Look back in Ascii: Computing in the 1980s

Call that a Pet?

A real Pet had awful square, flat buttons :-) A load were stolen one night from our illustrious educational establihment. They were dumped back on the front steps a few days later - the thieves obviously took pity on us!

Eagle Computers?

Their first IBM compatible was also launched in 1982 although they had been producing pre-DOS personal computers for years before that. They were built like brick sh*thouses thanks to their multimedia pedigree. They had to survive being thrown into vans and planes on a daily basis.

Right now I weep

Here I am sat at my desk doing my IT support stuff for a big, nay huge multinational IT firm. Slowly a tear is rolling down my cheek, as I look back to the golden 80's.

In 1989 I start as an operator of several machines

1. as400 (the size of a supermarket)

2. system 36

3. hp (various)

4. SYFA - (truly my fave machine)

As well as varoius essential line printers.

But then the IBM PC clone came along and we all played golf!

TRS80's

In the very early 80's my wife's PhD theses was written in Scripsit on a TRS80 model 1 (with expansion box).

The expensive bits were the floppy disks! 84kB (I seem to remember) a time - which subsequently got updated to double density through a US-sourced "doubler" board that had a different controller on it....

Relocating the RAM (on bigger, 64kb chips that weren't available when the machine was on the market) to the keyboard greatly improved reliability as like others of the era, your whole document was in memory!

Scripsit got hacked to make it do all sorts of things that more modern printers could support - like addressing individual pins which we used to print Greek letters!

After the thesis, it got used to produce - both analysing the data and writing up - what has become quite a seminal paper in its field that's still findable on the Web as a scanned image of the (new printer ribbon!) dot matrix printout produced by the TRS. Someone even wanted a copy of the (compiled Basic) program I used for the analysis which made me rather chuffed..

One of the things that set the TRS80 apart was the fact it had a decent Cherry keyboard - that taught me to touch-type although the keyboard unit needed a wrist rest as it was thick...

Happy memories - I think its still in the loft!

So, thirty-five years ago...

(My word, has it been that long?) I started playing with 8060 and Z80 from Sinclair, 6502 from Tangerine, and 8080/85 from some surplus CP/M place.

And now I'm working for one of the guys who worked on the Spectrum developing Z80 code.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

Getting a bit emotional here whilst remembering....

Kicked off with a ZX81, when I started college in 81/82 then worked my way thoughvarious Spectrums, and then a QL before buying a Zenith 8086 cheap from Morgans - expanded the memory by buying and inserting DIL chips. None of this ram strip nonsense then. Soon learnt that in 88/89 Pcs werent much fun and bought an Amiga 600. Bought my first hard disk for the Amiga £250 for a 2.5" 60MB.

Bought an psion LZ64 second hand back in the late 80s, then upgraded to series 3, then 5MX.

Sold the Amiga and bought another PC in about 94. added soundblaster CD and sound card and a modem.

Best memories are

1. Getting a Token ring network and novell server (2.0a) at work in a tea-chest (had been stripped out of offices and rescued from skip!) I then figured out how to put it all together and network the PCs, and setup email in the room. I worked for Employment training in those days and we had barely any money for kit. at the time email seemed magical!

2. Setting up a headless linux based box as an Mp3 player attached to my stereo system back in the late 90s - had an LCD screen and IR remote, and I could put my CDs in the loft. Everyone thought I was mad. Also networked my first house at the same time.

3. My Psion 5MX was awesome. I bought the Ericsson SH888 phone with the modem. In 2000 I was uploading photos and reports using the setup whilst cycling the End to End. Near John o Groats met up with a party of school kids doing the same. they were using a laptop the size of a small suitcase and a digital camera with a 3.5" floppy disk drive and had to grovel a loan of a power socket and the youth hostel's phone line. I took the CF card out my camera, stuck it in my psion, and uploaded the photos over the mobile to my website completely wirelessly - The kids were amazed. It was a proper compute anywhere connected device.

I agree with @james51 - The N900 is great, but the 5MX was a legend - still have 2 and ne is one my desk in front of me. would love an updated one with wifi/bluetooth.

Been an exciting ride over the last 30 years - The next 30 should be a fun ride

Exidy Sorcerer

I had a Sorcerer here in Canada for a year or two. I extended it with a huge external box with space for a pair of 8 inch floppy drives. I was always amused by the expansion slot devices, which were in 8-track tape cartridges. I remember a truly impressive Dr Who game that used the programmable character set to do a full-3D flying-through-space game, a bit like asteroids. No native sound output, however - I had an external one that did off/on via a pin on the parallel port.

Proper keyboard, upper and lower case, able to hook up floppy disks - excellent!

But, what is that switch in the middle of the bottom of the front? Mine didn't have one of those.

TRS-80 Model III

I first programmed on an IBM 704. It had vacuum tubes. But the first computer I took home was a TRS-80 Model III. It was either that, or an Apple II. And the TRS already had a monitor, and didn't need a silly add-on for capital letters. The cassette tape storage was miserable, but it worked, and eventually bought a Model IV and switched over to floppies. Novels were written on those computers. They're still with me, having been ported to CP-M and then MS-DOS.

The most miserable part about the Model III was that you could not trust it to save your files if you had more than 32k of memory. Radio Shack wouldn't believe us. We eventually cut the memory from 48k to 32k, and it behaved just fine after that.

Agenda/Microwriting

I used the both the original Microwriter (with single line red LED display) and its follow up with an LCD display. I have never been able to type as fast, as I could with those machines. I am still not a fast QWERTY user and reckon i could still type faster today using a Microwriter keypad. Sitting here now, I think i can remember at least 80% of the Microwriter chord alphabet; this, nearly 30 years after i last used one; once learned, never forgotten.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, someone do an iOS/Android version, it could sit as an overlay on any text entry panel, maybe even pimp up my 'Magic Trackpad'; THAT would rock my world...

Too bad

I did not save any of those early computers like Apple II, Pet, ABC 80 and the Sinclair’s Z88.

The ABC should have been mentioned, perhaps.

Seeing the Sinclair’s Z88 I wanted one right away, but then I think it was the most annoying "computer" I have ever used, terrible quit frankly, even if I liked the rubber keys.

I still think that Visicalc the first spread sheet program ever, and originally made for the Apple II+,

was the first and only software that has really surprised me. That was something really new and surprising. As far as I remember Visicalc tried to patent it but their lawyer told them not to.

In those days patenting things was not as easy as to day. What a disgusting mess it has become since then.

Seeing green

"Modems

It wasn’t long after the Mac was installed that I was hooking up my first modem and watching the glowing green characters coming up on-screen almost as fast as I could read them."

Glowing GREEN characters on a Mac screen? IIRC, they didn't do colour until late in the 1980's; except with "hacks". Perhaps Chris had one of those fancy screen filters.

Frontios

Sorry Christopher, if you're reading I need to talk Doctor Who for just a second. I'd just like to say Frontios is one of my absolute favourite Doctor Who stories, the whole thing was great from start to finish.

I'd love to see the Tractators revisited in the new series, I'm sure with CGI they could do justice to them curling up into a ball like a pillbug. That said, the recent Silurian story borrowed very heavily from Frontios with people being sucked into the ground which is a bit of a shame.

Epson PX-8

My first non-toy machine was an Epson PX-8 CP/M laptop, which had two auxiliary processors as well as the main Z80, and another Z80 in the bolt-on wedge-shaped 120K RamDisk that fitted nicely under the machine. The build quality was wonderful, the keyboard was good and solid, and it even had a pull-out carry handle. Unfortunately, the screen was only 8 lines (of 8 columns). I can't remember what the battery life was.

I knew a few other users of these; the only one who didn't have difficulty soldering the mini-DIN 8-pin serial connectors was a surgeon who specialized in re-connecting nerves in childrens' hands.

Ooh memories

Started with a zx81 saved from paper round and bought 2nd hand just as everyone started to save for the Spectrum.

Built a joystick adapter to take the Atari vcs joystick which was directly soldered to the keyboard header in the zx81. Sold quite a few of these to friends and family.

Used to visit my schoolmate John and his dad Dave Looker who wrote Zuckman and Frogger for the zx81. They continued into spectrum, Dragon32, and cpc464 games and never looked back.

Moved on to the Texas Ti99/4a whilst the schools had BBC and Econet with Wordwise for the word processor on Rom chips.

The college had Atari ST before the OS was on ROM. Upgraded a few months later.

Started work in 1986 on Sperry (unisys) and Tandem and ended up on ICL, IBM and AS400 gear.

Moved over to Novell in 92 when Ethernet cards were £1000 quid each. Windows NT in 1998.

Now it's all AD, GPO and not so much fun. Can't wait to get a Raspberry PI.

TSR80-100

I had one of these when I was at college to take notes on, a great little earner as I, being a touch typist, could take all the lecture notes and the rest of the students paid for copies, great weekend drink fund :)

The Microwriter Agenda, reminds me of a device we had for my fellow blind students, which had keys arranged in the same way, for them to key in notes on, much better than trying to lug a Braille embossers around.