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30 years of PC

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  • H Henry Minute

    In 1984 I was writing a student management system using an XT with Lotus 1-2-3. Happy days.

    Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.

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    Lost User
    wrote on last edited by
    #9

    This day in 1984 I was probably up a tree in Staffordshire. This day 30 years ago I was probably up a tree in Derbyshire. I spent a lot of time up trees when I was younger. I miss climbing trees (I did try again quite recently but it was a lot harder than I remember)

    Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.

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    • L Lost User

      It was on this day 30 years ago, IBM launched the IBM Personal Computer[^]. I remember using the AT and XT versions in my school in mid 90s to write GWBASIC programs.

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      leppie
      wrote on last edited by
      #10

      Shameel wrote:

      I remember using the AT and XT versions in my school in mid 90s to write GWBASIC programs.

      I remember using the original, with IBM DOS 1.10, 128K RAM. Was about 6-8 years old then. Also played with GOTO or as you call it, GWBASIC (IIRC it was just called BASIC then).

      ((λ (x) `(,x ',x)) '(λ (x) `(,x ',x)))

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      • L Lost User

        It was on this day 30 years ago, IBM launched the IBM Personal Computer[^]. I remember using the AT and XT versions in my school in mid 90s to write GWBASIC programs.

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        Abu Mami
        wrote on last edited by
        #11

        You mean - it was 30 years ago when you had to start calling someone "full", and not "fat"? Gotta be PC!

        modified on Friday, August 12, 2011 7:31 AM

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        • L Lost User

          It was on this day 30 years ago, IBM launched the IBM Personal Computer[^]. I remember using the AT and XT versions in my school in mid 90s to write GWBASIC programs.

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          dan sh
          wrote on last edited by
          #12

          30 years ago, there were still four years left for me to come to this World. Wasn't World a happy place then?

          "The worst code you'll come across is code you wrote last year.", wizardzz[^]

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          • H Henry Minute

            OriginalGriff wrote:

            and look where they are now...

            Oh yes, in desperate straits down to 55th in the world by revenue[^].

            Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.

            modified on Friday, August 12, 2011 6:33 AM

            OriginalGriffO Offline
            OriginalGriffO Offline
            OriginalGriff
            wrote on last edited by
            #13

            (Your link doesn't work - I suspect a space) Now look at capitalization, and revenue per employee, and compare that with Micro$oft... Nearly twice, and nearly four times as large!

            Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."

            "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
            "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt

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            • L Lost User

              This day in 1984 I was probably up a tree in Staffordshire. This day 30 years ago I was probably up a tree in Derbyshire. I spent a lot of time up trees when I was younger. I miss climbing trees (I did try again quite recently but it was a lot harder than I remember)

              Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.

              H Offline
              H Offline
              Henry Minute
              wrote on last edited by
              #14

              ChrisElston wrote:

              I did try again quite recently but it was a lot harder than I remember

              Me too. Ascending was pretty much as I remembered but descending was so much more problematic.

              Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.

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              • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                (Your link doesn't work - I suspect a space) Now look at capitalization, and revenue per employee, and compare that with Micro$oft... Nearly twice, and nearly four times as large!

                Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."

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                Henry Minute
                wrote on last edited by
                #15

                Thanks Griff! Damned CP linky paster. Chopped off a whole word. First time I've had that.

                Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.

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                • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                  (Your link doesn't work - I suspect a space) Now look at capitalization, and revenue per employee, and compare that with Micro$oft... Nearly twice, and nearly four times as large!

                  Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."

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                  H Offline
                  Henry Minute
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #16

                  OriginalGriff wrote:

                  Now look at capitalization, and revenue per employee, and compare that with Micro$oft...
                  Nearly twice, and nearly four times as large!

                  Oh yes, there's no doubt that they are a shadow of the colossus they once were but hardly a candidate for an episode of 'Where are they now?'.

                  Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.

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                  • H Henry Minute

                    OriginalGriff wrote:

                    Now look at capitalization, and revenue per employee, and compare that with Micro$oft...
                    Nearly twice, and nearly four times as large!

                    Oh yes, there's no doubt that they are a shadow of the colossus they once were but hardly a candidate for an episode of 'Where are they now?'.

                    Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.

                    OriginalGriffO Offline
                    OriginalGriffO Offline
                    OriginalGriff
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #17

                    True enough. But I bet the bosses of IBM grind their teeth every time they turn on the Windows 7 lappie... :laugh:

                    Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."

                    "I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
                    "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt

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                    • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                      True enough. But I bet the bosses of IBM grind their teeth every time they turn on the Windows 7 lappie... :laugh:

                      Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."

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                      Henry Minute
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #18

                      OriginalGriff wrote:

                      But I bet the bosses of IBM grind their teeth every time they turn on the Windows 7 Lenovo lappie...

                      FTFY

                      Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.

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                      • H Henry Minute

                        ChrisElston wrote:

                        I did try again quite recently but it was a lot harder than I remember

                        Me too. Ascending was pretty much as I remembered but descending was so much more problematic.

                        Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.

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                        Mycroft Holmes
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #19

                        It's that sense of impending death/broken bits as you look down from 15ft in the air. I was really pleased the other day when I spotted some little mongrel kid up 50ft up a morton bay fig, parent sitting under the tree weren't fazed at all. Good to see in these days of over protective parents.

                        Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH

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                        • L Lost User

                          Amiga was Commodore going to 'the next level' as it were.

                          Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.

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                          Lost User
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #20

                          Now that's one of the weirdest stories. Atari came first with the Atari ST, but the ST was the inofficial sucessor of the C64 (same developers + new owners of Atari). The Amiga came later and was sold by Commodore. Its chipset was made by the same people ho designed the chipset for the 8 bit Ataris, making it their inofficial sucessor.

                          "Dark the dark side is. Very dark..." - Yoda ---
                          "Shut up, Yoda, and just make yourself another toast." - Obi Wan Kenobi

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                          • H Henry Minute

                            Thanks Griff! Damned CP linky paster. Chopped off a whole word. First time I've had that.

                            Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.

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                            Dan Neely
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #21

                            Henry Minute wrote:

                            Damned CP linky paster. Chopped off a whole word. First time I've had that.

                            I wonder if something was broken. It happened to me yesterday, I just assumed I bunged the copy/paste since it worked fine in the fix edit.

                            Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius

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                            • L Lost User

                              It was on this day 30 years ago, IBM launched the IBM Personal Computer[^]. I remember using the AT and XT versions in my school in mid 90s to write GWBASIC programs.

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                              AHISDave
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #22

                              In 1983 I started as a programmer on the old IBM Series 1 and my company decided to take a look at the IBM PC and sent me to Boca Raton, FL for a "How to support the IBM PC" class. I thought it was a complete joke and never thought it or personal computers in general would amount to anything. Shows you what I know. :)

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                              • R realJSOP

                                I was there. I had an Apple 2e when the PC came out. My first PC-class machine was a Sperry XT in 1983. If you can picture it, the thing was MASSIVE. It weighed in at about 60 pounds, and you had to install the memory CHIPS one at a time. Floppy drives were 5-1/4 inch FULL HEIGHT drives, and 20MB hard drives were considered "too large to fill up". The common yardstick of compatibility was whether or not and how well a given computer could run Microsoft Flight Simulator.

                                ".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
                                -----
                                You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
                                -----
                                "Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997

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                                stevev6
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #23

                                I learned to program on an HP 9845 []. I was a draftsman at a civil engineering firm in high school and got to use the computer after the engineer went home at night. I even had my own cassette tape. That was thirty four years past. I had stopped climbing trees at that point. The rest is (literally) history.

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                                • OriginalGriffO OriginalGriff

                                  And don't they just wish they hadn't? They were the major computing company - if you wanted a computer, you probably bought it and all the software available from them. But they made it open source hardware, and an external OS. Despite PS/2 and OS/2, they couldn't put the genie back in the bottle, and look where they are now...

                                  Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."

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                                  Snorri Kristjansson
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #24

                                  The "open source" hardware was an accident :) IBM published the hardware schematics and the firmware BIOS in a technical reference manual - like they did for everything else they made - that made it very easy for others manufactures to make "PC compatible" computers.

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                                  • L Lost User

                                    It was on this day 30 years ago, IBM launched the IBM Personal Computer[^]. I remember using the AT and XT versions in my school in mid 90s to write GWBASIC programs.

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                                    edmurphy99
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #25

                                    I still have two of them that work sitting in my attic

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                                    • L Lost User

                                      It was on this day 30 years ago, IBM launched the IBM Personal Computer[^]. I remember using the AT and XT versions in my school in mid 90s to write GWBASIC programs.

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                                      K Offline
                                      Kenneth Kasajian
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #26

                                      If you were using IBM PCs, then you were using PC-DOS, which came with BASICA not GWBASIC.

                                      ken@kasajian.com / www.kasajian.com

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                                      • K Kenneth Kasajian

                                        If you were using IBM PCs, then you were using PC-DOS, which came with BASICA not GWBASIC.

                                        ken@kasajian.com / www.kasajian.com

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                                        Lost User
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #27

                                        The one I used did not have a hard disk, a boot floppy was required and we used MS-DOS boot disks. After MS-DOS fully booted up and showed the command prompt, the boot disk was removed and application disks were inserted. I am sure I used GW-BASIC.

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                                        • S Snorri Kristjansson

                                          The "open source" hardware was an accident :) IBM published the hardware schematics and the firmware BIOS in a technical reference manual - like they did for everything else they made - that made it very easy for others manufactures to make "PC compatible" computers.

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                                          BrainiacV
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #28

                                          They were used to that from the mainframes. I remember reading though some of the OS source code looking for the reason I was getting a specific error message. IBM was used to having proprietary hardware, so what was the risk of detailing everything? The PC changed that, but their documenting department didn't realize it.

                                          Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.

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