Off Topic Discussions

[Axxemann]

BEHOLD! JayzTwoCents presents... the COMMODORE 64!!!!!!!

[orbitech]

Hello, Axxemann,

Although I did not have one myself, one of my friends had one. I had the ZX Spectrum. I remember them well, and in fact have several working systems, which I still to this day mess about with. Retro, Old school systems, is what I collect and if anyone has one I will want to buy it, it has to be fully working, and in original condition though, no modifications, added memory, etc. Cool!

[Axxemann]

I didn't have a C64 growing up as a kid. I think when I was 8 or so we got a Vic20 with the cassette tape drive from my Opa. I think the first real PC we had was a 386 when I was about 12.

[rdenmon]

Not THAT OLD!

[Vynski]

OHHHH yes.  The C64 with a 1541 5.25" FDD.  

Do you remember the 8" FDD?

I remember a comment that my college advisor made to me, probably before 1983, when the IBM machines the university used had a 10MB HDD.  His comment: "Why would anyone ever need more than 10 MB of storage".  

Well @Axxemann  I did have two of them along with a C128 and a C128D.  The C64's  I sold about 1987 and both 128's I just sold about 2 years ago, well my sister-in-law sold them for me on Ebay.  Everyone wants to overclock their machines these days.  Well it was no different back then, but the tape drives and FDD is where you had to do the overclocking and make them run faster or at least retrieve data faster.  The FDD I had to solder a switch to increase the speed of the drive and also hacked the drivers where I could access read only tracks and sectors to enable me to write to them, (that's where the protection algorithms were stored, CHECKSUMS) .  

Man, why did you do this to me.  Those were the days! lol in caps LOL.

My wife always enjoyed the Olympics games, ski jumps, figure skating, etc.

[Axxemann]

Don't blame me for the nostalgia bomb, @Vynski, BLAME JAY!

We got a Vic 20 from my Opa when I was about 8 or so. It had a cassette drive. I think he liberated it from his job with the Alberta Government when they were upgrading their stuff to 386s in the late 1980s I think it would have been 1987 or 1988, IIRC, since Opa retired in 1989. One of his coworkers made some copies of a bunch of games that he had (Dam Busters was my favorite) on blank cassettes and sent them along. 

We got our 386 at Xmas in 1991. And we got the P133 at Xmas in 1996. I upgraded that one to a P233MMX and added a 3DFX VooDoo to it in 1998 or 99. The permanent switch for me to AMD came around 2001 or 02, IIRC. I think it was a K-6II or a K-6III that I bought as a prebuilt at the time, added an ATI XPert@Play GPU to before moving on to the Athlon in 2004.

[Vynski]

I guess we could blame Jay for a lot of things.  OK😀

[Axxemann]

Yep. Like my brain tripping over itself to remember all the PC components that cycled through my various PCs going back 20+ years. I honestly wish I would have kept some of that stuff, but then I would have been accused of being a hoarder.

[Vynski]

No, my wife is a hoarder.  She has over 16 sewing machines.  One, a 1928 electric Singer in running condition.  She also has my mothers old treadle Singer and I was going to rebuild the cabinet on it, but she could not find a part that it needed to restore it.  So it would only be for show if I went to the trouble.  I would still like to do it.

[Axxemann]

16 sewing machines? As long as everything is clean, organized and well maintained, I'd call that a COLLECTION, especially if some of them are display worthy. It's an odd collection, but a neat one. If there was all manner of other junk burying them, that's hoarding.

[Vynski]

Well she didn't have to buy that 1928 electric singer, only pay for the cost to have it cleaned and tuned.  Our brother-in-law is a superior auto mechanic and some guy was hauling it to the dump.  He saw it in the trailer and commented that he knew someone that might like to have it, so the guy just gave it to him.  When we went to get it, we found that it was actually in pretty good shape and bought it home.  My wife is still learning how to use this newest embroidery machine.  Just recently she was able to, get this; scan an image and digitize the sewing pattern.  Now the machine does all this but she was finally able to get it to work.  It is truly a computer with a sewing needle.

[rdenmon]

Since you have a hoarder in the house- watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-84KgkLyMw

[Vynski]

Thanks for the laugh.  I loved it.

[joebangles]

The "why would anyone ever need more than 10 MB of storage" quote was supposed to be from TJ Watson, an early pioneer at IBM.

IBM used to have "MAINFRAME" computers (IBM 370) that would progress through an "initial Micro Program Load" (IMPL) stage which was from one of the 8" Floppy disk drives.. essentially loading a micro program that allowed it to "Initial program load" (IPL) or "boot up" from the hard drives.

If you think that's ancient, I once read a checklist for an IBM 1620 computer -- how to load and run various Fortran Compiler stages from punched card decks. It went something like:
1. load in the 1st pass compiler deck; read then run

2. load in your object deck (i.e. your program on punched cards). press read

3. load in the 2nd pass compiler deck; read then run

4. press print for output

(this is actually an oversimplification)

I had roomies with a C128 -- two brothers were splitting the rent on a room and they could afford one!

[Vynski]

Been there and done that.  Sometimes it took hours.

Do you know when and where, I guess computers were used successfully?

You have to go back to about 1940 - 41.  Computers were the very reason the Bismark was the terror of the Atlantic.  The range finding was calculated after the first volley and the second usually found its mark.  I'm not talking 1 or 2 miles more like 15 to 20 miles.

[Wolfenx666]

Yes 🙂 before i owned my loved C64 me an my Dad had a Vic20. We build a memory extension Card for the Vic20 (lots of soldering).

The guide to build the Card was published in an PC-Magazine printed on recyled Paper, so crazy when i think about it today.

[Vynski]

I used to look forward to getting each month of PC Magazine.  It was head and shoulders above PC World and any other PC journal on the market.  Loved it.

[red5]

My family was too poor to afford something like that, but my neighbor had one. He had some sort of Apache 64 game for it that I would go over and play.  My wife had a somewhat nerdy dad, so they had one.  I don't think she did much with it

[Vynski]

I assume your talking the Apache Helicopter.  The best one I knew of was Apache LongBow.  I'm not certain if my youngest son still has it or not.  Just like Mech Warrior it was not compatible with newer versions of Windows.

[Axxemann]

Jane's AH-64 Apache, Jane's Apache Longbow, and Jane's Longbow Gold are the ones that come to my mind. I had Longbow Gold.

[bobpi]

I used a PDP 8/E minicomputer with a teletypewriter and paper tape storage in high school to learn BASIC. I also had an Atari 2600 and a TI 99 4/A around the same time.

At Georgia Tech I used a CDC Cyber System Mainframe. I then had an Apple IIe and upgraded to an Apple III (to which I added a used 5Mb Profile hard drive later) during the C64 era.

I then went to the Commodore Amiga 1000 (soldered in a memory expansion board I built myself and patched Kickstart 1.3 to use it) then a Commodore Amiga 2500/030. I then built an IBM compatible around the W95 era (Pent. 233Mhz I think) after Commodore killed the Amiga. I still miss the memory mapping of the Motorola 68000 and the multitasking system of the Amiga.

I currently am on an AMD FX-9370 at 4.7Ghz with W7.

I am eventually going to an AM4 system when I can figure out how to stomach either W10, W11, or W12?.

[Axxemann]

---

@bobpi wrote:

I currently am on an AMD FX-9370 at 4.7Ghz with W7.

I am eventually going to an AM4 system when I can figure out how to stomach either W10, W11, or W12?.

---

I'm going to hazard a guess you don't do a ton of gaming, and if you do, it's on older games. There's a number of games I play that no longer support Win7 or 8. 

Win10 isn't THAT bad after you take about 6 months to get used to it. I did the free upgrade, but I'm sure you can get a key somewhere for dirt cheap/free.

My laptop is on Win11, because some WCB provided online training I took mandated it. Had I gotten the PC hardware upgrade I told my WCB case manager would be a couple hundred bucks cheaper than said laptop (hey, they paid for it. I TRIED to save them money!) I would have told the instructors to pound sand about the Win11 upgrade. But since it was on a laptop I didn't pay for and I plan on selling once I'm back to work full time (unless I need to provide my own laptop for work) I ran with Win11. Some features are an improvement. Others... not so much.

[bobpi]

Some improvements with W11? Is that worth it though? I am not too thrilled about W11 being tied to a TPM motherboard or module. I just do classic gaming in 2D except Minecraft since I am on a satellite connection in the wilds of Kentucky. I am trying Wakfu right now since it is turn based for the fighting but I see hiccups even with that. 

[Vynski]

I have an FX 9590 that will reach 5.1 Ghz.  Always had a minor problem with it that balked at letting me install any version of Windows on an SSD of any type.  I guess it was such a severe overclock that it had issues.  My wife is using it now and to install Windows 7 on an SSD, I had to underclock it to the minimum, near the 8350 CPU.  However; it is a fantastic CPU.  The reason I upgraded to a 2700X was a lesson learned when I thought it was the CPU or motherboard and it was actually the monitor.

[bobpi]

Is that FX9590 liquid cooled? No FX series chip is capable of being stable at 5Ghz and above due to heat issues on air cooling.

[johnnyenglish]

Didnt owned one but used to play Street fighter on a Commodore Amiga. 

Back then, each kid had a computer system and we spent days and days playing it, so much fun on those rainy days. 

I had a spectrum 128K, other a tape 48K and the Commodore Amiga. 

We were so young... But happy. 

[Vynski]

Here was my computer my Junior and Senior years in high school.

[rdenmon]

High Tech- Well its better than this 

[bobpi]

I had one of those too. Seem to remember an early calculator too late in my senior year (1978). The PDP8/e minicomputer was owned by the high school.

[venaur]

Slide ruler!!! 😄

[Psyhix69]

I owned an Atari 65XE. I wrote many "games" and programs in Basic and tried to do so in Assembly language (but failed, since I was very young back then). This got me into the programming which I still do professionally. Really nice times.

[venaur]

my first pc was a windows 95

[rdenmon]

My first pc had DOS 3.31- that computer was awesome. I remember the Win 3.1 so called upgrade. 95 Was cool though. Definitely something very transformational.

[blazer]

My first computer was a Tandy Trash 80. I don't remember much of it though. 🤓

[fozan1072]

I had a Apple rip off "The Lisa". That was the first computer in the house.

[t3chl0rd]

TI-99/4A when I was kid and well abused, soon after my Dad built a 8088 from parts he got from work.

[larrydarren]

When I was young my grandma bought me a commodore vic 20.

It had a cassette tape storage.  😉

She was happy I wrote a small program to pick lotto numbers.

Never won the lottery though.

[ajlueke]

I think I had the same 5.25" floppy drive.  Although, I see it is hooked up with the yellow video RCA cable.  I had a coaxial based RF adapter, as I think the TV just lacked RCA plugs.

[red5]

Yup, I was 10 years old. My neighbor had one