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What was your first computer?
- Thread starter AHH who-stole-my-name
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The Barbarian
Crabby Old White Guy
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No one who was in engineering at the time, could forget those wonderful "portable" computers we used.
Keyboard went up over the screen and disc drives. There was a (very sturdy) handle on the other side for carrying.
Keyboard went up over the screen and disc drives. There was a (very sturdy) handle on the other side for carrying.
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Had a couple Win XP's; by Compaq and HP; they were good machines and were the first really modern PC that just worked.
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faroukfarouk
Fading curmudgeon
I like the inverted commas around 'portable'...No one who was in engineering at the time, could forget those wonderful "portable" computers we used.
Keyboard went up over the screen and disc drives. There was a (very sturdy) handle on the other side for carrying.
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When I was in the Signal Corps in the late 60s; we had electrical/mechanical computers to run our long-range Troposcatter radio automatic-switching phone lines in Vietnam to the Philippians and Hawaii. They were pretty robust; but primitive compared to today; you could 'wring-down" the phone circuits by whistling middle 'c' 360 cps and ring someones phone in the states!
CHECKING A CONSOLE AT PHU LAM AUTOMATIC MESSAGE SWITCHING CENTER. White rubber-soled shoes were required in dust-free, temperature-controlled building necessary for equipment
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faroukfarouk
Fading curmudgeon
And to think that they went to the moon before the silicon chip was invented, and used those bulky computers...When I was in the Signal Corps in the late 60s; we had electrical/mechanical computers to run our long-range Troposcatter radio automatic-switching phone lines in Vietnam to the Philippians and Hawaii. They were pretty robust; but primitive compared to today; you could 'wring-down" the phone circuits by whistling middle 'c' 360 cps and ring someones phone in the states!
CHECKING A CONSOLE AT PHU LAM AUTOMATIC MESSAGE SWITCHING CENTER. White rubber-soled shoes were required in dust-free, temperature-controlled building necessary for equipment
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When I was in college in 72-74 our table top computers looked like this and the "floppy drive" was a tape machine like the one to the left of the lady; took hours to run a program.
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faroukfarouk
Fading curmudgeon
Computers change in leaps and bound (while fashions in heels and haircuts seem to go round in circles).When I was in college in 72-74 our table top computers looked like this and the "floppy drive" was a tape machine like the one to the left of the lady; took hours to run a program.
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Yes; I still don't understand how they did it. I watched 'Apollo 13' the other night (which was pretty close to what happened) about the aborted moonshot and they had the guys in the capsule figuring out the reentry trajectory and the computer(calculator) was down and Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) asks cape Canaveral to check his figures and they have 4 guys check his numbers by paper and pencil, using slide-rules! Talk about accuracy!
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faroukfarouk
Fading curmudgeon
...and an 11.59 happened, right? (when the pre-silicon chip computer has been told to do more than its system can cope with).Yes; I still don't understand how they did it. I watched 'Apollo 13' the other night (which was pretty close to what happened) about the aborted moonshot and they had the guys in the capsule figuring out the reentry trajectory and the computer(calculator) was down and Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) asks cape Canaveral to check his figures and they have 4 guys check his numbers by paper and pencil, using slide-rules! Talk about accuracy!
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I've seen them come up with all 8's; means all the circuits of the read-out are maxed out. What got me; if the movie was accurate; is that the ground based launch control didn't at least have some electronic calculators; we had them in the Signal Corps .
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faroukfarouk
Fading curmudgeon
I remember calculating with a slide rule...which is going back a few decades.
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Yes; I haven't seen a slide-rule since about...1973; in electronics math class; they were used for estimating to see if your long hand math or calculator was giving you the right answers; it would get you within 10%; to make sure you weren't off by Log10. LOL
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keith99
sola dosis facit venenum
Mine was a glorified counter. But at least I soldered all the transistors, diodes and resisters myself. That would have been the mid 60s.
About the same time I saw the largest computer ever built. Not most powerful, largest. Took several buildings, it used vacuum tubes.
About the same time I saw the largest computer ever built. Not most powerful, largest. Took several buildings, it used vacuum tubes.
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faroukfarouk
Fading curmudgeon
I saw the Bombe at Bletchley Park, an enormous storage system from WW2, with war necessity being the mother of invention, so to speak.
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Was it a AN/FSQ-7? Used by the US Air Force; took up half an acre of buildings to house it's 60,000 vacuum tubes and Air Conditioning. Took a full time staff to change the tubes out; as vacuum tubes would either burn out or the cathode would carbon up and quit amplifying; and stop being a switching circuit.
The AN/FSQ-7 included a Maintenance Intercom System (phone on end of cabinet)
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faroukfarouk
Fading curmudgeon
Reminds me also of the old TV sets that would take a few minutes to warm up, and then leave a glow on the screen for a while....Was it a AN/FSQ-7? Used by the US Air Force; took up half an acre of buildings to house it's 60,000 vacuum tubes and Air Conditioning. Took a full time staff to change the tubes out; as vacuum tubes would either burn out or the cathode would carbon up and quit amplifying; and stop being a switching circuit.
The AN/FSQ-7 included a Maintenance Intercom System (phone on end of cabinet)
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