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My Cup

Yes it was a Voyager 108-2 Flying Station Wagon with a 185 HP Franklin engine that never gave me any problems. It was all metalized and she flew like a dream. I paid $2700 bucks for her and sold it two years later for $4200. I wish I stll owned her. But it was either her or the sailboat and the sailboat didn't cost any money to run...
My first PC was a Commodore 128 and then a TI something. I remember you loaded in the programs with a tape deck. There was another one starting with an "A".. Boy, the stroke raised hell with my memory. I'll think of it four o'clock in the morning.
 
My first experience was a Commodore 64 in the early 80s, I was late getting into the computer frenzy. After that I had a Seagate with MS-DOS in 1989. Learned all the keyboard commands for MS-DOS and they still work on Vista, so I use the keyboard about as much or more than the mouse. I then progressed to a Gateway with Windows 3.1, another Gateway with Windows98, a Velocity Micro with XP, and now have my home-build with Vista 64.

I know this much, I'll never buy another brand-name built computer as long as my mind holds up enough for me to gather the necessities and build another one. They put too much Bloatware on their systems that is not needed. I installed "only" Windows Vista and then the programs "I" want on my HD. No Bloatware 90-Day MCAfee, Norton, or MS Office. And Lord knows the crap H-P puts on their computers, even though in all honesty, the two H-Ps I have for my two boys have never given a moment's problem. Of course on both, the first thing I did was uninstall Norton and other Bloatware not H-P related on both. I use AVG 8.0 on all the computers, best Anti-Virus out there bar none IMHO.

Caz
 
Oh, lord !! My first taste of a computer was in the 70's. I went to school and learned to be a keypunch operator. Learned that Hollerith code and all, then went to work for a company. They were using an IBM360 model 30, 64k memory, 4 disk drives and 4 tape drives. Cards for their programs took up one to 2.5 trays of space. They did medical bookkeeping for various companies around town. I learned programming by reading through the IBM manuals (on the night shift) and then went in to systems and borrowed a programmers manual. Wrote a proggie that kept track of the paper inventory and caught holy ell for working on. Seems that time on the computer (at that time) was about $165 an hour :costumes: and I was getting it "for free". "Sorry, guy, you can't do that anymore" but we will move you into systems and let you learn on job.

Oh, and they kept my proggie and used it. Were still using it when I left.

:icon_lol:
 
When I hit college they were grading the tests using cards, but you colored in the blocks with a #2 pencil rather than punching them out (too smart for hanging chads back then, I guess :icon_lol:). There were some old stories about folk answering their winter finals in Christmas Tree patterns.

When I was in the Marines, we used the same cards for our maintenance and supply transactions. Then they introduced these new-fangled "green machines," which were self-contained mini-PCs, where the screen cover folded down to become the keyboard, and the screen was only about 6 inches across. Once the data was all entered, a courier would drive over to the mainframe building with a six-inch, single-sided floppy that probably held less than 380k of data, which was then uploaded for processing. He then returned with the previous day's transactions updated on a printout for reconciling, and we did this day after day...
 
Outside of the useing the IBM Punch cards in 74 - 79 .... my first real computer experience came in 84 ... my girlfriend at the time, (who became my wife, who is now my ex ...) had a Ti-994A.

I got so into that "computer". I bought the expansion box, I bought two 360k floppy drives at 5.25 disc size, I had the cassette recorder, the memory expansion cards in the box ... and my color tv for a monitor.

I learned basic and advanced basic and some assembly on that thing.
 
My first computor was a Commodore 64 and like every comp I've had since, I used it well past it's glory days. My next one was an old used 386 that was well past it's prime, enough so that I turned right around and bought a new machine with a 266 AMD chip and Win 98. That one I kept going thru several updates (up to a 500mhz cpu and 98SE. It was still going strong but dated when I built this one in 02.

I'm probably overdue for a new one, but I kind of got attached to this one and it's still working great for what I use it for.
 
Anyone want to buy a Commodore VIC-20 3.5kb mem plus an graphics and memory expansion card (8Kb) - comes with tape drive (standard audio cassette), TV hookup, several tapes of programs (some BASIC, some in hex). I'll even throw in a few pounds of printed material including lessons on using a hex editor (YOU do the typing!) ... with any luck the original box will still be intact.
Reason for selling: I upgraded.. to a Commodore SuperPet then in 1983 an 8086 (clone) box --WOW a HARD DRIVE!, a 286, a couple of 386 machines, A P1 which got upgraded to PII/400 (still in use), discovered laptops and hit the 21st century with an AMD 3500 (hmmm.. 9 machines in 28 years... I guess it's time for a new one)

and yeah.. I still regret not buying that 8008 kit from Heath/Zenith when I'd have been the first kid in town with a "personal computer".

Oh.. and I have dropped a stack of punch cards :banghead::banghead::banghead:

oh... I'll throw in a copy of MSFS(DOS) if you buy within 10 minutes!

C:\dos
C:\dos run
run DOS run!

Rob
 
I remember now. the first computer I owned was a Commodore 64 and then I went to the Commodore 128. Thence to the TI-994A with all the peripherals. Somewhere in there was a Commodore A**** and I'll be darned if I can remember the name of it.
With the slotted wing, the Voyager would land in 40 feet and get off in 150 foot. I landed it in the overrun at Hanscom Field in Bedford, MA. Darn near STOL capability. Plus it had more room in the cabin than a Piper Cherokee but it was a noisy airplane.
 
Commodore Amiga? I had a buddy with one of those and they lasted quite a while as there wasn't much that would touch one in graphics for quite a long while.
 
It was the Amiga and I kept it in storage far beyond it's usefulness. Thank You. I'm surprised how many active Commodore 64 and 128 as well as Amiga groups that are still active on Google. But from the looks of them, I would fit right in.
 
Anybody else ever own a Timex-Sinclair ? My first computer was as TS 2600. I still have it, and it still works. ( last time i got it out...)
LOL
Sue
 
College in 1969 we had a computer science program and used punch cards at Alfred State. Fast forward to 1980 and that's when I saw the first Tandy computer. I played with one in the mall out front of Radio Shack and couldn't make heads or tails of what to do with it. I could start my name and end up with Garrrrr. Couldn't figure out how to erase it and wasn't about to ask the sales people how either. What would they think. :costumes: I even said I'd never own one. Then we bought the first one, a Compaq Presario in 2000 that started the ball rolling for me. Now I've got two, a bunch of parts, a ton of CDs/DVDs, plus I can't stay away from the dam thing. I guess I'm hooked. :173go1:

So now I have some idea of what they do and what goes where. I've built a couple and fixed a few too. Funny how our priorities and hobbies change isn't it.
 
GT182 said:
College in 1969 we had a computer science program and used punch cards at Alfred State. Fast forward to 1980 and that's when I saw the first Tandy computer. I played with one in the mall out front of Radio Shack and couldn't make heads or tails of what to do with it. I could start my name and end up with Garrrrr. Couldn't figure out how to erase it and wasn't about to ask the sales people how either. What would they think. :costumes: I even said I'd never own one. Then we bought the first one, a Compaq Presario in 2000 that started the ball rolling for me. Now I've got two, a bunch of parts, a ton of CDs/DVDs, plus I can't stay away from the dam thing. I guess I'm hooked. :173go1:

So now I have some idea of what they do and what goes where. I've built a couple and fixed a few too. Funny how our priorities and hobbies change isn't it.
Click to expand...


Whats cool is if you can find a computer bone yard. We had one here in Phoenix for a while, but it became stricktly a recycler and stopped letting people in.

Was sooo cool to walk through ilses of parts, tons of HD's and things. most of it wasnt worth much, but it was fun to experiment on, making a basic computer, (which for me never worked, lolol... ).

Was a fun little short hobby, similar to RC planes except the computer doesnt accidentally fall out of the sky out of control. You have to heave it through a window. Just make sure its open or you have a glass bill....


Bill
 
I'm still using the Compaq Presario I bought in 2001. :d It ran CFS2 and FS2002 OK but doesn't cut it with FS9, I'm lucky to get 20 FPS with an older aircraft.
 
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