Old Tech thread

[BAYLOR]

20 bucks? That's pricy. You get basic ones (scientific even) for 3-5 quid.

What is that US dollars?

 

[BAYLOR]

Motor Mouse and Autocat, I remember that along with the Hair Bear Bunch.

I wish I could forget the Hair Bear Bunch ever existed.

 

[Vladd67]

There were worse, Grape Ape for instance, or the Scooby Doo rip off Goober and the Ghost chasers, and what was the one with a revolution era ghost that spoke like Snagglepuss? Heavens to Murgatroyd.

 

[The Ace]

I picked this up during the week.

The good thing is, it's still in working order, and can be useful.

 

[BAYLOR]

There were worse, Grape Ape for instance, or the Scooby Doo rip off Goober and the Ghost chasers, and what was the one with a revolution era ghost that spoke like Snagglepuss? Heavens to Murgatroyd.

Ive seen all of those cartoon travesties. The one with Reveoltuionary ghost was called The Funky Phantom and the name of the Ghost was Johnathan Muddlemore , he got stuck in clock case for 200 hundred years, awful show.

 

[Venusian Broon]

What is that US dollars?

4-7 USD

 

[BAYLOR]

4-7 USD

Wow , that is cheap.

 

[Danny McG]

Autocat and Motor Mouse

Inche High Private Eye

That's the only one I ever saw, inch high!

 

[Danny McG]

I had variations of these beauties over the years.
I think it was the late nineties the last time I used one - TBH it was easier keeping all contacts phone numbers in a notebook, but you could impress people flipping open one of these personal organisers....

 

[Anthoney]

When I first got cable internet through Adelphia in the mid 90s it was a hybrid system. It would use phone to dial in and connect. All up stream traffic went over the phone line (56k) and down stream came through the cable. I loved it. I bought an extra phone line so it could stay on all the time.

 

[Foxbat]

Kinescope and its death by videotape.
Kinescope - Wikipedia

 

[Harpo]

 

[Danny McG]

I like the "2 floppy drives with 100kb of storage on each!"

 

[Anthoney]

I took a class in the early 80s on the software listed (gotta love Wordstar) but I think dbase was also included. It wasn't on an Osborne. The lab used all Apple II machines. Which I think are older.

 

[Vince W]

I went to a trade show in the 80s where I first saw the Osborne. It was amazing looking. I was still using a PET at that point.

 

[Ursa major]

Someone in the office had an Osborne 1 in the early eighties. Back then, it was a thing of wonder.

I like the "2 floppy drives with 100kb of storage on each!"

That was more than was available on the TRS-80 model II, although you could, if you could afford it, have four drives: drives 2,3 and 4 could each hold, I think, 83k of data, but drive one had, I think, 57k available for storage, (the rest being used by the DOS).

 

[Venusian Broon]

I went to a trade show in the 80s where I first saw the Osborne. It was amazing looking. I was still using a PET at that point.

I always thought the PET was cool. But then it was the first computer my Dad (cough, cough) borrowed for a while from Napier and brought back to the house. Even had a game on it - the lunar lander one. Classic 70's computer shape.

have four drives: drives 2,3 and 4 could each hold, I think, 83k of data, but drive one had, I think, 57k available for storage, (the rest being used by the DOS).

So the operating system was 26Kb in size? Now a Windows 10 system needs about 20+ Gb. That's progress for you.

 

[Dave]

The parents/teachers society at my school bought the school a PET. I did Computer Studies 'o' Level using it - the whole class using that one single computer. It was so heavily used - from as early in the morning as we could get in, to whenever we were finally kicked out. It would often crash and everything would be lost. Had to save programs on audio cassette then verify. That rarely worked either, but we loved it.

 

[Vertigo]

Someone in the office had an Osborne 1 in the early eighties. Back then, it was a thing of wonder.
That was more than was available on the TRS-80 model II, although you could, if you could afford it, have four drives: drives 2,3 and 4 could each hold, I think, 83k of data, but drive one had, I think, 57k available for storage, (the rest being used by the DOS).

CP/M

We used the Compaq portable PC in the early eighties which was a pretty similar, though slightly smaller machine. Again the two floppies but this time one over the other and, I think, being MSDOS now, the disk capacity was larger - 270 odd k seems familiar. Before that we used the much more expensive HP portable 9826 which was based on the far better 68000 chip which didn't have the then 64k RAM limit that Intel based machines suffered from. This was in offshore oil survey work.

 

[Vince W]

The parents/teachers society at my school bought the school a PET. I did Computer Studies 'o' Level using it - the whole class using that one single computer. It was so heavily used - from as early in the morning as we could get in, to whenever we were finally kicked out. It would often crash and everything would be lost. Had to save programs on audio cassette then verify. That rarely worked either, but we loved it.

School is where I got to use the PET as well. At first, you could only use the cassette drive. Then the school got a 5 1/2" floppy drive. The speed was fantastic. I could save, search, load work and programs in under 20 seconds!