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Vintage Computers Any vintage computer systems, calculators, video games etc., but with an emphasis on 1980s and earlier equipment.

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Old 15th Jul 2009, 8:34 pm   #1
Electricdreams
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Default Your Favourite Computer?

I have various vintage computers which I admire for their abilities, the Epson HX-20, BBC Model B, Acorn A3000, IBM XT and AT, Dragon 64..

But my Favourite has to be the Original Macintosh. I remember my father bringing one home from University and the games we played on it. One was Shufflepuck and the most interesting software was Macintalk.

This was back in mid 80s, later on in the late 90s I brought up the memories of the Macintosh with my father and he managed to save me a Macintosh Plus from a clear out that the University was having, since then it's proved to be an amazing technology to many people that used it. (Even Mac-haters!)

I upgraded from 20mb SCSI HDD to a 600mb and it runs a lot faster with ease.

I daren't upgrade the memory to 4mb for fear it may overheat!

What's your favourite?
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Old 15th Jul 2009, 9:07 pm   #2
G8HQP Dave
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Default Re: Your Favourite Computer?

It was owned by my employer rather than me, but my favourite computer is the PDP-11 - specifically the 11/73. I also used 11/40, 11/34, 11/44, 11/70, 11/03. It has a nice clean reasonably orthogonal instruction set, and no Microsoft software!
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Old 15th Jul 2009, 9:58 pm   #3
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Default Re: Your Favourite Computer?

.... and ran a damn sight faster for what it was meant to do!
/34 was my favourite, but I was always amused by the description that it 'only occupied 10 1/2" of rack'. The fact that it went back nearly 3 feet and took two strong people to get it to the floor was skated over. Then there were the 8" floppies, RK05s (a whole 2.5M), RL01 and 2s ....
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Old 16th Jul 2009, 8:09 pm   #4
G8HQP Dave
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Default Re: Your Favourite Computer?

Ah yes, the RK05. The first PDP I used was an 11/40, with 64K of memory, and lots of disc space - two removable RK05s, and a fixed drive which pretended to be two RK05 (I forget what it was called) so 10M of disc in total. This was in 1978, at CEGB headquarters in the shadow of St. Pauls in London, developing control software for power stations. We each had to book a 2-hour slot up to a week ahead, so we made sure our software was as good as it could be before trying to compile it.

Later on, we had terminals on our desks connected to an 11/70. Our software development was faster, but I think the quality went down!
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Old 16th Jul 2009, 8:53 pm   #5
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Default Re: Your Favourite Computer?

Hi all.my favorite computer has to be the BBC micro....why?
Because it was my first computer....i learned basic and assembly programming on it and also because i highly modded it with all sorts of indicator leds and interfaces.....if it wasnt for that machine,i doubt i would have had the interest to study electronic engineering.
The machine was so easy to get to grips with and every single part was well documented.
I still have the machine and it still works...the only work that its ever needed is the replacement of the psu caps and a memory chip that went s/c through my own fault!

I never did get a 2nd processor for it or a GPIB interface...any one have one??
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Old 16th Jul 2009, 8:56 pm   #6
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Default Re: Your Favourite Computer?

Mine's the Tandem NonStop ( now owned by HP ) fault-tolerant machines of the early eighties. Up to 16 processors, each with up to 2Mb of RAM. Mirrored, dual ported, discs the size of washing machines, that were a massive 300Mb! It Ran the "Guardian" OS. Open reel vacuum tube tapes 800 or 1600 BPI. Ran off 3 phase supply

A two processor, entry level system cost £250,000!

happy days!

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Old 16th Jul 2009, 9:25 pm   #7
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Default Re: Your Favourite Computer?

For me the Amiga 500 released in 1987 for about £360 had a MC-68000 CPU, but this along with 4 custom chips (Agnus, Denise, Paula, Gary) Agnus being upgraded to Fat Agnus in later versions, was the first 16bit I owned
Kickstart Rom and Workbench operating system
I loved the way the Disk drive made a Waar Waar noise as it fired up some amazing game like 'Feud' or 3D Chess and with programming tools like AMOS, I was hooked You could add a hard drive by slotting in a unit and a CD player, so high tech for 20 years ago..
Mmm a trip to the loft I think! see if it fires up still...
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Old 17th Jul 2009, 8:07 am   #8
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Default Re: Your Favourite Computer?

Favourite Computer? - isn't that what they call an oxymoron?
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Old 18th Jul 2009, 1:06 am   #9
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Default Re: Your Favourite Computer?

Always a tough call for me.

I always end up stuck between Amiga A1200 (With a Blizzard 1250 accelerator card and 32Mb of memory as I recall). One drawback I always had was that I never managed to get hold of a decent monitor for that machine. That and it's never ending appetite for power supplies before I figured out how to hack together an adaptor to use a PC one!

And an Acorn A3000. It was a very different beast to the Amiga...but always seemed just "right" somehow. Plus it never crashed, and had a fantastic keyboard - something I'm always very, very picky about!

Though there's one which has to come in above those two - because it was my first real computer. An old Toshiba T5200 portable. Yes, it runs Windows 3.1 rathter than a more "interesting" OS - but it's just such a fantastic bit of equipment. One of those things which manages to feel expensive, reminding us of an age when computers WERE built well. It also has in my opinion a very good keyboard, and while the plasma display might not be to everyone's taste - the definition and contrast is fantastic - and I find it's a lot easier on the eyes than many other technologies. One of these now graces the other desk in here, and is used as my weapon of choice for writing.

So yes...Toshiba T5200 comes in at top of my list.

I've attached a couple of photos, showing it next to a modern "Netbook" - giving a bit of a sense of how things have shrunk since the early 90s!
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Old 23rd Jul 2009, 5:08 pm   #10
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Default Re: Your Favourite Computer?

The latest computer in my collection has become my favourite: the Commodore CBM 8032. I like all the PET computers, especially the original 2001 (not to mention I also LOVE the movie 2001: a space odyssey!) with the built-in cassette deck!

The PET/CBM series look absolutely great and they give the feeling of built quality. All the PETs look very adorable with their built-in green-black CRTs.

Best combination is achieved by connecting a CBM double floppy disk drive (huge!).

Attached is a photo of my CBM 8032 computer and CBM 8050 disk drive. These are both of the "business" series (80 column screen and 0,5 Mb per floppy).
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Old 23rd Jul 2009, 11:25 pm   #11
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Default Re: Your Favourite Computer?

Favourite? An abacus – only joking!

Probably the Nascom2, it had – if I remember - an 8080 CPU. I built one for our lab back in the 70’s using a modified B&W portable TV for the monitor and a cassette recorder to store the programmes. I learned Hex and Basic on this machine but it was mainly used for developing and programming Eproms used in our products. I remember 1k Eproms coming onto the market – so much memory to play with back then! I have a ZX81 and a couple of BBCs somewhere.
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Old 24th Jul 2009, 6:36 am   #12
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Default Re: Your Favourite Computer?

Quote:
Originally Posted by theoldtrout View Post
.....
Probably the Nascom2, it had – if I remember - an 8080 CPU. I built one for our lab back in the 70’s using a modified B&W portable TV for the monitor and a cassette recorder to store the programmes.....
The Nascom 2 used a Z80 CPU. This was Zilog's enhanced version of the 8080. I used one in about 1979 as a development tool in the early stages of what became the Cox T series vision mixers. I remember the tedious cassette recorder for program storage. Definitely not favourite.
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Old 24th Jul 2009, 6:44 am   #13
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Default Re: Your Favourite Computer?

Quote:
Originally Posted by theoldtrout View Post
Favourite? An abacus – only joking!
I remember 1k Eproms coming onto the market – so much memory to play with back then! I have a ZX81 and a couple of BBCs somewhere.
1K was plenty when you had to enter your code hex manually on a primitive EPROM blaster
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Old 24th Jul 2009, 9:38 am   #14
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Default Re: Your Favourite Computer?

I think it has to be the Elliott 803.

This was the first computer I met in the flesh and was a remarkable machine, and a great lesson in efficient programming since the average instruction rate was under 0.002 MIPS and total system memory of 8K words. In spite of that the work we got though it was not noticeably much less than is often achieved by modern PCs running a hundred billion times faster!

Its best feature was it made a noise. The top bit of the current instruction clicked a loudspeaker, with 0 for most fixed point operations and 1 for branches and more complex instructions, with a maximum speed that was not quite ultrasonic it meant that you could hear your program run! It made a wonderful low-pitch warbling noise except when in tight loops and this was a great diagnostic aid, as well as being deliberately used to make sounds of course. (You sometimes hear something similar as background noise on old feature films depicting computers).
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Old 20th Aug 2009, 11:15 am   #15
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Default Re: Your Favourite Computer?

Quote:
Originally Posted by HOUNDMAGNET View Post
Hi all.my favorite computer has to be the BBC micro....why?
Because it was my first computer....i learned basic and assembly programming on it and also because i highly modded it with all sorts of indicator leds and interfaces.....if it wasnt for that machine,i doubt i would have had the interest to study electronic engineering.
The machine was so easy to get to grips with and every single part was well documented.
I still have the machine and it still works...the only work that its ever needed is the replacement of the psu caps and a memory chip that went s/c through my own fault!

I never did get a 2nd processor for it or a GPIB interface...any one have one??
Gosh the old BBC!
I've got a couple of these lurking in the garage somewhere..

Ours had a Z80 and the 6502 Second Processors... IIRC the 6502 was used for the enhanced version of Elite we had..
Used to play that for ages after I finally managed to kick my brothers off it...
Also had the double disk drives and a dedicated (Microvetec Cub) monitor.

Julie
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Old 20th Aug 2009, 12:48 pm   #16
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Default Re: Your Favourite Computer?

For me it has to be the MicroVAX II, the first fully functional general purpose 32 bit minicomputer to fit into what we now consider a standard 19" rack server form factor.

It was rated at 0.9 MIPS, making it almost as fast as the original 1977 VAX 11/780 which was a huge machine taking up 2 or 3 5' high 19" racks and requiring 3 phase power and a lot of cooling. It used enormous external 'washing machine' disk drives.

At one time in the late 80s MV2s were absolutely everywhere. I still hang onto one for data conversion purposes but it doesn't see a lot of use now.

The MicroVAX I from 1984 was in the same form factor, but wasn't really a usable product with limited memory, poor floating point support and no TOY clock.

Paul
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Old 20th Aug 2009, 1:21 pm   #17
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Default Re: Your Favourite Computer?

Quote:
Originally Posted by paulsherwin View Post
.....the original 1977 VAX 11/780.....
That takes me back! I remember the Computer Manager at work in the late 70s proudly telling me that they were upgrading their unit's memory to a whopping 4 megabytes, which he reckoned would make it pretty well futureproof.
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Old 20th Aug 2009, 4:55 pm   #18
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Default Re: Your Favourite Computer?

Commodore C64. I learnt machine code (Assembler) on it. Ever so easy.
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Old 21st Aug 2009, 2:23 pm   #19
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Default Re: Your Favourite Computer?

Acorn Electron - with a Plus 1 and a Plus 3 (never did discover what a Plus 2 was) - it was our first family computer and the kids had great fun with it (and learned a lot) - I built a 2nd processor for it - the bare board plugged into the Plus 1 - it did make things go alot faster (almost as fast as a BBC B!)
When I had almost achieved BBC compatibility, I cheated and bought a 2nd hand BBC B - and, like Julie, got a 6502 2nd processor which made Elite fly! I really enjoyed that game - nothing has come close since (not that I play a lot of games nowadays). Had a Master after that - not as much fun, but ok - then moved onto the old 8086 based PC (ARC) - definitely not as much fun!!
Cheers
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Old 21st Aug 2009, 4:49 pm   #20
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Default Re: Your Favourite Computer?

Would have to be a Commodore 64 for me, first was a Sinclair Spectrum but it kept breaking nearly monthly and the Commodore was a reliable replacement. Recently got hold of a Commodore SX-64 which is the "portable" C64 but sadly without the keyboard.
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