Remember the days when....

Post by **UBT - Mikee** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 2:39 pm

Just having a clear out and came across a load of ex-magazine 3.5" floppies. How old are they? Check this and remember the good old days of DOS - no mention of Windows/Linux here!

Requires 256-colour VGA, 2Mb of RAM and DOS 5; 386 PC recommended

Anyone else got similar?

UBT - PaulC · Post by **UBT - PaulC** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 2:41 pm

I've got a small stack of 3.5" and 5.25" disks in the cupboard. I doubt the 5.25" inch ones will work. But i'd need to actually find a drive to test them

UBT - Simon · Post by **UBT - Simon** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 3:38 pm

Heh the last time i saw 5inch floppies was when i had a BBC Master! god I had that computer from 1988-9 to around 1996! and it was still going strong! Shame i was stuck with crappy games that where aimed at primary school kids.

Post by **UBT - Mikee** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 4:00 pm

I've still got access to my first PC! 386SX with 4Meg of RAM (Back in the days when 1 Meg was £25!). That's got a 5.25" drive but it hasn't been switched on for years so will it work? Would it matter if it did work? Doubt if I've got anything around to make use of Windows 3.1 or DOS 6.2!

UBT - PaulC · Post by **UBT - PaulC** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 4:05 pm

UBT - Simon wrote:Heh the last time i saw 5inch floppies was when i had a BBC Master! god I had that computer from 1988-9 to around 1996! and it was still going strong! Shame i was stuck with crappy games that where aimed at primary school kids.

Still have a BBC B computer in a cupboard too, last powered up about a year ago. Worked great.

UBT - Simon · Post by **UBT - Simon** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 4:11 pm

Unfortunitly mine died

Darren · Post by **Darren** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 6:21 pm

I had a bbc model B as well, but before that I had a dragon 32 and before that I had....no, now I'm showing my age!
With the Model B I had a BBC Tape drive.... they were the days when you used to wait 10 mins for a game of Elite to start up.

Post by **UBT - Mikee** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 6:34 pm

dazza wrote:I had a bbc model B as well, but before that I had a dragon 32 and before that I had....no, now I'm showing my age!

Bet it was an Atari or ZX81!

Darren · Post by **Darren** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 7:57 pm

Yes, a ZX81.
I had an atari 2600 but that was a video game player, and b4 that good old pong

UBT - BHCJackie · Post by **UBT - BHCJackie** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 8:36 pm

Until late December 2004 (when I moved house) I had a C64. I was supposed to be packing stuff but I set it up and spent the rest of the afternoon playing Wizard's Lair.
I think I took it to the local Help The Aged shop.

UBT - Halifax-lad · Post by **UBT - Halifax-lad** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 8:55 pm

UBT - BHCJackie wrote:Until late December 2004 (when I moved house) I had a C64. I was supposed to be packing stuff but I set it up and spent the rest of the afternoon playing Wizard's Lair.
I think I took it to the local Help The Aged shop.

I don't know all these people showing ther age

I had an Amiga 500

UBT - PaulC · Post by **UBT - PaulC** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 9:06 pm

A500 ruled! If your talking retro here, i had a Vectrex console games machine and I still have a Philips CDI unit :shock:

Post by **UBT - Mikee** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 9:58 pm

Oh come on guys! Sinclair ZX Spectrum ruled! A whole 16K of RAM (yeah that's K not M!).

Tested your dexterity that beast! Had to press 3 keys at the same time to get certain keywords up!

And don't forget the 16 pin dot matrix printers or heat sensitive paper if you were poor!

UBT - PaulT · Post by **UBT - PaulT** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 11:20 pm

I used to have a VIC20. Thing was, if you had a game that required a 8K memory expansion (if I remember right, the VIC only had about 3.5K) you could not use the 16K memory expansion, it had to be an 8K expansion.

After that I got the 128K spectrum with the tape deck built in and then an Amiga 500, Amiga 1200, Amiga 4000 with 68060 at 40MHz (kicked the arse of any PC available at the time), then moved to PC's when the Amiga was no more.

Interestingly, the Amiga was going to be the Atari ST but, Commodore bought the design team from under Atari's nose.

RodEllery · Post by **RodEllery** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 1:06 am

UBT - BHCJackie wrote:I don't know all these people showing ther age

Load of youngsters the lot of ye!

I can remember going off to work one day with a 5 platter disk drive in me arm. (approx 18" across and a foot deep) That's what you call mobile computing!

UBT - PaulC wrote:I've got a small stack of 3.5" and 5.25" disks in the cupboard

In the loft I've still got 8" floppies as well. Haven't seen a reader for those in years.

Who else hear (<- obligatory typo) remembers paper tape as a way of booting a machine?
--
Rod

Post by **UBT - Chris Suddick** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 8:37 am

RodEllery wrote:Who else hear (<- obligatory typo) remembers paper tape as a way of booting a machine?

Excellent stuff. When I started computing it was on a PDP-8/e with 24Kw or 12-bit memory and it supported 4 users simulaneously. We had ASR33 teletypes (the ones where you needed real muscles in your fingers to press the keys) with papertape punch/reader running at 110 baud (10 cps).

Nostalgia just ain't what it used to be.

Chris.