21st Century Buggy Whips

Lol Greg, I didn't know you were working at Initech :D

BTW you should use this next time you hand one in.
 
CGA Monitors, replaced by EGA monitors replaced by VGA monitors replaced by Super VGA monitors replaced by LCD Monitors.

Oh...and Hercules Monitors too.
 
Ghery said:
My Commodore 64 started out with a tape drive, too. It's still in a box out in the garage somewhere. Bet it still works, too. :D
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About five years ago, I found myself in need of some files from my old Commodore 64. I fired up the C-64 and transferred the files to an IBM-formatted 5 1/4" floppy using a program called "Big Blue Reader/Writer". Then I cranked up my old 286 computer (being the only thing around that had a 5 1/4" floppy drive) and copied it to a 3.5" floppy so my current PC could read it....

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
About five years ago, I found myself in need of some files from my old Commodore 64. I fired up the C-64 and transferred the files to an IBM-formatted 5 1/4" floppy using a program called "Big Blue Reader/Writer". Then I cranked up my old 286 computer (being the only thing around that had a 5 1/4" floppy drive) and copied it to a 3.5" floppy so my current PC could read it....

Ron Wanttaja
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How about that 'turbo' button on the 286?
 
Matthew said:
How about that 'turbo' button on the 286?
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I'd forgotten about that. I had at least one Gateway machine that had a 'turbo' button on it too. Anybody else remember DR's 'GEM' GUI? I ran that on a bunch of 8086 class machines and even on a really early '386 before Windows 3.1 came out. GEM was actually a very attractive program on a green-screen monochrome monitor....way better than the early versions of Windows on a CGA. I did my first desktop publishing and fancy graphing using GEM.
 
I think I still have a TI-74 that's ready for the trash bin...
 
Back in college my brother and I kept an old 10 mhz 8088 alive. We pretty much put in every bell and whistle into this box (the college surplus sale was our friend). By the time I got done with it, it was quite the screamer.

2mb ram extender board (all of the extra ram was on 16 pin DIPs)
VGA graphics
14.4 mbps modem
40 mb hdd
8087 math co processor (it was a pain finding the 10 mhz one)
an ancient ethernet card
and a German Keyboard :D

While I couldn't run windows I had a WISYWIG wordprocessor/office suite called GeoWorks for it.
 
Matthew said:
How about that 'turbo' button on the 286?
Click to expand...

How about the one on the 8088? 4.77mhz with turbo to 10mhz.

Anyone remember Jet? Try flying that game on an 8088 sometime. It's all CPU speed dependent software and designed for a 4.77mhz 8088. Flip the turbo switch while flying it and it's totally uncontrollable then, if you haven't already crashed, you're out of fuel and headed for the terrain. Approach speed appears to be about Mach 5, maybe 6. Run it on a 20mhz 286 and everything is done at mach 50..or faster.

Apple II ProDOS. The predecessor of windows.
 
Lol I had that exact problem with a German Frogger clone. Had to De-Turbo the 8088 to be able to make it across.
 
Ahh, Pong. The local sears had one set up for playing. Mom would take us to the mall, drop us at the Pong game, and go shopping. 1hr, 2hrs - didn't matter. She knew we wouldn't move an inch.

We had just gotten back from living in Poland. To go from that technological desert to Pong was like going from, well, one century to the next!:D
 
Matthew said:
How about that 'turbo' button on the 286?
Click to expand...

Took you from the "normal" 4.7 MHz processor clock to a screaming 6 or 8 MHz. It still blows me away that even though today's PCs are technically about a thousand times faster I still have to wait several seconds when searching a long document in a word processor or to start up an app.
 
Mentioning 8088 makes me think that writing anything in machine language/assembler is pretty much dead for those who don't write system/drivers and possibly even them.
I knew
6502
6809
8086
80186
 
Ah the good old days. My Masters project was the design of porting the Xinu OS to protected mode operation on a 80286 from the 8088. I got my start in software when I was in the navy and started writing machine level code for diagnostics on Honeywell 516 and 716 minis. Had to enter the code in using front panel neon switches for the 16 bit system.
 
AuntPeggy said:
Mentioning 8088 makes me think that writing anything in machine language/assembler is pretty much dead for those who don't write system/drivers and possibly even them.
I knew
6502
6809
8086
80186
Click to expand...


Hey, I still work with the 6502!

On the show Futurama, there was an episode where the Professor invented the F-ray (like the X-ray, only better). Fry aims it at Bender's head and you can see a 6502 inside. Talk about an obscure inside joke.
 
AuntPeggy said:
Mentioning 8088 makes me think that writing anything in machine language/assembler is pretty much dead for those who don't write system/drivers and possibly even them.
Click to expand...

I use to build IC cards from scratch for special purposes when I had nothing else to do living somewhere miserably BORING. 8255 I/O, game port I/O, 8253 timer, LCD displays, etc. I did plenty of machine code and direct port R/W as needed. Pascal was the most advanced software I wrote anything entertaining in though a lot was in Apple basic or assembly/machine. 6502 (Apple II) and 8088/80286 programming in machine/assembly was normal behavior for a while.

A few years ago someone mentioned finding antique Apple II's having an impossible time getting an operating system up and running. They had the computer, a blank unformatted disk and could download a disk image from internet onto their PC - then they were totally stuck. Without the Apple running DOS, they simply couldn't get the machine to load the disk because there was no DOS to access the disk. I dug into my Apple technical reference manual, DOS and assembler manuals and started editing Apple DOS. The end result was a machine file on the PC that that I could force load DOS into the Apple through a super serial card or the game port then format a disk and proceed to move disk images over as desired. I poked around on apple sites after that and from what I saw, it's entirely possible I'm the only person on the planet that can load DOS into the system without a disk.

300: 60 RTS

P.S. This contraption has three 8255 IO ports (IIRC 24*3 I/O channels) and a 8253 timer on it that runs in a 8088/80286. It also will run any of the dot matrix LCD displays from 1x2 up to 4x40 without editing software. At one point I had it running a LCD screen I picked up at a junk shop.
 

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AuntPeggy said:
Mentioning 8088 makes me think that writing anything in machine language/assembler is pretty much dead for those who don't write system/drivers and possibly even them.
I knew
6502
6809
8086
80186
Click to expand...

CDC 6600 assembly was kind of fun. Can you imagine teaching
that to MIS majors?
 
jtheune said:
Ah the good old days. My Masters project was the design of porting the Xinu OS to protected mode operation on a 80286 from the 8088. I got my start in software when I was in the navy and started writing machine level code for diagnostics on Honeywell 516 and 716 minis. Had to enter the code in using front panel neon switches for the 16 bit system.
Click to expand...
HP21MX also had the toggle switches on front. I remember coding in several programs that way.
 
smigaldi said:
I had a TI99 but do not recall using cassette tape. I do recall having these cassette ROMS and EPROMs that would slide into it.

A friend was a TRS80 fanatic and I do recall him having a cassette. Did the Commodores have a cassette?
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Yea, had those too. The cassette was an option. I rigged up the cassette on my stereo because I was too cheap to go and buy the dedicated tape player.
 
smigaldi said:
I had a TI99 but do not recall using cassette tape. I do recall having these cassette ROMS and EPROMs that would slide into it.

A friend was a TRS80 fanatic and I do recall him having a cassette. Did the Commodores have a cassette?
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Commodores had a "Datasette". It handled the A/D conversion, but otherwise used standard cassettes. It had an edge-connector interface to the CPU and was a little more "intelligent" about loading programs from the cassette.

Ron Wanttaja
 
smigaldi said:
I had a TI99 but do not recall using cassette tape. I do recall having these cassette ROMS and EPROMs that would slide into it.

A friend was a TRS80 fanatic and I do recall him having a cassette. Did the Commodores have a cassette?
Click to expand...

The Commodore PET (pre C-64) had a cassette.

John
 
They sure had a tape drive for the C64.

Code: 
LOAD "*",1

The damn thing was so slow I was really happy when my friend finally got his 1541 diskdrive
 
vontresc said:
They sure had a tape drive for the C64.

Code: 
LOAD "*",1
The damn thing was so slow I was really happy when my friend finally got his 1541 diskdrive
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Anybody remember the KIM-1??
 
Keith Lane said:
Flash Cubes
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Well, that brings back the memories. When I was the Camera Department buyer for The Value House chain of catalogue showrooms -- New England, NY, and NJ -- I was privy to a lot of "tomorrow's" new goodies. During one seminar in Waltham, Massachusetts, conducted by Eastman Kodak and Sylvania Electric Companies, I and similar Purchasing Agents from around the East had to sign "Do Not Disclose"(to the general public) agreements about what we were about to see. It turned out to be the announcement of the Sylvania Flash Cube. At the same time Kodak introduced the Instamatic(s) 104, 124, 134, 154, 704, 804, and a reflex compact, cameras all of which would use the new flash source; and some new film product to be known as 126 cartridges.

Though the meeting was sometime during the early spring we had to keep our mouths shut because the products would not be revealed to Kodak's own sales force until their upcoming September sales meeting to cap off the Fall selling season. Those of us in the catalogue business -- Value House, Best Products, Basco, Modern Merchandising, Service Merchandise -- had to have sufficient advance notice of new products in order to get the goods in the September to-be-issued catalogues for the next year.

What was really fun was shanking-off buying quantities of certain products from the Kodak sales representative -- on which products he would have "really good deals"(the old and outgoing models with which EK was overstocked) because we knew something he didn't(the all new product lines). Then in a later year the same scenario occurred when theMagic Cube (X) was discreetly introduced, and the to-be all new Kodak X-15, X-25, X-35, X-45, X-80, X-90. Those were fun times; but they sure have changed.

HR
 
At Professional sound, Inc., Boston, I worked on the radio/TV jingle, "Let your fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages."
(The old studios -- at 136 Arlington Street -- is now .................. condominiums. Figures.

HR
 
Twin SU carbs keep it running. (Austin Healey)

HR
 

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>Teleporters.<

And we'd have the arguments about light-sport teleporters and are they really cheaper than regular teleporters or was it just for regulatory reasons that category was invented. And the ATITAPA arguments would still go on.

Ain't progress grand?
 
Yeah but finding stuff on the disk was a whole hell of a lot easier than fast forwading the tape.

Oh yeah add another one to the buggywhip list.

Disk Notchers
 
and floppy disk drive cleaning kits.
 
Has anyone mentioned Walkman portable tape players and the slightly more recent but obsolete nonetheless portable CD players? Flash memory has killed off lot of 21st century technology.
 
Ron Levy said:
what 20th century devices have been or are being relegated to the rubbish heap of history by 21st century technology? Off the top of my head, I'd start with:
  • Carbon paper (by copiers)
  • Pay phones (by cell phones)
  • Typewriters (by computers)
  • Road maps? (by GPS's)
Any other ideas?
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Sliding credit card machines
walkmen
studded snow tires
VHS, BETA tapes
Airwave TV (VHF and UHF)
rabbit ear antenea's
slid rulers
adding machines
car phones
reel to reel tapes
phonographs / turntables / 45's / 78's / 33 1/3's
soda can openers (puncture kind)
 
drgwentzel said:
studded snow tires
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What are those replaced with? They're still very popular in areas that get real snow (at least certain ones) but with the advent of 4x4 in America people in areas that don't get real snow now have an easier time accelerating (usually straight into a ditch).

One of my friends in Norway owns only 2wd cars and has studded snow tires for all of them. He says that it's the law there.
 
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