Old Tech thread

[Dave]

Never mind about the laptop. She's wearing a jet pack rocketman suit!!

 

[BigBadBob141]

I would imagine the so called laptop is actually a wooden wax faced tablet with a wooden cover tied to it plus a scriber /scrapper to write and erase with.

 

[Danny McG]

 

[Phyrebrat]

View attachment 71818

The Colonel refused to share his secret spices recipe with his step brother forcing him to find a new career. Finger Clickin’ Good!

 

[Danny McG]

Hmmmmm, I don't know if this is real or photostopped

 

[Danny McG]

Look at the little insert picture, this was portable, this was probably the first laptop design!

 

[Dave]

I don't know if this is real or photostopped

I think that if you "found these on the internet" then those are most probably photoshopped and designed to be spread virally by social media. Most of those that I have posted were copied directly from old newspaper archives, so I'm quite sure of the source of those, but then they aren't quite as striking, interesting or as shocking either. On the other hand, Stevie Wonder personally vouching for Atari isn't that unlikely and the other pictures of bricks as mobile phones, well, I actually remember that.

 

[Pyan]

Sorry, Danny - it's definitely a fake, though weirdly not that far from the original...

Sorry, That Crazy Stevie Wonder + Atari Poster Is Fake

 

[mosaix]

Look at the little insert picture, this was portable, this was probably the first laptop design!
View attachment 72101

I considered buying one of those in the early 80s. It was quite an impressive little machine. It had twin 4 1/4” drives and the keyboard folded up and over the front to make it into a portable box. The screen, that is visible in the centre, was a bit small though.

 

[Foxbat]

Sorry, Danny - it's definitely a fake, though weirdly not that far from the original...

Sorry, That Crazy Stevie Wonder + Atari Poster Is Fake

Ironically, Atari was a reasonable option for music creation back then (the ST having built in midi ports). I know that Tangerine Dream released at least one album created with an ST (I still have it somewhere) so it would have been quite possible that Wonder could have considered Atari for music production.

 

[tinkerdan]

Just for the record

standard disk sizes were 8 inch 5 1/4 inch and 3 1/2 inch
Back in the early 80's when I worked at the MSU Cyclotron

Many of the engineers were still using kaypro's like the one pictured.
However the university already had a central Vax machines with terminals[screens and keyboards]spread throughout the building.\

And a coax network connection to several other universities.

We also had line-printer/terminals

Where the print out was what normally would be on the screen.
One of these was near a plotter where the user could input Fortran commands to send to the plotter while sending a plot job.
That was why I had to learn Fortran.

PLOTTER

 

[Foxbat]

I remember using a Vax. I remember using dBase IV on it. I found it to be not very user friendly but maybe that was just me.

 

[Vertigo]

Look at the little insert picture, this was portable, this was probably the first laptop design!
View attachment 72101

We used to use a similar beast at the beginning of the '80s:

It was a remarkably tough beast, as it needed to be, going out into the North Sea on survey boats! It was also one of the earliest IBM PC 'compatibles.'

 

[Dave]

It was a remarkably tough beast, as it needed to be, going out into the North Sea on survey boats! It was also one of the earliest IBM PC 'compatibles.'

I was going to ask why these portable computers needed to be so "well-built". Overheating must have been a problem in those heavy cases. I could see them going up a few floors in an office lift, but I didn't think of them being taken to sea, however, I expect they actually went all over the world.

 

[Toby Frost]

 

[Ursa major]

Look at the little insert picture, this was portable, this was probably the first laptop design!
View attachment 72101

We -- an engineering department, that is -- had one of those in the office back in the day.

 

[Dave]

We -- an engineering department, that is -- had one of those in the office back in the day.

You had an alien organism? In the office?

 

[Ursa major]

You had an alien organism? In the office?

And you didn't...?!

​

 

[Vladd67]

View attachment 72122

Watched the special edition last night.

 

[Biskit]

That was why I had to learn Fortran.

I got my last job partly because I knew Fortran. The company was replacing an old Fortran-based system and having someone who could read the existing code and its data structures was useful in the migration process.