

Computers I have known - jacquesm
http://jacquesmattheij.com/computers-I-have-known

======
aerique
_Programming the PC (after the ST with its linear memory space) really felt
like a step back in many ways._

I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt this way. It actively put me off from
programming for a good while (that and Doom) because it was such a hassle, it
felt so needless. Why make things harder than they should be, or why fail so
bad at making hardware? (Remember this was an arrogant 16-year old thinking.)

Needless to say, I came across such situations a lot more once confronted with
the real world.

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jgrahamc
Interesting to see the KIM-1 in there. Some time around 1984 I used one of
those to build a prototype replacement for the large electromechanical
controls on a machine that placed labels on bottles (shampoo etc.).

To program it I wrote the control program (which used the I/O ports to
interface with the machine to read the speed bottles were moving and adjust
the labeler appropriately) on paper in assembly language, debugged it there by
hand and then converted it to machine code and entered it on the KIM-1
keyboard.

The display was enough to output information about the program's operation and
using a microprocessor meant that the machine could get new functionality
quickly (such as spotting that there was a missing label on the spool of
labels and accelerating the labeler so that it skipped the missing label and
didn't skip a bottle).

~~~
jacquesm
I bought my KIM off the doorman of the bank where I worked (in the mailroom).
He mentioned he had a computer for sale on the message board in the hallway
and I went with him (on the back of a rickety old motorcycle, scariest thing
I've ever done) to his house in Almere, came back home by train with a bag
full of bits.

This particular KIM-1 was sold as a kit which had been partially completed and
some of the parts were installed the wrong way. So I got to practice double
sided PCB parts extraction for a while before being able to program it.

The FSK chip eventually got cannibalized to do duty in a home-brew modem for
the BBC (which had a dedicated serial port).

------
DanBC
People don't understand just how expensive computing used to be.

Here are some old issues of infoworld from the '80s.

([http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=aj4EAAAAMBAJ&printsec...](http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=aj4EAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false))

Dot matrix printer, 63 lines per minute, 80 columns == $740 (cable an extra
$35). ($750 adjusted to today is $2,000)

"Tape Solves Winchester Backup Crunch" - talks about the trouble of backup up
10 million bytes; about the drop from $20,000 to $3,000 making winchester
technology available to the 'average advanced individual businessman". (1980
$3,000 = $8,300 in 2013).

([http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0DAEAAAAMBAJ&printsec...](http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0DAEAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&lr=&rview=1#v=onepage&q&f=false))

~~~
jacquesm
There is nothing sadder than old computer hardware and what you paid for it.

I shudder to think what I paid for my first portable PC (the size of a very
large toaster), my first laptop and my first > 100 MB hard drive.

64Kbit of ram, cost $50/chip (bits, not bytes) and it needed an awful lot of
them to populate a motherboard, cache chips were even more expensive.

For one project I hacked together a memory expansion that held a full page of
data to be sent to a laser printer as a bitmap at 300 dpi, weeks of wire
wrapping and a bill for the memory that you could easily buy a very nice car
for. (But it _did_ give me the ability to do grayscale printing when everybody
else was still stuck with dithering :) ). Operating on an in-warranty $10K or
so laser printer to be able to modulate the laser in real time as it lights up
the drum is lots of fun.

387s, Weiteks, DSP boards, now FPGAs and GPUs and an endless lists of
expensive goodies at the bleeding edge of computing (bleeding edge as far as
ordinary mortals were concerned). I still have a bunch of Indys laying in the
basement that I paid ~$10K a piece for, they're worth next to nothing now. The
funnies bit about those computers is that today - a good 15 years later - I
still use their keyboards, through a ps/2 to USB dongle. Those keyboards are
both fantastic to type on and practically indestructible.

We bought a PDP-11 off NikHef for scrap in the 80's and used it to design
electronics and route PCBs, it had cost a small fortune new.

~~~
DanBC
Old computers have an odd mix of brilliant and awful keyboards.

Proper hardware switches (the IBM keyboard is well known) were reasonably
common.

But the membrane keyboard of the Sinclair ZX 81; the rubber squidgy buttons of
the Sinclair Spectrum; the square layout and keycaps of the Sharp MZ80k; there
were many terrible keyboards.

ZX81 : ([http://www.nightfallcrew.com/27/11/2012/sinclair-
zx81-person...](http://www.nightfallcrew.com/27/11/2012/sinclair-
zx81-personal-computer-boxed/)) -- The awful keyboard meant you had to push
hard, which would wobble the machine, which would case the attached RAMPack to
wobble and thus need the machine to be rebooted.

Sharp MZ80K: ([http://www.old-
computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=174&s...](http://www.old-
computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=174&st=1))

------
jgrahamc
You can rekindle those 8-bit days when you knew _everything_ about how your
machine's software and hardware worked with a microcontroller such as Arduino.

[http://blog.jgc.org/2009/08/just-give-me-simple-cpu-and-
few-...](http://blog.jgc.org/2009/08/just-give-me-simple-cpu-and-few-io.html)

------
pjmlp
The ones I have worked so far:

Timex 2068 (My first computer)

ZX Spectrum 48+ (2nd computer)

ZX Spectrum +2A and +3 (at friend's place)

Amstrad PC1512 (at school)

Amiga 500 (at friend's place)

PC Compatible 386SX, P75, P166 MMX, AMD K-7, ...

AS/400, Aix, HP-UX, Solaris Workstations (At work)

~~~
draegtun
I previously left a nostalgic list of the computers I owned on a HN comment
last year - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4052679>

One thing I didn't previously mention is that the first computer I saw & used
was a Sinclair ZX-81. It was my best friends but he couldn't make head and
tail of it. So when I visited he left it mainly for me to use and that started
my addiction to programming :)

~~~
pjmlp
Nice list.

If I am not mistaken, we started with the same Linux distribution.

~~~
draegtun
Thanks.

If I include computers used at work & friends then we overlap a bit more...

\- Commodore 64 & Amiga (?) - both friends

\- Prime minicomputer (primos)

\- PDP (11?) server

\- Vax/VMS server

\- SCO Unix & Xenix servers (my first taste of Unix - 1994)

\- SCO OpenServer (first server I setup & managed at work)

\- Sparcstation (SunOS), Sun Blade & couple of Sun Ultra workstations (all
running Solaris)

\- Tiny bit of AS/400 & HP-UX

\- Lots of Intel servers running Linux! (SuSE, Redhat & Ubuntu)

------
bhauer
Fun read. Though, at least here in the US, the 520 was the first ST and the
260ST was a very limited run that came after the 520. I think the 260 was
intended for the European market, but I still believe it was released after
the 520 as a lower-cost alternative.

I personally had a 520STFM and then a 1040STE. Fantastic computers for their
time.

------
kylec
48T of attached storage for your current computer? Why so much?

~~~
jacquesm
Large dataset addiction :)

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whileonebegin
Nice nostalgia. Now, where is my 100-core CPU?

