Seagate 3.5" 60TB SSD !

[8_1_Van]

I remember having a 30MB full height 5.25" HDD in my IBM AT PC back in the 80's.

[RLS7201]

MrWizard wrote:
in order of purchase

sinclair

commodore VIC-20 ?

commodore C-64

Amiga 1000, and then added external 2MB memory

Used that for many years before switching to a windows PC
used DOS and windows at work, for interfacing with PLC machine controllers

WOW! You was one step ahead of me.

Started with Timex Sinclair 1000. Pre-assembled. 16k module.

Vic-20, MPI memory extension board. +24k

C-64, PET 1meg floppy drive.

Run, Commodore North User Group's BBS on a SX-64 lug along. (Gladstone, MO)

IBM 286 clone

etc.

Richard

[ramgunner]

My first was an Atari 400 with flat membrane keyboard and 16K of RAM.

I started teaching myself basic and decided to write a spreadsheet/DB/word processor.

It eventually hurt my fingers typing on the membrane keyboard. Replaced it with an aftermarket Inhome Software B Keyboard.

Hit the 16K limit before program was done. Bought a 48K RAM module which required soldering some jumpers on the motherboard.

Finished the program, and enjoyed. Wanted to get a floppy drive but parents couldn't afford it so used a 410 (crappy) tape drive, and upgraded to a 1010 (much improved) one. Had a 300 bps modem, and eventually a 1020 color plotter/printer which used narrow rolls of paper and 4 tiny pens. Eventually got a 1050 floppy drive, then eventually a couple of Indus GT units that were much faster and more capable. All of these plugged into the SIO port on the Atari. The guy that invented that tech used it as the basis to start the USB spec we all use today.

Got an ATR-8000 which had an Z-80 processor and ran CPM and plugged into the Atari to allow it to use any HDD, RS-232 devices, centronics-interface printers, and floppy drives.

Hooked up a Panasonic KX-P1180i dot-matrix printer that I bought when a local computer store placed a bulk order and got them dirt cheap. Later got a Panasonic laser printer when they did the same thing with them.

Got a Seagate ST-225 20 megabyte HDD from a guy I knew who worked for a repair shop. Some guy had the HDD repaired and never picked it up or paid for the repair. Cost me something around $150 I think. It could hold every program ever written for the Atari (including cartridge-based programs) and still have something like 18 megabytes left.

Upgraded to an Atari 130XE. It had 128K of memory. Got an ICD MIO board that gave it 512K of RAMdisk (which I later upgraded to 1 megabyte), and a standard HDD interface (MFM or RLL), as well as RS-232 and Centronics printer ports. Had light pens, light and sound sensors, a full-page scanner which worked by attaching to the head of a regular printer and moved back and forth across a page while line-feeding it up, and a Morse code decoder/encoder that I built from plans in Antic magazine. It worked best if you had a PLL filter, and could decode up to something like 40WPM. It connected to two of the 4 joystick ports, which on the Atari were both input and output devices.

Eventually sold all of that and used the money to buy a clone 286 with 40 megabytes of HDD space, a bunch of other stuff for it, and an Intel SatisFAXtion board which I used to turn into a career with Intel for a few years.

It's fun looking back.

[MrWizard]

in order of purchase

sinclair

commodore VIC-20 ?

commodore C-64

Amiga 1000, and then added external 2MB memory

Used that for many years before switching to a windows PC
used DOS and windows at work, for interfacing with PLC machine controllers

[Chris_Bryant]

[SCVJeff]

JoeTampa wrote:

MrWizard wrote:
my first computer was a Sinclair kit, i put together ,it had 1kb of ram, and used audio cassetts for program storage
i did a hardware hack found in "micro computer" magazine to double the ram to 2kb
drove 60 miles one way to get the parts,

That was my first computer at home. My dad wouldn't buy the 16K RAM module for it because it was too expensive ($150!).

I also used Commodore PET computers in school...

Ditto, but I had the expansion module (sure dont remember it was $150... yikes)

#2 was a Commodore 64

[rk911]

TRS-80 Model I....4k RAM, 2-string variables, 5.25 single density floppy disk, tape loaded applications, spontaneous re-boots. despite all that it was magical and I was hooked.

TRS-80 Models 3, 2, 4 and 4p followed and then my first 286 machine with MS-DOS, then onto Windows...3, 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, (2000 at work), XP and now 7. been quite the ride.

[Big_Katuna]

Yes it's amazing. I worked for a company called Maynard Electronics.
We sold a 10MB kit with a controller and cables for $1895.

Had a hard time keeping up.

Early 80s for IBM PCs.

[JoeTampa]

MrWizard wrote:
my first computer was a Sinclair kit, i put together ,it had 1kb of ram, and used audio cassetts for program storage
i did a hardware hack found in "micro computer" magazine to double the ram to 2kb
drove 60 miles one way to get the parts,

That was my first computer at home. My dad wouldn't buy the 16K RAM module for it because it was too expensive ($150!).

I also used Commodore PET computers in school...

[MrWizard]

my first computer was a Sinclair kit, i put together ,it had 1kb of ram, and used audio cassetts for program storage
i did a hardware hack found in "micro computer" magazine to double the ram to 2kb
drove 60 miles one way to get the parts,

[Fizz]

Yup, I remember saying 'Why would you want a 30 Meg drive'
Yesterday I videoed a waterbomber skimming the lake.
25 seconds = 60 Megs

[Chris_Bryant]

My first computer had 256 bytes of memory- yes, bytes. Now they advertise using only 17 of these for a petabyte of storage.

( First was a Cosmac Elf II , second had 64k memory with 5 1/4" 115k discs).

[Second_Chance]

Yeah... in graduate school in the '80s, I had a clone shop put new PC together for me. I asked for a 40MB hard drive and they guy exclaimed, "Good God! What do you need all that space for?" I explained that I was starting to play around with a half-page hand scanner and that some of the files were 3 and 4 KB big. My dad, who had worked on the Apollo project, came to visit. When he saw the PC, he said, "What's that?" When I explained that it had 1MB of RAM and a 40MB hard drive, he thought a moment and replied that this was hundreds of times more computing power than they had in the command module. Of course, my first time through college, PCs hadn't been thought of and I didn't even have an electric typewriter...

Rob