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Hi!

Introduce yourself. Tell people why you are interested in vintage computers and what (if anything) you've got.

Hi!

by Mr President » Mon Jun 21, 2010 12:46 am

I'm 40 this year.

I got my intro to computers at college on apple 11e's and BBCs. Learnt a bit of BASIC as part of our computer class and became lunchtime computer room supervisor. Used to key in games listings from mags in BASIC. My first own computer was a commodore c16 which was commodores replacement for the vic20. It had a much more advanced BASIC than the c64 and, if one added a memory expansion, potentially more RAM than the c64 but didn't have sprites so never took off. The world was in love with c64.

Once I entered the working world I didn't touch the computer much except when I tried to interface it to the outside world with only limited success.
But then I got married and loaned the machine to someone who killed it.
I would have been maybe 22 when someone gave me an old ibm XT with two 5.25" floppy drives and no harddrive. I acquired a DOS handbook from somewhere which I devoured. Learned that I needed a harddrive so scanned the Trade n Exchange paper for parts. Learned about MFM drives and adapters. Early pentiums were listed in those days. Wanting to learn more I got books from the library and learned all about 8088s, 8086s 80286s etc and CGA/VGA/Hercules video adapters.

I attended a computer course (CBC) and at that stage purchased the shell of a 486 ps2 with mb and psu. Bought 4mb of EDO RAM for it which the shopkeeper thought was a bit ridiculous. Got an 80Mb IDE harddrive from a shop (2nd hand of course. 500mb was pretty big back then). Got win3.0 (Win95 was just coming out).
Did a bit of dabbling with C. I had done pretty well with BASIC and assembly on the c16. Gave up the whole programming caper after a few years as my mood was controlled by my success with the programming day by day.
Tried to start a computer repair business. Was a bit of a cowboy. Still do the odd job from time to time.

So now you know me. The important stuff anyway.

Funny how you used to reach new heights in computing power and go WOOOW! Like when I first installed a whole 16Mb of RAM. And the time I installed a vast 500Mb harddrive. It had Descent on it. Was playing it on a black and white VGA monitor. Was great playing network games between two computers using a serial cable. I used to use that cable to transfer files between computers in DOS using a command called interlink. You had to set it up in your config.sys and run another command in the autoexec.bat or from the command line and it made the drives on the other pc show up as local drives.
On TradeMe I'm BIT.
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Re: Hi!

by tezza » Mon Jun 21, 2010 3:10 pm

Hi there, and welcome,

Yes, I remember the relentless improvements in storage and memory. From my maxed-out System 80 with 48k, to an XT clone with 640k, then onwards and upwards. I remember when the 1st 1GB hard-drives were announced in the papers in the late 1990s. Another WOW moment.
Tez (Terry Stewart) (Administrator)
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Re: Hi!

by Mr President » Mon Jun 21, 2010 11:00 pm

Yeah. And now 1G RAM is common place.
When you look at what programmers achieved with the limitations of computers like the C64 for example, I reckon programmers today must be a lot more lazy. Well certainly I respect those programmers of old and the efficiency and elegance of the code they must have had to produce, looking at the power of the machines back then and the power of todays machines. Even taking into account that modern games have much higher resolution and colour depth etc. The code was tight back then. Tight.
On TradeMe I'm BIT.
Mr President
 
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Joined: Sun Jun 20, 2010 1:50 pm
Location: Whangarei


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