My first MicroSquash machine was a Used Gateway2000 Laptop that ran Windoz 95.... Still have it, and it still runs the Programing Software for a bunch of Commercial Radios, that I service. It connects to my LAN via AppleTalk/Fastpath Router. I also have an old Gateway Solo Laptop that runs Windoz 2000Pro that runs the newer Programming Software, for the later Radios. It connects to the LAN via a PCMCIA WiFi Card in the slot. All the rest of my MicroSquash OS Machines are Virtual, and are 2000Pro and XP, and run on my iMac, and MacBook under VirtualBox from Oracle, or Apples Bootcamp software. One of the Virtual Machines is my MonkeyNet Box, that runs the MonkeyNet Suite of Programs. That VM lives on a 32GB ThumbDrive, inside an Encrypted folder, with a 4096 bit KeySet. That VM also runs my BitMessage Comms App.... This file is also backed up on a couple of Servers, one of which is Offshore, and Hidden. (No DNS Record, and only available via direct IP Addressing, and VPN Tunnel) .....
My first operating system was a Dick Smith system 80 which, evidently was a near clone of the Tandy TRS80, but somewhat more reliable. the computer looked more like a hybrid electric typewriter/audio cassette deck, minus a golfball print head and ribbon. some programs I bought on commercial audio cassette tapes....some I typed in manually from books and magazines. CLOAD, CRUN and CSAVE are the only commands I can remember from those days. Some specs describing the Dick Smith System 80 are shown below.
Wow have been googling some of your classics, cool stuff! When I was in school we had clients called microbee that had some pretty fun games. I beleive they were hooked up to an x86 system up by the teachers desk. And at some point we had ones made by Ericsson called Compis (COMputer I Skolan - computer in school). Right before I had my first intel-based computer I also had an Atari 1040Ste that I had alot of fun with. Never had a Mac though so if I get to buy another computer preapocalyptia I guess it'll have to be one of those.
Timex Sinclair 1000 @ around 11yrs old Timex Sinclair 1000 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia A whole 2K of Memory! Then an Atari 800XL (With cassette tape drive!) Finally a Commodore 64
I remember coding floppy discs and using them in DOS to run as memory. An old Blue Chip (new at the time) IBM computer and a TON of software. With freaking monochrome monitors and the simplest games we would play endlessly and be perfectly content. I think I stopped using computers until a few years after high school and even after the Win 98 era, right around 1999 or so and Win ME was released. Now, at the time I didn't know any better, but who would have figured the very first PC I threw down money on came with Win ME? Wanna talk about bad timing awards...I built every PC I ever owned from that moment forward. Yeah, so I got into rebuilding computers from that point on. The old PIII 933 was by far the best PC I owned for a long time, custom build by myself, all I needed.
Dad built a homemade computer (complete w/ wooden cabinet) in 1976 that ran North Star Basic among other things. Neighbors would line up in our garage/shop to look at/touch it.
August 15, 1980 (one year before the announcement of the first IBM PC), I bought for $2000 a just introduced Apple II+ 48K RAM 6502 8 bit CPU, running Apple Disk Operating System and a few months later added a 16K RAM expansion card (called a CP/M Card cuz back then the only reason for it was to run the bloated piggy CP/M DOS), a Hayes 300 baud modem, and a 160K single-sided floppy disk drive. I later added a Corvus 5 MB hard disk drive. My next computer was a 1982 IBM PC 8088 CPU with 64K and an AST 6 Pack+ 384K RAM expansion card with IBM DOS 1.1. Then I worked extensively on the very buggy Apple Lisa computer, a GUI precursor to Mac in 1983. Then, like @BTPost, I had a Mac 128K as part of the Own-a-Mac program in January 1984. Then in 1984, I became a PC Network Engineer and focused on Corvus Omnishare, Novell NetWare ver 1.02 and 3Com Etherseries 1.0 network operating systems (NOS) and PC-to-Mainframe SNA gateway connections. From there I went to 3Com 3+ Open and OS/2 which got me work living in France for several years. France, who had just started to use computers in business, 8 years behind the USA, had no corporate choice for PC OS, so the WHOLE country of France (Socialist government and businesses) all installed IBM OS/2 1.1. The Server-side OS wasn't even translated to French yet, so as a native English speaker, I had an advantage for about a year or two.
I don't know the name of the very first OS I used, but the terminal had a printer instead of a monitor. We used punch cards to program it. The next OS was Hydra used by the Wicat system (OLD-COMPUTERS.COM musem ~ WICAT 150 several years later, Then came the combo of CPM and DOS in a DEC Rainbow. First computer I owned was a heathkit I built in a long weekend that ran DOS 2.1. Later came multiple flavors of Unix and Linux, Apple OS and VMS. The only OS I've used, though, that totally blows is Windows 8.
Punch cards were a little before my computer days although my father worked with them for a company called Bunker Ramo, now part of honeywell.
Actually, the PET2001 RAM ranged from 4 to 96 Kb...hard to believe when we now think in GBs. Had to check because I remember being so blown away when Apple made the big jump to 1 Mb RAM with the MacPlus in the mid 80's....that sucker flew.
I worked with a older fellow who'd done some of the FEA on the Trieste II - WITH PUNCH CARDS!!!!! Apparently the pressure was a bit too high for gaskets so hatch deflection/fit is sort of critical! This came up as I was showing him how we do FEA these days. His months of work building up matrices for loads and geometry could be done in an afternoon now. Just verifying it was punched in right makes me shudder.
My first HDD was 20MB and I can remember using some sort of stacker/compression software to fit 40MB on that sucker. Was in an IBM 286 - those were the days when you could buy the 287 math co-processor.
K M when compared to G it's nada. My first 10MB HD, I thought I'd never fill it up. LMAO! now, I guess i could probably fill a few TB's, with what? I'm not sure.
@VisuTrac, I still remember it well... the October 1977 issue of Popular Science magazine with the super sleek futuristic looking Commodore PET 2001 on the cover. That issue made me walk into a computer store and ask to see one. The guy told me the real computer to buy is the Apple II. So for the next three years I saved up to buy that $2000 Apple II (which by then was called the II+).
