Anybody Remember This?

16 years ago

HA HA..Just saw something like this recently while stumbling...it was an old ad for a drive. I remember those days all too well (giving away my age a bit now)

Thank goodness they are long gone!

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seasoned

16 years ago

Originally Posted by djbventures

HA HA..Just saw something like this recently while stumbling...it was an old ad for a drive. I remember those days all too well (giving away my age a bit now)

Thank goodness they are long gone!

What magazine did YOU subscribe to to see such ads? The largest drive I ever saw advertised when I was a kid(ok, teenager) was the corvus! It was about the size of 2 shoe boxes, and cost several thousand dollars, but I think it went up to about 20MB.

Steve

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seasoned

16 years ago

The largest 5MB diskpack I EVER worked with was an RL01! The entire DRIVE was only about 1/4 to 1/5 the size of that drive.

HERE are the specs: RL01 - pdp11.co.uk

Apparently winchester drives, AKA HARD DISK DRIVES, as we now know them, are relatively NEW! It looks like they came about around 1973! IBM Archives: 1973

Apparently the picture you showed is basically the 350

IBM Archives: IBM 350 disk storage unit

Early IBM disk storage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

IT came out in 1956!

The disks don't look like they are properly sealed, and that GREATLY limits the storage capacity. I guess that was the big 1973 revelation. The other major changes, to today, were a better head adjusting mechanism, and a better coating on the disks. That is pretty much all that has happened in the past 37 years! Of course, they HAVE reduced the size of everything, but that would have meant reducing storage too if the better positioning mechanism, and coating didn't allow tolerances to be better which meant higher capacity. And doing that would have been FOOLHARDY if things weren't protected against things like cigarette smoke particles, and dust.

BTW the first drive I got, around 1981 or so, was 5MB. It was about the size of a shoe box, but EXTERNAL!

Steve

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Kenster

16 years ago

^^^^ Thanks for making me feel young hehe!!

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seasoned

16 years ago

BTW my father gave me 2 PDP 11/23s once! PDP-11 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

He had a customer that wanted drives that were VERY hard to get, so he had to buy the whole system, and gave the customer the drives. I got the systems. They looked like they worked great, but I needed drives. 8-( I ended up leaving them behind when I last moved. 8-( It's a shame. I was thinking about maybe having a BBS, or some other case when I could have a small system or firewall connect a lot of serial devices. Of course, that wouldn't make sense today anyway. I got them in the early 1990s.

BTW the drives were floppy drives, and I DID have the OS floppies. Yeah, I know, I can hear you laughing. Well, you want to hear the REALLY funny thing? When I say floppies, I mean FLOPPIES! Most of you guys, I bet over 99% of you guys, NEVER even TOUCHED a floppy! In the 90s, and even in the 80s, they were RARE! I don't mean the 3.5" MICROfloppies! I don't mean the 5.25" MINIfloppies! NOPE, I mean the 8" FLOPPIES!

The LARGE one on the left is a floppy. The one in the center is the minifloppy that was used in computers like the IBM PC, and that MOST people called a floppy. Many asked why it was called a floppy. Get a REAL floppy, and you will see why!

Steve

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myeanne

16 years ago

whoow.. that's too big. lol!

I can't imagine having that one this modern life. haha!

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PLRwithAlex

16 years ago

Thank goodness for shrinking technology!

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PLRwithAlex

16 years ago

In my early college days I remember the 8 inch floppies! barely....

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davewebsmith

16 years ago

cleaning out my house before i moved over to the uk - i found an old ICL pc

it had 2 floppy disk drives / dos / pctools / and a minute amber and black screen all housed in the 200kg frame with a built in keyboard

so i booted it up and played a game called "alley cat" - man that screen was small and i felt like a bit of a idiot when i kept looking for the mouse

man im glad my netbook is a lightweight champion

ps it was simular looking to this image ...

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Rosin

16 years ago

lol,I remember this.
remind me of the old days in my memory from now.
time flies.these things we used to own almost are out of date today...

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JustinDupre

16 years ago

Wow! Thanks the advance technology that make our lives much easier..

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Aj Wilson

16 years ago

You'd need a pretty big pocket...

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sarahberra

16 years ago

Oh wow! I remember those days. I was a little kid. We used those types of floppy discs in grade school.

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seasoned 16 years ago

Originally Posted by sarahberra

Oh wow! I remember those days. I was a little kid. We used those types of floppy discs in grade school.

You mean the 8" floppies? Your picture makes it look like you are younger than I am. ALSO, I doubt people my age ever worked with computers in gradeschool. I first had them in the 12th grade. Now that I think about it, I THINK CSUN had 8" floppies, but I never did. I WAS going to work on a program at CSUN. But a "friend" kept erasing the disk. 8-(

Steve
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KimW

16 years ago

There were no computers in schools when I was in school. I am familiar with the 51/4 floppies but I never worked with the 8" ones.
Most people around Steve and mine age and younger are familiar with the 31/2 floppies.As those are what were being used when the real computer revolution took off. But the real breaking point for computers came when the broke the 1K price barrier.It was then that everyone and their brother had a personaly computer finally.

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seasoned

16 years ago

Originally Posted by KimW

There were no computers in schools when I was in school. I am familiar with the 51/4 floppies but I never worked with the 8" ones.
Most people around Steve and mine age and younger are familiar with the 31/2 floppies.As those are what were being used when the real computer revolution took off. But the real breaking point for computers came when the broke the 1K price barrier.It was then that everyone and their brother had a personaly computer finally.

Actually, the REAL computer revolution really started with 5.25! And THEY are the ones I remember!

The 8" didn't count because costs were so high and they were either large and EXPENSIVE, or relatively complicated and expensive. The 3.5" didn't count because the computer revolution was WELL on its way.

HECK, SOME will say that the revolution started when this STUPID company, that LAUGHED at microcomputers, used a reference kit for a crippled processor to create its first MPU based CPU system. The ONLY copyrightable part they really had was a few bytes in the ROM. Even THAT computer predates the real use of the 3.5" floppy. BTW the apple II several times went below $1000, and some workalikes to that crippled platform(AKA "IBM PC") cost less than $1000. STILL, the sweet spot was actually $2500. AND, for the longest time, the computer industry hovered around $2500. As computer parts got cheaper, the entrance level features were raised such that the price stayed more constant.

Steve

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peter_act 16 years ago

Anyone remember the airline in the photo?
(When pilots were called "Captains" and they really were)
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- seasoned 16 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by peter_act
  
  Anyone remember the airline in the photo?
  (When pilots were called "Captains" and they really were)
  
  The two I really remember that I used to be on were PANAM and TWA. BOTH are GONE!
  
  But YEAH, they had FOOD, peanuts, treated you better, etc.... I even remember a kind of bar in the top floor of a 747.
  
  Steve
  
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nigrilaforever

16 years ago

Ohhh, sweet memories. I remember my first PC. It had 512MB HDD and 8Mb RAM ))))
thanx for nostalgia

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seasoned

16 years ago

Originally Posted by nigrilaforever

Ohhh, sweet memories. I remember my first PC. It had 512MB HDD and 8Mb RAM ))))
thanx for nostalgia

Well, people, intentionally or not, lied to me, and I knew that and correct them. They would say like I have 256K memory, and I would say NO, that is DISK SPACE! How much RAM do you have?

MY first computer originally had 48K and, I believe, my first disk drive had 140K.

Steve

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nigrilaforever

16 years ago

Originally Posted by seasoned

Well, people, intentionally or not, lied to me, and I knew that and correct them. They would say like I have 256K memory, and I would say NO, that is DISK SPACE! How much RAM do you have?

MY first computer originally had 48K and, I believe, my first disk drive had 140K.

Steve

Well, I understand in computer's characteristics so bad, so I could be mistaken. But I remember that the parameters of my first computer was very low. So much so that today it is even funny to remember and compare

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seasoned

16 years ago

Originally Posted by nigrilaforever

Well, I understand in computer's characteristics so bad, so I could be mistaken. But I remember that the parameters of my first computer was very low. So much so that today it is even funny to remember and compare

NO, you were probably right, and I wasn't disputing it. Just showing how things changed in even a few years. To THINK, I was born before the first MPU! The first worthwhile MPU was on a chip perhaps 1/2" square on a 40 pin chip that was a bit bigger than an adults middle finger. And TODAY? the chips are smaller, there are HUNDREDS of "pins"(NOW they are often balls, etc...) annd the package, though about the same size, contains a LOT more.

Things keep swinging back and forth, but the old IC form factor could DISAPPEAR in a decade! It ALREADY has, for the most part, with MPUs!

Steve

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magnd

16 years ago

I would really need my entire street to pack a product of such

Really good to remember

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hockeyroom28

16 years ago

Haha I just found one of the larger (actually floppy) floppy disks, we've come a long way!

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lcombs

16 years ago

When I was in college getting my degree in computer programming, ( Not IT. ),
we studied the original Cray.
The first Cray-1™ system was installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976 for $8.8 million. It boasted a world-record speed of 160 million floating-point operations per second (160 megaflops) and an 8 megabyte (1 million word) main memory.

Email was a thing of the future and the pc was a toy coming in the future. Not to be taken seriously.

I started out with BASIC. Took 20 hours of COBOL, Assembler, RPG, Flowcharts, Systems Analysis, and other, now mostly useless crap.

Although, knowing the concepts of how things work has come in very handy.

HTML, for instance, is much easier than the original BASIC.

Everything is so much more user friendly now you hardly need any schooling at all.

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seasoned 16 years ago

Originally Posted by lcombs

HTML, for instance, is much easier than the original BASIC.

Everything is so much more user friendly now you hardly need any schooling at all.

Comparing HTML to basic is kind of silly. On a 1 to 1 basis trying to do traditional programming stuff, BASIC is EASY! HTML is IMPOSSIBLE, because basic HTML is nowhere near a computer language. Of course, they EVENTUALLY enhanced it, but I doubt it caught on. ALSO, it can't do things like write files. Of course, for graphics display/formatting HTML is better.

Steve
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JamesJeffery

16 years ago

We had the BBC computer when I was in primary school. Those used "real" floppies, and then we moved up to Acorn computers. Those are the day's I'd skip class to sit in the computer room and attempt to create the pacman game in paint (you can laugh ... but I had the same ambition back then).

I'm 26 this year. If I live to see 40, I will look back at USB pen drives as being "huge", mark my words.

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seasoned

16 years ago

Originally Posted by JamesJeffery

We had the BBC computer when I was in primary school. Those used "real" floppies, and then we moved up to Acorn computers. Those are the day's I'd skip class to sit in the computer room and attempt to create the pacman game in paint (you can laugh ... but I had the same ambition back then).

I'm 26 this year. If I live to see 40, I will look back at USB pen drives as being "huge", mark my words.

USB drives, that existed only a few years ago, are ALREADY *****GIGANTIC*****! I remember when the LARGE 256K drives came out. I thought NEAT! Well, I understand they now have MICROSDHC memory that is 32GB, and perhaps even 64GB Well, they are SO small that you could probably take TEN of them and put them in the space of that USB drive.

I truly hope they DON'T get a smaller form factor, because the micro is already pushing the limit. And imagine corporate spying! You could take like all of the company's secrets, store them, tape the drive on your pocket, or treat it as a pin, and it is likely nobody would even NOTICE!!!! BUT, of course, they COULD increase the amount of memory.

Steve

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Debbie Kennedy-Crook 16 years ago

Hi Everyone

Not only do I remember all this but I'm gona really show my age now (although I was very young when this happened!)

I remember back in the good old days of about 1978 -79 I worked for a company who supplied programmers to companies. We used to go and visit the companies to assess their needs and the first time I saw a computer it "FILLED A WHOLE ROOM!"

The room was also kept extremely cold so that it functioned properly.

It amazes me now that everthing in that room now fits into my lap top. Just incredible.

I also remember the first games console for the TV. I got one for Xmas and the whole family sat round watching 2 white lines at either side of the screen (Table Tennis Bats) hitting the white dot (ball) over the net. We just thought it was so cool!

I love it when people post these questions up. It gives you a chance to remember things you had forgotten about.

Just wicked - thanks
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Kenster

16 years ago

Wow guys, keep the comments coming. No offense, but I haven't felt so young!

The earliest I remember is the 5.25 inch floppy drive days. I dont remember any of the other specs as I was too young, but I do remember it was slow as molasses.

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seasoned

16 years ago

Originally Posted by Kenster

Wow guys, keep the comments coming. No offense, but I haven't felt so young!

The earliest I remember is the 5.25 inch floppy drive days. I dont remember any of the other specs as I was too young, but I do remember it was slow as molasses.

Well, the 5.25 came out in 1976. I didn't get my first computer until about 1979. I didn't even really start using computers until about 1978. My 8" experience was due to working with older equipment, etc... HEY, I DID use paper tape and punch cards though! 8-/

Steve

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orbero

16 years ago

and in a few years they will have hard drives that have more space than the human brain.

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malwyn 16 years ago

My god! I just cant believe it!!!
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waterotter

16 years ago

Hey seasoned, did you ever cut (notch) your floppies so you could write to both sides? Gosh I feel old and dated!!!!

)

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seasoned 16 years ago

Originally Posted by waterotter

Hey seasoned, did you ever cut (notch) your floppies so you could write to both sides? Gosh I feel old and dated!!!! )

YEP! How about you?

Steve
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- waterotter 16 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by seasoned
  
  YEP! How about you?
  
  Steve
  
  Yep! I did with every floppy I purchased. Saved money and got twice the mileage. :p
  
  Thanks
  
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