[Doug]

Before I get flamed for writing off subject, I just want to say that seeing as we all use computers, this may hit home with some of you.

I started off computing in 1983 with a 16 K Sinclair ZX-81 that almost made me fail my high shool finals as an uncle of mine lent it to me just as I started studying for my exams. My first real computer a few years later was a 16 MHz machine that I bought for my Dad's medical practice. I was so proud to buy a 16 MHz machine with a 20 MB hard drive. Double the power and double the diskspace of the computers of my peers. We bought a modem with it: a 9600 baud Hayes device. For a year or two I had nowhere to call with it.

I then bought a 33 MHz machine as I went to university - this was the top machine and then people thought that it couldn't get any faster. I actually had a dream then that I would get a 1000 MHz machine one day and out-compute everyone else. What a fantasy.

When I came to France in 1993 I bought a 66 MHz box - double the speed of my old one - wow! This time with a ZoomFax modem and a Free CompuServe try out. I was the 200th French CompuServe client (they had sequential numbers in those days).

When I started working in computers and running my Internet service providing company I had a succession of machines: 200, 400 & 600 MHz. Glory days and happy as hell at being able to by the best-of-the-best whenever I wanted.

I felt that it was important to have the best computer available as the software of the time - Microsoft Office and such was much too demanding for the average computer. We were always waiting for things to process.

I bought a 1000 MHz machine in 2000. It was the first one to hit the market and I paid for it - ouch. I had the machine to end all machines. For the first time and for a few years, I had a machine that was fast enough to run any software and still have enough oomph left to have fun on. But after a while it also clunked up. I added memory and a 128 graphics card and still it works.

Habits change and I feel that it is my right nowdays to want to do 10 things at once. To write email, to browse the web (multiple times -even with tabbed browsing), to chat, to write HTML, to upload, to calculate prices in Excel and to dabble in Photoshop all at the same time.

It's become a little slow and I find that I'm waiting more and more for things to process. It reminds me of the early days.

Today I'm moving to a 3.6 GHz machine as it takes me forward for the next few years. The 1 GHz machine will go to the track to run RMS

The new machine will run my business, let me play games, record my TV programs and play them back. It will on one 400 GB disk do what I did before on 6 disks. It will be quiter, cooled with a liquid coolant and it will be able to write to CDs and dual layer DVDs as easy as the first machines wrote to 5¼ inch floppys.

Aren't computers great

 

[Tropi]

No, they are a damned menace!
If it were not for them I might retain a semblance of sanity!

I beat you to the draw, Nuro - a 48k Apple II in 1979.
£2,500 all in with two 5.25" (180k I think) floppies and an Epson 80 column printer, with a copy of Apple Writer and Visicalc (in 40 columns) which I used to charge local businesses £5 an hour for using in my home. But I eventually made more money selling Australian made 80 column video cards for £265 a shot. Whoo, you can nearly buy a whole PC for that money now!

My son still has it somewhere at his place in Manchester and next time I visit, we will dig it out and play a game of Sir-Tech's 'Wizardry' for old times sake.
Best money I ever spent actually.

 

[Inside_Info]

I wouldn't call them a menace, but I'm sure we'd all spend more time racing/modifying/admiring/playing with our beloved slot cars if it were'nt for the damned internet... (and particularly 'Slotforum')....

Then again, I doubt some of us would ever learn about other peoples cars and problems and all the new cars...

 

[SinclairZX81]

QUOTE (Nuro @ 29 Oct 2004, 20:58)I started off computing in 1983 with a 16 K Sinclair ZX-81...

So did I, as you can probably guess from my username! Actually I started off with the 1K base version but quickly added the 16K RAMPACK, using a large blob of blu-tack to prevent the dreade d wobble.

I moved on to the 48K ZX Spectrum when it came out... I still remember the first game I bought, the release of Jet Set Willy and the first Ultimate Play The Game game I bought. Those were the days.

Now I type this on a astonishingly beautiful and quietly powerful dual processor Apple G5 and one of Apple's equally gorgeous new 23" aluminuium flat displays, running the coolest UNIX OS in the world... so yeah. computers are great... just not Windows ones

 

[PAULH]

who remembers typing in 100's of lines of dos codes etc for days and weeks just to see a matchstick man run across the screen and the sense of achievment it gave you !

or the dreaded error message which told you one of the 100's of lines was typed incorrect

my first big computer

was a commodor 64 complete with datacorder then i had a amstrad cpc 464 that was the dogs

 

[CoolScientist]

QUOTE (PAULH @ 30 Oct 2004, 09:22)who remembers typing in 100's of lines of dos codes etc for days and weeks just to see a matchstick man run across the screen and the sense of achievment it gave you !

or the dreaded error message which told you one of the 100's of lines was typed incorrect

my first big computer

was a commodor 64 complete with datacorder then i had a amstrad cpc 464 that was the dogs

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Wow - that was me at the age of 8... my dad bought me a commodore Vic 20, with the Words "you make your own games boy". This thing had a tape drive, no disks. I used to sit for hours, working out code, colour refernces... and for a bloomin "Syntax error" to occur, and I would have to read through my whole 1000 lines to find a simple comma in the wrong place, or a blooming space too many.

ooo - wasnt that fun.... now, I pop down the shop or trawl the internet to find games..... I progressed on to an Amstrad C128.... and that was after the Acorn Electron..... oo the memorys..... As for pcs of today, well.... I darent go buy another, or a divorce would be on the cards Im sure.....Ive got 2 sat on my desk with another on the way to go in the loft. That one should have my new 150 gig harddrive, which some how now holds 10500 mp3's...... some serious mucis taste....

Pc's - you gotta love em....

CoolS

 

[Tropi]

HARD DRIVES!
I remember the first Apple compatible HDD - it was a WHOLE ONE MEGABYTE
and it cost a whole one thousand pounds!
It was about 4 inches high and eight inches wide, but around two whole FEET in depth!
Then came the two Mega Byte model and it was two thousand quid.
I didn't buy one, needless to say!
Now we can get 250,000 Mega Bytes for under £100 - that's progress!

 

[LMP]

The Amiga (500 or 1200) was classic.

Flashback? What a godly game. And the original Grand Prix by Geoff Crammond. Now that was class. There was a game called Indy Heat which was a pile of fun aswell. Top down racing against three oponents. Pit crew were hillarious.

 

[Robert Davies]

QUOTE (SinclairZX81 @ 30 Oct 2004, 06:53)Now I type this on a astonishingly beautiful and quietly powerful dual processor Apple G5 and one of Apple's equally gorgeous new 23" aluminuium flat displays, running the coolest UNIX OS in the world... so yeah. computers are great... just not Windows ones

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Aahhh... The one true path to enlightenment

PowerBook G4 Mac OS X 10.3.5

-Rob

 

[Synth]

I had a slide rule once; does that count?

 

[McLaren]

Here's my computer:

It looks a lot better when the 52' Plasma monitor and wireless keyboard and mouse are attached...

McLaren

 

[a Bill]

I had gained access to a main frame on a secure military base back in '76 or so. First thing I did was play games on it

Back then they had a HUGE hard drive they were trying out. This thing was a stand alone machine all by itself. About 3' tall, 2' deep and 4' wide with a clear glass top and a rotating metal cylinder inside. I think they said it held ten megs of data. The rest of the computers were using tape reels. All their stuff was made by Sperry-Univac.

Of course, all of this is just from my memory. The same memory that can't remember where it left a beverage I was drinking just a moment ago

I still play with computers today. Only now I can work on computers anywhere in the world and never leave my house. Jeeze, that sounds kind of scary

When I did heavy duty gaming I always had the fastest stuff out there. Now I'm an occasional gamer and don't need high powered equipment. So my home network is only more powerful than 60% of the nation today instead of 97%

I'm actually starting to do more with less. The software tools I use will work just as well on a 3 ghz box as they do on a 400 mhz laptop so I don't bother updating as much anymore. My current desktop box is just a 2.4C Intel (800 mhz FSB) with a gig of PC3200 DDR in dual channel mode. I actually use an old PII 400 laptop to lay the smack down on the naysayers. Of course, I primarily do Unix systems administration so high powered consoles aren't needed

Good grief, you got me talking about computers. There are two subjects you never want to get me started on, cars and computers. I'll talk your ear off

 

[fouldsc]

My first was also a ZX81 with the 16k RAM Pack (used bluetac and sellotape to hold
that in).
Then a Spectrum 48k+ , Amiga 500 , Amiga 1200 (My first machine with a hard disk - 120 meg a seem to recall) , 486 DX2 66Mhz , Pentium 3 ,- 450Mhz and now - I
don't even own one.

They p!ss me off ! - I work on them all day and thats enough !

Chris

 

[Maltese]

Ha ha! I work on them all day as well, but it's a whole 'nother thing when I sit in front of the box for fun and Slotforum.

I started out programming as a hobby on a Vax, writing text-based games. I was so hooked that during the summer I wrote a 10,000 (or more) line game program by hand just itching to get back into the lab to actually run the darn thing. It ran!! And the other kids would show up to play at lunch and after school.

Then on to Apple IIe, NEC APC (CP/M 86 OS), then a DOS IBM PC with dual 512k floppies. My business programs at work ran off drive A and the data was on drive B... (Hard disk? What's that?) I started building and selling boxes and have about 3 at home now. I waterfall systems to my wife and slot racing fun.

Computers are much more powerful that most folks need. I just want my games and graphics to shock and amaze me.

-Maltese

 

[Jimster71]

I remember when our school was expecting delivery of a ZX Spectrum. A friend, myself and the computer teacher went to open it when it arrived. Set it all up and then wondered how to get those green and red words to come up. That was in primary school, we'd only had a ZX80 and a commodore pet to play on before that.

At home I went through a 16K Spectrum, 48K Spectrun, 128K Spectrum, Amiga 500, Amiga 1200 and PII 400Mhz PC, which I still use.

The PC was top spec when I got it too!

 

[dhmotorsport]

My first was a Spectum 48k too, it came free with a car my dad bought (Renault 9). Aah the good old days, Nigel Mansells Grand Prix World Championship and a fizzy pop in the spare room...( I can still remember it, rubber keys, 'A' hard left, 'S' shallow left, 'D' shallow right, 'F hard right, 'P' accel, 'L' brake, 'Space' change gear)

Now, the two things I hate the most are computers and cars. As sources of entertainment they are both fantastic fun (cars especially) but as things we need to rely on every day for work and life they are annoying tempremental nuisances that you live in fear of them going wrong and emptying your wallet.

So with that in mind, what do I do for a living, oh yeah, I travel around the country, by car, teaching people how to drive fast, in a car, then spend the rest of the time running an internet based business from home on a computer... Somethings not right here...

To make it worse, cars are now full of computers, and they are even making their way into my safe haven of slots...