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Wwabbit

Wwabbit

GT Owner
Mar 21, 2012
1,259
Knoxville, TN
We moved recently, and whenever that happens you get to find stuff you haven't seen in a while. Here's one; a 16K RAM expansion module that I probably paid $200 for. Contrast that with a 32G SD card today for $15.

So, here's the useless facts for today;

2,000,000 times the memory for 7% of the cost.
For the same money you now get 426G
By volume you 8.17 Terabits

16k.jpg
 
Wow
 
I understand the pain.....30 years ago I bought a TI99 computer with the "big" 16K memory expansion plug in for $2,200.
 
I also cut my teeth on the TI. I remember the Expansion Box and the day I got the two floppy drives to fit. Ah, I miss Shugart.
 
On this system my drive was a cassette tape player. Programs were loaded from and saved to a T60 audio cassette tape. I thought I was on the cutting edge (maybe I was).
 
Wwabbit said:
On this system my drive was a cassette tape player. Programs were loaded from and saved to a T60 audio cassette tape. I thought I was on the cutting edge (maybe I was).
Click to expand...

That's new stuff, I have used paper tape on a Teletype terminal!
 
and how about punched cards?
 
the Wizard said:
and how about punched cards?
Click to expand...

Paper tape preceded punch cards. I have used those too! :lol
 
BlackICE said:
Paper tape preceded punch cards. I have used those too! :lol
Click to expand...
I can still remember cleaning out the "chad" bin under the tape punch.
 
KMCBOSS said:
I can still remember cleaning out the "chad" bin under the tape punch.
Click to expand...

IBM029 keypunch. I used to collect the punchouts for parades. Then they got spooked about them getting in people's eyes and stopped it.

My first computer was remote batch to a 360 at Iowa State University. Later I got up close and personal with the first "minicomputer" - the IBM 1130. It still was a computer room environment.

I worked at DEC starting in 1979 so got to see all of them - PDP8, 11, and some of the other odd ones. Mostly storage, but because I was a "debugger" I got to do lots of stuff. I focused on the 11s (I have a 11/74 front panel) and the VAX. I wrote some microcode for the 8800. Mostly storage though, the HSC50 had a boatload of my code in it. Now I do interface code - "Phy" stuff. My name is on the front page of the first version of the Serial ATA spec. Our group made the first native Serial ATA drive (others used a "bridge" to a PATA drive.) It's hard to believe that the interface we thought would be a 10 year interface is probably going to be 20.

PS. The industry in the 80's hadn't settled yet on capacity points. There were 4xxMB drives and 525MB drives. The customers decided they wanted to settle on the 525 and the next point was 1GB (actually, 1050MB). We had the other point and saw the handwriting on the wall so a couple of us worked on the servo and the firmware (my part) to make the 1050 (1.05GB) drive. I had one that I kept for years, but got tired of moving it around. The drive was the DEC DSP3105. The Mac guys loved it, and I worked closely with a company in San Francisco for the Mac software package. We won the "MacUser Eddy award" for that year. The next one was a weird capacity - 1.6GB, and then they one after that was 2.1GB (continuing the doubling). Of course now we think in Terabytes, not gigabytes.

It's been a great industry, and I'm never bored, although sometimes tired :)
 
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Punch cards vs. paper tape.....I guess I don't know which one came first, but it does seem to me I remember us still using paper tape long after punch cards were gone.......but maybe that was just what was going on in my world......

either way, it IS truly crazy how far we've come in this relatively short period of time.....

they say we're doubling the entire knowledge base of mankind every 10 years now.....
 
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the Wizard said:
Punch cards vs. paper tape.....I guess I don't know which one came first, but it does seem to me I remember us still using paper tape long after punch cards were gone.......but maybe that was just what was going on in my world......

either way, it IS truly crazy how far we've come in this relatively short period of time.....

they say we're doubling the entire knowledge base of mankind every 10 years now.....
Click to expand...

Hard to say which used first. It depends on if it is limited to computers data, or looms?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card

Punched cards were first used around 1725 by Basile Bouchon and Jean-Baptiste Falcon as a more robust form of the perforated paper rolls then in use for controlling textile looms in France. This technique was greatly improved by Joseph Marie Jacquard in his Jacquard loom in 1801.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_tape

In 1846, Alexander Bain used punched tape to send telegrams.
 
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