I Hate Computers

Bird · Aug 22, 2001

Patrick, I was just talking about my first hard drive. My first computer (if you could call it that) was a Radio Shack "color computer", 32k (the latest thing at the time; had just stepped up from the 16k model), hooked to a 13" color TV for a monitor, and an ordinary portable cassette tape recorder for the only storage capacity, and a little printer with 4 or 4.5" wide roll of paper like an adding machine and actually used 4 different colored tiny ball point pens to print./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

Bird

TerryinMD · Aug 22, 2001

Geez... for a bunch of people who hate computers, you are keeping this message thread going like the EverReady
Bunny. Just keeps going and going and going....... /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif

Bird · Aug 22, 2001

Terry, I thought I was the only one who hated computers (just don't know what I'd do without one); think some of the other guys actually like them. Believe it or not, I actually use it for a few things besides tractorbynet, and even more unbelievable; I think I've got both of these machines running properly now!/w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

Bird

scruffy · Aug 22, 2001

I've still got the old 286's passive backplane, system board etc all packed away neatly in the closet. Boy, I thought it was hot stuff when I replaced the 10meg h/d with an 80 meg full heighth drive....it took up two 5.25" slots! I was really in hog heaven when I upgraded to a 170meg drive....which I paid over $300 for....never need a bigger drive! /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif Can't even load winders on one now days!
NOTE: First rule in Scruffy's troubleshooting guide...Turn it off, unplug it, and never, never, plug it back in. It helps to maintain personal sanity.

TerryinMD · Aug 22, 2001

Bird,

I've been in the industry for over 25 yrs. Mostly Engineering computing and supercomputers. Now I'm on the fringe with project management/requirements management with whats left of UUNET (ISP of ISPs). I've built a couple of PCs myself and will probably have to build another in the near future. Two networked computers at home with four people "fighting over them" is getting to me. The wife uses one daily for her mechandising jobs and being the CFO. I use mine for surfing, games, and occasional work at home. The kids use them for AIM, email, games, and homework. We're getting to the point where three machines will just be enough.

Three years ago, I was the only one using the dang things. Work, cruising the Internet, gaming. Now.... how did we ever live without one......... just like getting a new tractor.... how did I ever live without one.... /w3tcompact/icons/tongue.gif

Anonymous Poster · Aug 22, 2001

Scruffy,

It was about 1979 or 1980, UPS delivered one Single Sided, Single Density Floppy Drive {large 160K storage!} for a Texas Instrument Home computer... {IBM PC wasn't born yet}

One of my guys and I fought /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif over who was going to take this baby home to replace their cassette drive... /w3tcompact/icons/blush.gif

The invoice is kicking around here someplace... $320..../w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif

scruffy · Aug 22, 2001

John, was that the old 8 inch (something like that anyway) floppy? Never had the opportunity to use one of them. My first floppy drive was the 5.25 floppy.
The first computer was the Commodor 64, which was actually for the kids, it had a tape drive for storage, and used the tv for the monitor. That turkey caused me no ends of grief trying to get past the "C:\" prompt! Of corse d'at wure b'fore I got sum alitearacy! /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif
I somehow got suckered into computer/network arena in the early ninety era after I had broken my neck. Darn things have been irritating me every since!

Anonymous Poster · Aug 22, 2001

No it was a 5 ¼ floppy. At the time, the Commodore 64 {replacing the VIC 20 and originally the PET}had just come out and started the original computer wars…

However, I have a pair of nice brand new 8” drives in the back room for our NEC {IBM of Japan}CP/M computer… I’ll sell real cheap… /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Besides making a great paper weight, and boat anchor… they make great conversation pieces...

GlueGuy · Aug 22, 2001

<font color=blue>Is it still in the IBM PC case???</font color=blue>

Nope. That was one of the earlier changes. Don't remember whether it was when she went from a 286 to a 386 or from the 386 to the 486.

We've upgraded every thing one piece at a time: Case, disks, cpu/m-board, memory, CDROM, CD/RW, monitor, keyboard, etc. There isn't one blamed thing that is original anymore, not even the mouse.

The original disks were a pair of 10MB "tractors" (they both sounded like they were running on diesel /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif). Both were full-height, full-width monsters. These days there is one tiny 3.5" Ultra SCSI disk in there (20GB or so). The way she uses it, she may not ever run out of space (famous last words; she's suddenly got the bug to do photo editing /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif)

The GlueGuy