OT: Who has the oldest computer?

On 4/20/2011 8:18 PM, J. Clarke wrote:


My earliest experience in the IT field was with mainframes but granted,
I didn't know the architecture. I was just a programmer on System 36
IBM, then to the very early AS400. And not a very experienced one
before I decided it wasn't for me. Very quickly moved on to Netware,
then NT and it's successors.




As I said, we'll see how this works out. I know the govt is desperate
to cut the budget. I think they think this is the way to cut the IT
budget. And, as a contractor, we're desperate to meet their needs to
stay in business. We already know how to do it the other way, so if it
fails and we have to revert, the problem is, who pays?
 
On 2011-04-19, Krypsis wrote:


You've obviously never had to dig into a cranky Windows box. More than
once I've had to resort to that DOS emu mode on hosed w2k boxes to
deal with files that didn't respond to Windows gui file mgr.

I will admit XP keeps surprising me w/ its robustness, but then it
turns right around and shows its true M$ heritage. My mom's Vaio w/
XP and tons of Sony crapware is getting more squirrely every day. Was
so froze up this morning, hadda unplug and replug it to cold reboot.
Some things about Windows never change.

nb
 
On 4/18/2011 10:06 AM, Roy wrote:
Our first home computer was a TRS-80 Model II, which used a cassette
tape recorder. (No, that's wrong, we had a Sinclair before the TRS!) We
had a lot of "fun" putting together several different control boxes to
maintain a steady signal but, OH the great day, when we managed to
afford two 5 inch floppies and could use Scripsit for word processing
and a Pascal compiler.

I've had a quite a few computers since but have only kept the replaced
model for about a year.

--


James Silverton, Potomac

I'm "not"
[email protected]
 
In article , [email protected]d
says...

Nobody ever claimed that XP was "brand spanking new". XP is NT 5.1. NT
was "brand spanking new" in 1993, however you probably never even saw
the box it came in--the Microsoft consumer OS at the time was Windows
3.1.

If you want to claim that XP has a lot of NT 3.1 code in it you'll be on
pretty firm ground. But to claim that it has DOS under it is a
different story. There is simply no reason for anybody familiar with
the history of NT to believe that.


Answer me this. Having developed NT on hardware that was incapable of
running DOS, specifically so as to avoid _any_ legacy code creeping into
the system, and having run a parallel development stream for most of a
decade to slowly wean developers away from DOS, why would Microsoft then
rewrite major portions of the OS to put DOS back into it? And if NT
runs on top of DOS, then how does it run on the Itanium, which never,
EVER ran DOS?
 
On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 03:08:31 +0000 (UTC), Nad R
wrote:


A calculator IS a computer. The very first electronic computer(s) did
only mathematical calculations, as did all previous mechanical
calculators including cash registers... today's most modern, most
powerful scientific computers only calculate numbers. The early
mechanical adding machines used by bookkeeppers/accountants were
called calculators. A slide rule is definitely a computer, as is an
abacus... I do have a small cheapo abacus somewhere, forgot about
that. Throughout history there have been all manner of counting
devices, variously sized pebbles, beads on strings, even beans... you
have herd the term "bean counter". An ordinary mechanical weighing
scale is a computer. There was no internet until Al Gore came along.
 
On Wed, 20 Apr 2011 21:29:00 -0400, Cheryl
wrote:


"The [federal] government" is not a monolith. And it is *huge*.

There is no "they think" where the federal government is concerned.

-- Larry
 
On Sun, 17 Apr 2011 12:00:48 -0800, Mark Thorson wrote:


Why don't you say what you're running, then?

According to your headers, your Netscape seems to think you're
ruinning NT. And I've never seen it lie.

X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.6 [en] (WinNT; I)

You're just paranoid and don't want to tell people what you run
because you're afraid of getting hacked. Which *is* quite "out
there", IMO.

-sw
 
On Sun, 17 Apr 2011 21:03:23 -0700, "Paul M. Cook" wrote:


I've a 386-40, 486-33, and a P100, the 386-40's ram was $243.00 for four gigs
(bought the 386 new for $1744.00). The 486-33 has the biggest HD available
which was bought from office depot on their grand opening 500meg. WD for
$395.00. The P100 is original, I'm not sure what it's specs are right now.
 
On 4/19/2011 4:16 PM, Cheryl wrote:

If it makes you feel any better, none of this stuff is in the right
place anyway. It does make me smile to hear folks ranting about the
cloud and the evil Government since it seems that you are the Government.

Fess up. Are you looking to mean us any harm? :-)
 
On Sun, 17 Apr 2011 15:33:57 -0400, [email protected] wrote:


But what are you using to post to RFC and your every day computer, I
think is the question here.

I have a 8" floppy drive where you change sectors and tracks manually
using knobs on the front of the case. Is that "hard sectored"?

-sw
 
In article ,
[email protected] says...

Ahh, Televideo. I never had the portable, but I did have one of their
286 desktops that I ran Unix on (little known fact--AT&T System V
release 2 was ported to the 80286, even had a provision to run a single
DOS session). Alas the one I had was the more compact of the two
desktop models and they did something to it that broke compatibility
when a large memory board was installed--the large desktop worked fine.
However I called Micron, from whom I had bought the board, and they told
me that they had a similar machine in-house and a copy of the version of
Unix I was trying to run, so one of their engineers worked the problem
and hand-tweaked the board until it ran. Try to get _that_ kind of
service from a PC peripheral manufacturer these days.

I used to have a hand-written note from the CEO of Micron apologizing
for my inconvenience.

That's why given a choice I always by Micron RAM.
 
On Sun, 17 Apr 2011 23:17:39 -0500, Sqwertz
wrote:


Or my Coleco ADAM that I just took to the E-recyclers a couple of
weeks ago? Still had the invoice. Hard to believe that I paid (CND)
$1,006.00 for it back in '83.

Ross.
 
On 4/19/2011 4:24 PM, Andy wrote:

Don't forget iOS4.x.

I'm seriously considering getting a iPhone 4 or 5. A year ago I would
have thought this to be impossible. Now I know that these truly must be
the end of days...
 
On 21/04/2011 12:07 PM, [email protected] wrote:
There is a certain arescovering 'tude amongst the uncivil servants which
transcends time and space , nothing in the public interest can and will
ever alter the self centered group self serving bureaucracy does
anything for self preservation

--
X-No-Archive: Yes
 
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