Your earliest computer and programs

[irneb]

If I remember correctly that original XT cost me around R6000 to R7000. Can't remember the name of the shop though.

The company I worked for in the late 80's bought some Olivetti PC/Printer combo. The PC was an XT with 512kb RAM, a 20MB HDD and a 760 stiffy. The printer was part-n-parcel of the same box as the PC itself (it was one of those Daisy-Wheel printers). The strangest part was the 12" green on black CRT screen which had a mounting arm so you could move it about and have your document underneath - just in front of the keyboard. It came with some proprietary Olivetti word-processor (with special features for the "printer" so you could also use it directly as a typewriter), but you could install whichever other programs you needed, as long as it could run on that hardware through DOS. The company's secretary used to type specification documents on opaque film paper on this thing (A3 max size), then we'd magic-tape those onto an A1 sheet and make ammonia copies to issue together with the full drawing set. Then she'd also "do the books" using the spreadsheet in Ability+.

The biggest time waster in the company was actually the Roland pen plotter. You tended to send the drawing to the plotter through a serial RS232 cable (had a mechanical switch box so you didn't need to unplug and replug the cable to a different PC if you wanted to print from some other) and then go stand in front of it watching how it swapped pens and moved the page and/or head around to draw what you just finished in CAD. It could even cut from a vinyl sheet: http://www.luberth.com/help/Roland_d...yl_cutter.html

As for HDD, I've had the opposite experience: My original XT's HDD is still operable, the PC's had its day though with some parts on the MB burnt out. Newer HDD's tended to get bad spots galore, especially those 40MB's in the 386's - you had to "park" the heads before turning off - they tended to "crash" into the platters if a car drove by in the street. Later the HDD heads became less sensitive, but I still had huge issues. Though that was probably due to me buying cheap Maxtor discs in the Pentuims (worst hardware mistake there was): "Goedkoop is duur koop!" Still have some of the replacement 20GB HDD (WD's and Seagates) which still work. These days (last 3 years) I've had one Verbatim 1TB (actually a WD with Verbatim branding) external crash completely unrecoverable, and one Seagate Expansion Disc (500GB) give up the ghost - but those are probably since they're portable and tend to get some knocks. But then again I'm still using an old (7 years) 80GB Iomega external (it gets plugged into my NAS every now and then) without any issues at all.

[Didditmiself]

The most irritating machine must have been the Sinclair Spectrum with it's 4 functions per key. Trying to copy games and stuff from books was a frigging nightmare. And yes Adrain, I remember using the (Philips and Sony) 4 track cassettes for the Commodore. My son still has an original AppleMac machine with the keyboard, screen and machine all in one. Those were the days....

[Mitos]

In '79 I used to be the onsite engineer at Trust Banks in Durban - they used our Burroughs L series computers for banking transactions. Magnetic stripe and punch tape were the input/output medium then!

[IanF]

I used to use an Apple IIe with visicalc to check banks interest calculations and from I remember they were correct. Then there was financial modelling for the budgets, we had to rent time on the chamber of mines computer to run those.

[irneb]

Magnetic stripe and punch tape were the input/output medium then!

So you guys didn't use a terminal? http://www.old-computers.com/museum/...asp?st=1&c=596

Edit: Actually in the 70's you guys could probably have used one of these instead: http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=94

But no! They went with an input "terminal" like this:

[Mitos]

Well here's an image of the full computer...took some muscle to deliver always..

[Mitos]

Look at the size of the hard drive...

[Martinco]

My first office "computer" 1980 was a Radio Shack which cost me +- R 8000.00 to do Debtors Creditors and Stock an then obviously invoicing. Ran on Basic and used three individual Floppy disk drives, Two for the program and one for the data. (360 Kb ) the output was via a 12 inch dot matrix printer. I can still remember it was quite easy to go into the program and fine tune certain parts to work the way one wants it to.
If memory serves me right I then upgraded to a XT IBM and the rest is history !

[irneb]

Look at the size of the hard drive...

So where in the timeline does that one fall?
http://www.pcworld.com/article/127105/article.html

This is another thing which is swimming around in my mind: Previously, the hardware was available though extremely expensive. E.g. that IBM disc in '73 which worked like today's HDDs with the platters and a sealed encasing. You got "cheap" programs which was "easy" to customize to your exact needs. Early on the "software" was either built-into the hardware or packaged together with it, but always there was some form of - you got the source code and could modify to suit your needs perfectly.

These days, it's again reversed. Hardware costs peanuts in comparison to the 60's and 70's. But software has become expensive, yet more prone to crashes and a lot less customizable (at least not "easily").

[Mitos]

Can't really place it in your link timeline as IBM are being used as the frame of reference....Burroughs technology was properiety & while the company was formed in the mid to late 1800's (with cash registers, accounting m/c etc - strictly mechanical); they acquired another company in 60's and began the swing towards electro mechanical computers thereafter, perhaps '62 - '65. The partnering company was the developer of the magnetic stripe technology which enabled Burroughs to grown their products mainly in the banking industry.