Anyone remember the really old computers...?

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RogueIce
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Anyone remember the really old computers...?

Post by RogueIce »

Y'know, the ones with the "TURBO" button?

Did that actually do anything? I never noticed any difference...

Oh, by the way, I recently got my old one back. It had a B: drive and TURBO button! Y'know the B: drive, the really floppy floppy disk? :)

*tries to see if he can find the cords to reconnect it, and see if it survived Y2K...or whether it still thinks it's in the mid-90s*

Anyone else still have their old machines lying around?
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Post by kojikun »

ahh the B: drive.. back when you needed one floppy for your OS the other for data..
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Post by Montcalm »

The oldest one we have is a Commodore Vic-20 with the shitty casette drive.
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Post by phongn »

Yes, it did for very old machines. Turning off "turbo" mode switched you into a slower compatibility mode needed for very old software.
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Post by Ghost Rider »

Pfft...youngin.

I remember the load up screen for the C-64(ah GTA:VC...truly only old geezers get the joke...and youngins who've seen it)

You and your B Drive...hell I remember cassettes and even further back.
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Post by RogueIce »

phongn wrote:Yes, it did for very old machines. Turning off "turbo" mode switched you into a slower compatibility mode needed for very old software.
They should have that for the newer ones.

So I can play some old games! Damn it all...

Well, probably not a huge deal with this 900 MHz 120MB RAM machine, but if I ever go higher...

Oh, and that fucking "Windows 95 game won't play on Windows 98" bullshit... :evil:
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Post by darthdavid »

I hat an ibm multi media, with turbo button, b drive, a drive and cd drive. Runnign windows original. It was my last desk top.
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Post by RedImperator »

I have an Apple II/c moldering in the attic somewhere. I've SEEN toys that ran off 8-track tapes, but I don't know if they were computers or not.
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Post by phongn »

It ran Windows 1.0? Damn, I didn't think anyone actually used it. (Now Windows 3.0 or 3.1, that's another story).

Due to many architectural changes, a "turbo" button probably wouldn't work anymore. It's a lot easier to throttle down a 33MHz i80486 to 4.77MHz or so than it is to get an Athlon running at similar performance.
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Post by phongn »

RedImperator wrote:I have an Apple II/c moldering in the attic somewhere. I've SEEN toys that ran off 8-track tapes, but I don't know if they were computers or not.
I know there have been plenty of machines that ran off of cassette tape, but 8-track?
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Post by darthdavid »

phongn wrote:It ran Windows 1.0? Damn, I didn't think anyone actually used it. (Now Windows 3.0 or 3.1, that's another story).
Sorry about the confusion. It was infact running windows 3.x (0 or 2 i know it wasn't 1) i said original because i didn't know that they really made anything before that other than prototypes. Sorry.
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Post by RedImperator »

phongn wrote:
RedImperator wrote:I have an Apple II/c moldering in the attic somewhere. I've SEEN toys that ran off 8-track tapes, but I don't know if they were computers or not.
I know there have been plenty of machines that ran off of cassette tape, but 8-track?
It had to be 8 track. The tapes were big, clunky plastic things and they could only be wound in one direction. I'm pretty sure they were 8-track, anyway--I've never actually seen a working 8-track player except for this game thing.
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Post by TrailerParkJawa »

The oldest computer I ever had was a TI-99 4/a. I threw it away one day when I had too much stuff in my closet and no place to put it. At the time it didnt seem like a big deal, but I should have kept it. Gosh, that must have been 6-8 years ago now.

There is still a C-64 out in the garage. It works, but I never set it up anymore.
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Post by StarshipTitanic »

phongn wrote:It ran Windows 1.0? Damn, I didn't think anyone actually used it. (Now Windows 3.0 or 3.1, that's another story).

Due to many architectural changes, a "turbo" button probably wouldn't work anymore. It's a lot easier to throttle down a 33MHz i80486 to 4.77MHz or so than it is to get an Athlon running at similar performance.
I remember hearing something about the Galilaeo probe running 1.0 but only vaguely...is that possible?
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Post by The Yosemite Bear »

kojikun wrote:ahh the B: drive.. back when you needed one floppy for your OS the other for data..
What floppy drives..

I remember when a tape cassette drive was an improvement.....
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Post by Einhander Sn0m4n »

When I was 12 or 13 I remember having a computer class in which somehow my teacher managed to LAN together three dozen IBM XTs or something (it was a monitor with a 3.5 floppy drive taped on, that's it) with a nice big-ass UNIX Serva. I think the whole contraption used some strange fusion of UNIX and MS DOS too. Sorry boys, this was before the days of Quake. Hell, if you had Wolfenstein3D j00 were t3h PwNx0r. Well, until DooM came out. Ah, those were the days.

Even back then I was amazing everyone with my L33t P4!|\|7 SK!||Z when Mrs. Leger installed a rather quite advanced paint program on the LAN Serva. No one could get their work done when the Paint G0d was going at it...
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Post by Einhander Sn0m4n »

The Yosemite Bear wrote:
kojikun wrote:ahh the B: drive.. back when you needed one floppy for your OS the other for data..
What floppy drives..

I remember when a tape cassette drive was an improvement.....
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Post by Lagmonster »

Broken record. Here's what we're going to do: Everyone over the age of thirty automatically gets a free pass towards assuming that they know old technology.

Actually, screw that. Here's what we're REALLY going to do: Everyone under the age of thirty gets to be on one side of the forum and pierce yourselves in places I don't want to know about and flip us off and laugh about how we don't 'get it'...and the rest of us will sit on the OTHER side of the forum and laugh our asses off about how your education is so poor that you won't know how to BUILD a high-powered computer in ten years, and we'll all be back to paper and pens.

So THERE. :lol:
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Post by Kelly Antilles »

Lagmonster wrote:Broken record. Here's what we're going to do: Everyone over the age of thirty automatically gets a free pass towards assuming that they know old technology.

Actually, screw that. Here's what we're REALLY going to do: Everyone under the age of thirty gets to be on one side of the forum and pierce yourselves in places I don't want to know about and flip us off and laugh about how we don't 'get it'...and the rest of us will sit on the OTHER side of the forum and laugh our asses off about how your education is so poor that you won't know how to BUILD a high-powered computer in ten years, and we'll all be back to paper and pens.

So THERE. :lol:
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Post by phongn »

Einhander Sn0m4n wrote:When I was 12 or 13 I remember having a computer class in which somehow my teacher managed to LAN together three dozen IBM XTs or something (it was a monitor with a 3.5 floppy drive taped on, that's it) with a nice big-ass UNIX Serva. I think the whole contraption used some strange fusion of UNIX and MS DOS too.
It probably booted DOS and you telneted into the server - probably running AIX if it was an IBM box - and used XWindows or whatnot.

In middle school, we had a LAN consisting of TRS-80s hooked up. A master machine had a printer and FDD while there was this switch that connected everything at the astouding speed of 1200 baud. Only one computer could be hooked up to the "server," too (in this case, literally selected by the switch).
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Post by The Yosemite Bear »

Is it my fault that my mom sent me to the Computer Science Lab because she couldn't find a sitter?

Unfortunatly I have one disadvantage to working with hardware...

I was working as an intern when I had an incident that has left me un employable in any hi-tech situations.

I was working when the transmitter was struck by lightning. A lot of feed back passed through me, but I wasn't grounded. Well now I am the dark god of biocapacitance. I can't actually work on hardware anymore, because even after grounding my self out as much as possible, I can kill motherboards/CPU's.

BTW the daisy-daisy chained external storage devices of the early 80's were like the funniest thing. I know one BBS er who untill the 1990's still used an Amiga with dozens of Daisy chained floppies and external HDD's to run his board off of...

Rant: The thing I miss most, Bullet proof Hardware/software. Fuck if you understood Basic/C/Unix you still can do stuff, but I remember when you could do horrible things to keyboards and unplug them, then dry them off, and they were good to go.
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Post by phongn »

I remember those things (the Apple II series was notorious for this as well). I know some places with these huge SCSI chains as well.
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Post by Peregrin Toker »

Well, I recall my family's first computer. An Olivetti 33-Mhz.

Call me insane, but I think I'll be more emotionally attached to that old Olivetti than any other computer I'll ever touch...

(Even the high-tech computer I'm using right now)
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Post by Baron Mordo »

Oh lordy. My old 386 had a turbo button. I remember having to switch from 26 mhz to 21 mhz so I could play Dungeons of Pun. Also, our C-64 at public school had Planetfall. I kept on getting killed by getting sucked out the airlock.
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Post by YT300000 »

I have an XT.
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