Missing computer company's

[WinterDeere]

I wonder how many know the difference between a Pentode and a Triode vacume tube.

Would that be equivalent to enhancement mode versus depletion mode? Or n-channel versus p-channel?

In my world, there are tube guys and FET guys, and I was always a FET guy. The microprocessor guys still use MOSFETs, I assume with shorter and shorter gate lengths, but the high frequency stuff I work on is all HEMT (High Electron-Mobility Transistors)... just another special type of FET. In simplest terms, FETs are classified by channel type (positive versus negative conduction layer) and enhancement mode versus depletion mode (i.e. whether you apply a gate voltage to turn it "on" or "off".

The trouble with tubes, at least when talking high power amplifiers, is the voltages. If you like to stick your fingers into circuits to tune or adjust, stay the hell away from high power tubes... high impedance = high voltages.

 

[ultrarunner]

Seems like every grocery store had a tube tester with tubes available to sell in the 60’s

 

[WinterDeere]

Seems like every grocery store had a tube tester with tubes available to sell in the 60’s

I lit my 3-year old ass up pretty good, with a TV tube tester at our local Woolworth's department store. It may be my earliest memory, either that or the one of by mom telling me to be quiet when the "Breaking News" of Elvis's death popped onto the TV.

In any case, there I am at Woolworth's ca.1977, and mom is at the customer service desk either returning or ordering something, when this cool looking cowboy guy comes in with his stylish belt buckle and Stetson, and starts plugging tubes into a podium. He's hitting buttons, things are lighting up... everything that would fascinate any little kid.

So after he finishes and leaves, I go over the podium, which was too tall for me to really see what was going on. I start blindly sticking my fingers into holes and hitting buttons, and at one point must've had my finger in a high-voltage socket when I pressed a test button, because all I remember is it just about knocking me off my feet.

And when I came to my senses, they were yelling at me! Different times...

 

[Jaybr]

Add me to the list of tractor owning geeks. I can’t think of any that haven’t been named, but I am familiar with most of them. Started working with computers in the USAF in the 80s, the OS on our equipment was Atlas. Contracted to DEC for a while working with their clusters, Pathworks LANs, and Alpha servers. Spent close to 20 years at the evil empire from Redmond, and the last 10 as a solution architect at a cloud service.

 

[BravoXray]

The trouble with tubes, at least when talking high power amplifiers, is the voltages. If you like to stick your fingers into circuits to tune or adjust, stay the hell away from high power tubes... high impedance = high voltages.

When I was working for P & H Electronics in my college days, one of the techs working on a radar system got a finger in the wrong place and got it cooked pretty badly.

 

[CliffordK]

Perfect Writer and Perfect Software
Novell Networks
CP/M
Sinclair
Atari (noted for games, but they also had a computer).

I think WordPerfect has been traded around a little bit, and is now all but defunct. Latest release 3 years old.

Symantec swallowed up a bunch of smaller companies.
pcAnywhere was originally Dynamic Microprocessor Associates, swallowed up by Symantec, and now that product line is defunct.

Quattro Pro hasn't had a release for 3 years now, and is hardly dominating the market as they once did.

Corel is now Alludo

NeXT

Nextel (push to talk) Probably a bunch of phone companies.

ENIAC... does that count?

BSD Unix
AT&T Unix
Apollo Computers
Tektronix (after a few mergers, they may still be around, but not doing PC computers).
CompuServe
AOL, now a subsidiary of Yahoo

 

[BravoXray]

Stearns Computers, they were in Minnesota, I believe, and made PC's that were somewhat IBM compatible, ran a proprietary version of DOS. One of my customers had one, said he had paid over $10K for the computer, keyboard, monochrome monitor, tape backup and an Okidata 132 column printer. It ran some proprietary accounting software on 256K of ram and a 20 MB HD, and they had problems with it crashing and corrupting data.
I sold him four new PC systems for way less than that.
That was in the early '80s and I still upgrade, repair and sell new systems to the company that is now run by his son.

 

[ultrarunner]

Why is it my Apple//e has never crashed and still works perfect nearly 45 years later but drives in my newer non apple only seem to last a few years?

I've got files backed up by Iomega tape on I win 98 and plus a laptop with lots of photos I can no longer access...

Never got into cloud storage so nothing there.

Funny, at work we were told every keystroke and site is archived forever so be mindful.

Now legal says 2 years and auto delete as archiving data is a liability?

 

[Tomtint]

Digital Equipment went out in the 90s / early 2000s

 

[CliffordK]

Why is it my Apple//e has never crashed and still works perfect nearly 45 years later but drives seem to last only a few years?

My Apple IIe hasn't crashed for decades either. But I suppose it hasn't been booted up for quite some time. I have no idea if any of my floppy disks are still good.

Long gone are the days when one had to memorize printer control codes to do things like italics, bold, or change font sizes.

My word processor and spell checker were two different applications. So, boot up the word processor and type one's paper. Then save it on the floppy disk. Unload the word processor and load the spell checker. If it picked up a word it didn't recognize, one could change one letter in the word to an asterisk, and then resave the file. Now boot back into the word processor and search for one's asterisk symbols. If one wasn't sure how to spell the word, then grab the paper dictionary and look it up.

Oh, those were the days!!!!

None of this computers thinking for a person.