Something for all you nostalgic OS fans

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http://www.wimp.com/upgradingwindows/

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Banyarola,

Thanks, very interesting. I’m sure all the MS bashers won’t like it though. :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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RG, you are absolutely right…

I’m happy to have the opportunity to aggravate them more then they already are…

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I did not follow this route, although I did start with 3.1, then 95, then 98, the ME (hate to admit that 1), then XP, then Vista, now Win 7. I usually did the clean install route rather than the upgrade route. I would think that installing many other apps and security tools might have caused more compatibility issues to the upgrade route, but who knows. A very nostalgic look.

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down memory lane. :rolleyes:

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I started with DOS….

My first computer didn’t have the OS installed and it ran on 5 1/4 floppy drive.

When Hard Drives came around I bought a 40MB hard drive for 350.00.. I still have that Hard drive…

Then, the INTERNET was on and I we used all the Government bulletin boards, like the SBA and National Geological site for email.
They all had toll free numbers and had to configure the modem for each site..There were only three colors back then and because the modems were so slow you had the option of viewing the site in color or B&W..

Email wasn’t bad but sometimes it tool two days to get and email.. You could get a letter from the post office faster.

I used Bluewave Mail Reader which was a great mail program but they never made it for windows.

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You rang?

The real thang! No sissy beer here!
You can tell, by that beautiful amber color, that ain’t no Lite Beer.

😎

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When Hard Drives came around I bought a 40MB hard drive for 350.00.

I bet it’s a little smaller than this one here.

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Banyarola,

Youngster! I started on PCs, we won’t go into before that, with the venerable TRS-80 Model I, Basic in ROM…yes that is Radio Shack! 16Kb memory, cassette drive for storage. A great machine at $600, at least for that point in time. Want a floppy disk add 1 expansion unit $300, another 16Kb memory $300, 160Kb Floppy drive $300 {they seemed to be stuck on that number. 😆 :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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I started on PCs … with the venerable TRS-80

You were just a bit before me. For anyone interested in seeing these “antiques” … there is a good site here. Scroll down the timeline to 1981 and click on the Sinclair ZX81 if you want to see my first one. It looked like a toy and really wasn’t much more. Never did manage to do anything useful with it. I heard their shape made good doorstops! (I still have it somewhere in the basement.)

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“Youngster! …the venerable TRS-80 Model I, Basic in ROM…yes that is Radio Shack! 16Kb memory, cassette drive for storage. A great machine at $600, at least for that point in time. Want a floppy disk add 1 expansion unit $300, another 16Kb memory $300, 160Kb Floppy drive $300 {they seemed to be stuck on that number.”

Toddler! :rolleyes: MY computer of choice was the Commodore-64! An 8-bit architecture, 1Mhz, 64K RAM, operating system in ROM, 16 colors, sound, graphics, BASIC built in, a 25×40 character screen, and a large body of “canned” software available. And the starter system — with tape storage — all available for less that $200, and disk drive only $100 more. Top that if you will! Yah!

By the bye, I still have my Commodore system, but it’s considerably upgraded by now. First off, it’s a Commodore-128 now; and it now has a CMD 20Mhz SuperCPU and CMD 16Mb RAMLink attached to it, with a CMD FD-2000 floppy disk drive (able to hold just slightly more than a standard Windows floppy disk). All in all, a fairly respectable system if I want it to be — but usually I choose it not to be, opting to program in good old fashioned C64 mode! And — believe it or not! there is still a large body of Commodore-64 enthusiasts still out there, on the Usenet newsgroup comp.sys.cbm.

Put that into your astonished pipe and smoke it! :rolleyes:

—–
P.S.: Oh — did I mention that I happen to have a working Timex-Sinclair/1000 in storage…? :o:

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That’s nothing RG:

I started when a modem was a hollow log and interference was caused by bad weather or Indians…

I traveled to Albany New York in a stage coach and crossed the Hudson river to New York City in a canoe! Without a paddle!

So there!

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Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be…

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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I think we could correctly assume that the keg is in the cooler under the computer.

A simpler way to have a beer while computing, just get a can from the fridge.
Then you don’t have mugs or glasses to wash. Eh?

Or just have a cold one at the local Pub and let them wash the mugs.

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Banyarola,

I bow to your superior experience. 😆 :rolleyes: :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Thank You..

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Heck, My grandkids (and many of my much younger co-workers) think I started chiseling on rocks! And dragging my “mate” by the hair! :unsure:

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[…] And dragging my “mate” by the hair! :unsure:

No possibility of that with you, eh, Ted?!

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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😆 😆 No sir, I have been growing through my hair for many years (you know as the brain cell grows, so does the cranium)

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Win-95? Like, that was so YESTERDAY!:rolleyes:

I consider myself a ‘young’un’….. just with white hair.
I was on the cutting edge, before most people even knew there was one. :rolleyes:

I do drive my little SX4 4X4, like I was 20 again. :^_^:

😎

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I started with submitting punched cards to a service that ran the job in the early morning hours on the weekend. Turn around-time was one week. In those days programs were extremely simple and you made sure it would work before submitting the job. That was high school. College was much better – the turn around-time on the punched cards was about 4 hours during the day. Then you could afford to be a little sloppier in coding, but then the programs were also more complex.

First personal computer was an Atari 800 with all of 8KB on it. And that was a big deal because the earlier model only had 4KB! I did get an attachment for it that served double-duty as a disk drive controller and as a CP/M machine. I had a lot of fun with that.

First “PC” was DOS. I recall using Word for DOS and all the pain and effort I went through to incorporate pictures within my documents.

Then I went to Windows 2.1, 3.0, 3.1 then jumped to NT 3.5, 3.5.1, 4 and Windows 2000. Then to XP, did a brief Vista stint (needed 64-bits) and then 7. I had Windows 98 on a new Gateway that I bought, but 98 lasted only a few days before I overwrote it with NT 4.

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All you old ‘coots’ are so funny, knowledgeable,but funny.

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I used a DecWriter in school when I learned Fortran IV and APL. Instead of a CRT it printed the input and output on paper. I wrote a blackjack program on it.

My first “PC” was a Commodore 64 with a 13-inch TV… now I have a Windows 7 laptop with a C-64 emulator and a Legacy joystick, which looks just like the original Commodore joystick. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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Scary maze to look — but I still have a 5 1/4 drive that still worked when it was finally pulled 🙂

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Children!
I set up my first hard drive on an NCR 395 in the mid 60’s.
I worked on punch card punches, sorters and readers before the first PC was ever marketed.
The first real “Computer” I ever worked on was so big it heated a five story building through the coldest Iowa winters.

My first entry into the world of the HOME computer was around 1980, with a Commodore 64, with a cassett tape drive.
My dear sainted mother took pity on me and bought me my first Floppy Disk drive, the C-1541.
I got pretty good at installing the “Quiet Stop” and re-aligning those drives. So much so that I wound up in the Commodore repair business. I hated the SOOOOOO SLOOOOOW program loading routine in the C-64, so I re-wrote the OS (Kernel ROM Chip) to remove all the redundancy and greatly speed up program loading. I burned my own Improved Kernel ROM chips and sold them all across the Mid-West. I wrote commercial programs like Accounts Receivable, Payable and Inventory on the C-64 in Commodore Basic. Fun! Fun! Fun! Remember the 300 Baud modem? I used one on the C-64, for accessing local Bulletin Boards.

Anyway, times demanded that I get on the PC bandwagon, circa 1983, so I built my first PC-XT-Clone.
My first HD was the Seagate ST255, 20 meg drive and #2 was the ST-4038, 30meg drive. I didn’t think anyone could ever fill a 30meg drive. ha ha!
I started building XT Clones for my friends and I’ve been in the PC business ever since. Strange, how my hobbies always turn into businesses. (the same dang thing happened with CB Radio and Ham Radio)

I started with MS-DOS 2.0 and I’ve used every version of DOS and Windows since then, missing only Windows 2000 and Windows NT, both considered as Business Systems.
(I’m hurt, that the video totally missed Windows ME. That was a challenge, but perfectly workable.)

Every OS since Windows 98 has required some tweaking and tuning to get the full efficiency out of the OS.
Programs like TweakUI were a big help. The unofficial Windows 98 upgrade was really neat.

Windows XP came on the scene with something new, called “Services”, most of which were totally redundant. Another MS kick in the users pants. Grrrr!

Vista easily takes over the title of “Worlds worse OS”, from Windows ME.

Enter Windows 7. :rolleyes:
Nothing has really changed. The Windows OS still comes with crap we don’t need and hides the simple things we need to do to make our version of Windows our OWN. Microsoft still thinks we’re too stupid to know what we need or want. Grrrr!

It shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me, that I’m still running Windows XP-Pro-SP3, tweaked and tuned to my own specifications, on a SATA II, FAT-32 formatted HD. My little home-made computer runs much faster than most of the new PC’s coming off of the shelves today, with Win-7 installed.

Thanks for the video and the little trip down memory lane. That was fun.

The Doctor 😎

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All, I think we have a winner… Dr. Who has obviously been around the longest.:thewave:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Cute! Really cute!

But, even at 68 I’m still running service calls on PC’s and searching the WWW every day for new tweaks and fixes and the latest versions of programs that I use to improve the PC.

I have to admit, that I’ve learned a lot from the guys on this forum.
Keep up the good work guys! Your efforts are appreciated more than you’ll probably ever know.

Cheers mates!
The Doctor 😎

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I started working on debugging vacuum tube based mainframe tape drives in 1965. Four years later, moved into mainframe engineering and designed a rotational drum controller – the predecessor to hard disks. Moved on to designing the IO section of a Univac mainframes. Participated in the IPI and SCSI interface standards committee. Built a Sinclair ZX 80 as my first PC. Moved on to the Comodore 64. Ran every version of MS Dos and Windows and have built every computer that I use.

“He who speaks of punched paper tape.”

Jerry

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The original C-64 screen was really sick, with light blue letters on a slightly darker blue background.
The guy who thought that up had to be a real idiot!

When I re-wrote the Kernel ROM chip, I also changed the screen to yellow letters (which looked white) on a dark blue background. It really looked sharp. When I was doing a chip for an individual, I could also put their name at the top of the screen. Made for great theft protection.

Taking out all the redundancy, I could load a program that normally took six minutes, in just 20 sec’s.

I still have my C-64, I’ve just not had it powered up in about 25 years. I’m afraid now that if I plug it in, it might go up in a big puff of smoke.
Some things are just better left alone.

My fondest memory of the C-64 was “Synth Sample” a whole floppy disk full of the neatest music, written for and ON the 64.
I have a piece of that music on my PC and Utilities CD and I play it often for my customers. ( just to test Media Player, of course)

I totally remodeled the C-1541 disk drive, but that’s food for another time.

Cheers Mates!
the Doctor 😎

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In college (electronics) Fortran programming was a required course (circa 1970) I still remember the punch cards and feeders that keep jamming and eating my cards, grrrr. This was a small community college, couldn’t afford new card readers. Yes Doc, the computer heated the building quite nicely in our NY winters.

One job used Compac PC’s (If I remember correctly with a whopping 64 K RAM) with dual 5 1/4 floppies. How fun they were. Like I stated before started my home PC on 3.1 and used almost everything since except 2000 and nt. Those were the days.

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Oh well, I am a kid, by you guys standards (I wish ;)). My first computing experience was with a Data General Nova 4X, in college. We had to wait in queue to get a few hours at one of the few terminals available, but we could use an advanced editor like vi and, counting on a good mood from the single technician available, we could get our C programs printed for the following day. I then got my very own Sinclair Zx Spectrum 48 K, which got me into Visual Basic and Z80 assembler programming (that was a lot of fun, actually). My first PC run a 8088 CPU and had two 5 1/4 floppy drives. It served me good for a while, until I got a 386 DX running at 25 MHz, my first pc with a hard drive, that cost me a small fortune. This was the first PC I had that ran Windows, and the first I remember running was 3.0. I have no memory of previous Windows versions. Dos and the available apps really did without it till then… or so says my poor memory 😀

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See! There’s a bunch of us Old Fahrts with a computer background out here!
It’s sure been a wild ride, but also a lot of fun. 🙂
A lot of our experience is based on what companies we worked for, and what products they made.
I’m actually a youngster compared to many of my customers who are in their 80’s and 90’s.
Boy, the stories they can tell!

No matter where I worked (NCR, Xerox, Itt Servcom, Caterpillar Research) I’ve always been an innovator.
Unfortunately, every thing I ever did was the sole property of my employer.
A thank you was about all I ever got along with honorable mention in company service bulletins.

I’ve saved my employers millions of dollars over the years, but here I sit, on minimal Social Security,
barely able to pay my bills each month. But, that’s the American way! Right?

For some diversity, I’m now working the Suzuki SX4 forums. I love tweaking my own SX4 for improved
performance and MPG. I’ve improved my road trip gas mileage to Orlando from 27 to 32 mpg. And all that
without voiding my factory warranty.
My little SX4 (my baby)

I don’t do much with my own PC any more, except for keeping it clean, lean and backed up.

It’s hard to improve on Perfection.

Ok, I’m outta here! Thanks guys for an interesting thread.

The Doctor 😎

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Here’s my latest upgrade.. I’m happy with it’s performance..

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Banyarola,

And if you order right now we’ll double your order for only…..just pay separate shipping & handling… :rolleyes:

Sorry, just couldn’t resist. :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Next someone will show a tower with a tap for drafts on it. I want to see that one. How about you Fred, you are an innovative thinker, how about “developing” one of those. Or perhaps that could be Doc’s next project. You could probably sell a lot of those! 😉 :cheers: :cheers: Cheers, Ted

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Ahhhh hahahah

Thatta boy…My hero..

What a way to liquid cool your PC…

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I knew it was only a matter of time. Thanks Doc. I bow to the Master! :cheers: :cheers: cheers, Ted

I wonder if the tower is also refrigerated? Dual purpose, cool the CPU and cool the beer! This is fantastic!

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Maybe he’s streaming directly from Budweiser…

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Well Mosie, one thing us “old coots’ know about is —-Streaming…

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lol I use word ‘old coot’ with affection.I should have included I started with a win95 late in life.(no age admitted here for me)(old mscoot maybe?)lol
With all this wonderful new Technologically these days,I am a wee bit envious of all the young-uns these days.:rolleyes:

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You want to talk about loving our cars in our middle age (I don’t consider myself old) I have a sporty, hot convertible, and I love driving it. 6 cylinder, 266 hp, will haul. Does make me feel like a kid again.

28596-2011SpyderGT-8

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Well Ted, I’m a little more conservative then you…

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PC World has jumped in here with 9 Geeky 80s Gadgets We Loved.

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When I went to work for NCR in 1964, one of the first calls I was sent out on was to fix a bank accounting machine. It had some catchy name like “Computronic” I believe. Anyway I was handed a tube caddy and was told to call in when I got there and someone would tell me how to open up the computer section and what tubes to change. I believe they used 12AX7 tubes as digital switches.
Ah, the good ol’ days!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12AX7

My first CB radio, circa 1967, was all tube type too. That little Regency Romper, launched me into the CB Radio Business.
10-4 Good Buddy!!!
“http://radiopics.com/CB_Radio/OtherCB/3-Base/Regency/Regency_Romper.htm”
That little radio was tunable receive and crystal controlled transmit. I started off with just three channels.

A personal computer wasn’t even on the horizon yet, at least not for me.
CB Radio led to HAM Radio which led me to the guy who sold me my first Commodore 64, which led to my first IBM XT Clone.
Every one of my hobbies, turned into a business. I hate that!!!

😎

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Started with Texas 99/4A in 1985, then Amstrad 9512 instead of a QDOS machine (quick and dirty operating system), then W 3.11/DOS 6.22, on to 95, 98, Me, XP, Vista and now 7 (at work, NT4 and 2000).
Preferred the Texas for CP/M, and 3.11 and XP for Windows.

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I think we could correctly assume that the keg is in the cooler under the computer.

A simpler way to have a beer while computing, just get a can from the fridge.
Then you don’t have mugs or glasses to wash.

Clachic, chic sur soi chic chez soi

http://www.clachic.fr

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I remember, I believe it was the Timex Sinclair that I checked out from the library and brought it home and hooked it to my TV and played Ping Pong..

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Roderick, that one was a toy compared to the Fastrands we had. I remember seeing a picture of one of these being hauled up to the sixth floor of a buiding on Wall street with a crane. See http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/univac/fastrand.htmlJerry

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I’m sure there must be someone out there that has written code on a stone tablet….

Where you hiding?

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When I started, we only had ones and zeros and sometimes we didn’t have any 1s.

Jerry

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Well, when I started we only had 1’s…The zero wasn’t invented yet…
So there!

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GrandRascal,

Not so fast there…Aug. 77 1st Radio Shack sold…one month later 10,000 sold projection was only 3,000 for 1st YEAR!.
Oct. 15th 77 1st Commodore’s delivered to customers.
Ref: Computer History Timeline :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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IBM 360 Model 20

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Ok Guys been there, done that, y’all missed some steps. First of all thanks for the video that was excellent, I’d forgotten what those screens looked like.

I too started with a C-64 and was using a 300 baud modem to connect to Q-link (Quantum Link, later became AOL) the Commodore chat and BBS dial up. I too was tired of the slow load and bought the Promenade programming board, eproms, and modified game cartridges. Loaded the programs in the eproms, and virtual instant loads. Make a goof? Erase the eproms with the UV eraser light. I went beyond the desktop back then and got the commodore version of a portable computer that looked like early kaypros called the DX 64. Decades later I found it was extremly rare and even though I kept none of my old machines equipment from being career military and not wanting to move old stuff or store it, I wish I had kept that old DX 64. It was the same as the SX 64 except with two floppies. I later got an Amiga and then switched to an XT clone. I switched to GEOS as soon as it came out for the C64. I also got my first PC around 1986. Then the Air Force (did I mention I am re-tarred military?) got rid of our IBM Selectrics on each desk or two and replaced them with the oddest computers in hindsight. They were Zenith Z-100 that looked like a TRS 80 in that the monitor and the keyboard computer were one piece, but it also had a translator card to allow them to Run MSDOS. I think they ran CP/M natively I forget. But, since I had a computer at home and knew what a BIT was, and there was no such thing as IT except for the few mainframe guys who scoffed at the micro minis, lots of us got drafted by our squadrons to get them up and running as BBS networks. They thought that writing DOS batch files (.bat) in edlin was programming! LOL.

The PC used Dos until Berkley Softworks of GEOS fame later came out with the Geoworks Ensemble for PCs that did better multitasking like DR DOS before MS could do it with their OS’. It was around 1989/90 that I started to drift from Commodore and MS DOS and played around with the above and found them to be more stable and faster especially when DR DOS 5.0 and 6.0 especially came out with the novel idea to move resources to high mem and debuted SuperStor the first real multi purpose disk compression tool and was also the version that MS wrote the infamous AARD error code for that works like Apples current chip that would not let OSX run on any other machine than Apple’s. In that case MSDOS refused to allow dual boot and replacement by other than MS OS’.

Gary Kildall the brains behind DR (Digital Research) originally DRI (Digital Research Intergalactic – I kid you not) was one of the pioneers in the history of OS’ but we aree talking MSA through the years.

I remember MS DOS 6 and Windows for Workgroups 3.1 as gaining the market shares back at least with me. Windows 95 and MS Office 95 and I was hooked for life. I remember resisting mice and MS Word, sticking to Wordstar and keyboard commands. I also remember buying a Sony 1X CD burner for an outrageous price and the media was impossible to get other than by mail, and took hours to write a CD if it worked at all. The oldsters remember the early day of optical tech and the dreaded buffer overruns that made that pretty coaster art and mobiles possible.

They did forget ME in that upgrade film and I missed that in real life and while watching.

I remember also using my 1989 or 1990 first AST tiny notebook computer then and thinking that 386 architecture couldn’t be improved upon in speed or scalability.

Anyway y’all don’t know me, but thanks for the trip down memory lane.

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Agree… thanks for the trip down memory lane. Loved it! Some painful memories there too … restarting Win98 over and over and over… BSOD.

I too started with a C-64, actually C-128 but used the C-64 aspect more so than 128. Aaaaah… BASIC.

Friend of a friend unloaded a ton of C-64 stuff on me, donated it to a friend. That friend did not even know what a computer was! Three months later, he knew more about it than I had learned in the years of having it. Today, that friend is a highly respected network admin.

My C-128 is boxed up the basement but I still use an emulator on a old 98 machine just to play those old games. Ahhh… nostalgia!

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Actually, I started with an Radio Shack Color Computer, which I still have, that I bought for my son…

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That’s funny, I have to assume that the narrator in that video is Andrew Tait (from the copyright notice) but he sounds just like Chris O’Dowd from the UK series “The IT Crowd”. I kept expecting him to suggest “Hello, IT. Have you tried turning it off and on again?”.

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