, Death and loss of data. You control the last. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators hazelnut Posted August 5, 2014 Moderators Share Posted August 5, 2014 To think some "bad boy" ROCKED this 10.7 kg (23.5 lb) baby. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_1 the Osborne 1 reportedly resembled "a cross between a World War II field radio and a shrunken instrument panel of a DC-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_1#mediaviewer/File:Osborne01.jpg Support contact https://support.ccleaner.com/s/contact-form?language=en_US&form=general or support@ccleaner.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hav0c Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 And that baby ran on the Z80 which was the first chip we programmed on in Uni with Assembler. Ah, the glory days of computing. I've still got my Programming the Z80 manual on my bookshelf. All these things are a forgotten world to the kids of today with Pacman right there on their phones - on their phones for god sake, how cool is progress. No more asking Mum to drive you down to the arcade. So mta you are one of the "ancient" programmers..... . On behave or all man kind, "ancient" programmers, thank you for giving Pacman and more on our phones. Every line of code written by man can be undone by man . "A loser in the real world is still a loser in the net!" - .hack//SIGN . Getting old is inevitable, growing up is optional !! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators mta Posted August 5, 2014 Moderators Share Posted August 5, 2014 So mta you are one of the "ancient" programmers..... . Here's a "how it used to be" blast, I wrote my first game (Pacman by chance) in COBOL on a DEC-20 mainframe. I do miss programming mainframes in Pascal, Fortran, COBOL and Assembler. Those were real men (don't eat quiche) languages. And who amongst us remembers the 80 column green punch cards we had to punch holes through to give to the 'computer room guys' to run through the card reader to get the code into the mainframe? Is that a collective HUH? I here from all the gen X's and Y's... Backup now & backup often.It's your digital life - protect it with a backup.Three things are certain; Birth, Death and loss of data. You control the last. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hav0c Posted August 5, 2014 Share Posted August 5, 2014 Here's a "how it used to be" blast, I wrote my first game (Pacman by chance) in COBOL on a DEC-20 mainframe. I do miss programming mainframes in Pascal, Fortran, COBOL and Assembler. Those were real men (don't eat quiche) languages. And who amongst us remembers the 80 column green punch cards we had to punch holes through to give to the 'computer room guys' to run through the card reader to get the code into the mainframe? Is that a collective HUH? I here from all the gen X's and Y's... My first understanding of programming was with the help of Pascal then Delphi and now VB.Net. At the collage where I did some studding, they still teach students how to work with punch cards.... Every line of code written by man can be undone by man . "A loser in the real world is still a loser in the net!" - .hack//SIGN . Getting old is inevitable, growing up is optional !! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Andavari Posted August 5, 2014 Moderators Share Posted August 5, 2014 they still teach students how to work with punch cards.... That will come in handy when someone emits an EMP and destroys all electronics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek891 Posted August 16, 2014 Share Posted August 16, 2014 Small efficient programs. Indeed. You can do quite a bit if you know how to write the code to perform efficiently. Question: What can you possibly do with a system that has a 2 MHz processor, 32KB of RAM, and 576KB of ROM storage for applications? Answer: Fly to the moon, land there, and fly back to earth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer Start every day with a smile and get it over with. - W.C. Fields Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Andavari Posted August 16, 2014 Moderators Share Posted August 16, 2014 Answer: Fly to the moon, land there, and fly back to earth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer Always helps to be very precise and tell the computer to go to Earth's moon, wouldn't want it to go to one of Jupiter's moons instead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators mta Posted August 16, 2014 Moderators Share Posted August 16, 2014 Answer: Fly to the moon, land there, and fly back to earth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer To be precise the computer couldn't land, it got overloaded by the radar returns of the uneven surface and was heading them towards a crater so Neil took manual control and landed with something like 7 seconds of fuel remaining. Recently read his biography, impressive man. Backup now & backup often.It's your digital life - protect it with a backup.Three things are certain; Birth, Death and loss of data. You control the last. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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