Sam Vimes

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Back in about 1992 I got my first PC. We'd had computers on the home prior to this but this was the first PC. It had a 40Mbyte hard drive and 1Mbyte of Dram.

On this I used to surf the net, such as it was; check email; do word processing and spreadsheets and play a few games.

These days to do just the same I need at least a 100Gbyte hard drive and 4Gbytes of Dram.

Admittedly I can probably do more than I use to if I wanted but there seems no way to get rid of the unnecessary functions. I do trim out as much as possible but it makes little difference.
 
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I bet you didn’t have your X thousands of photos and the editing suite to play with. So could we be accused of sponsoring an element of inflation.
 
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In 1984/5 I was given £20,000 (£82,000 plus today), to buy whatever I fancied. Strange, as my only experience was a Spectrum ZX81. But my employer (the government) took a chance on me.

From memory, I bought about 8 Apricot PC’s 2 Sharp PC’s with 20 inch colour screens, a network of 5 Philips linked to a 5gb HD (our only HD). 2 macintosh. And about 4 Amstrads.

A goofball typewriter with a 1 line memory. (A complete waste of money and immediately out of date).

No internet.

Operating systems, MSDOS CPM CPM86 Apple DOS and original Windows.

A few printers and a plotter.

Software, Wordstar, Datastar and Calcstar. CAD for the Sharps.

The learning curve was immense. But we ran a highly successful training centre, one of the first in the Country.

John
 
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Our kids had the ZX81 my first encounter with a desk top PC was using IBM XTs when in Canada in 1985. They were used for condition monitoring trials on ships.
 
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Back in 1966 I joined Rolls-Royce as an apprentice, studying computing - at the time we had the largest computer installation in Europe - our largest computer, an IBM S/360, had just 1 Mb of memory with data being processed from reel-to-reel tape.

One of the computers we had at college, now Wolverhampton University, was a valve machine previously install at Harwell Atomic Research with just 90 memory positions - but being valves their contents could be read directly!
 

Sam Vimes

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I bet you didn’t have your X thousands of photos and the editing suite to play with. So could we be accused of sponsoring an element of inflation.
It's true but as I mentioned even if I wanted to do just the same as I did in the 90s I'd still need a machine that's 1000s of times larger and fastest.

Interestingly though the relative cost of the machines...90s to today....show todays machines are cheaper.
 
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JTQ

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Thankfully the real price of computing technology has gone very much in the reverse direction to the complexity.
I can't remember what I paid for a Sinclair "Cambridge" calculator, it was a lot to me at the time and I even had to assemble it myself!
 
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Back in the early 90's I noticed that every six months or so the performance/capacity of components almost doubled,hard drives CPU,s,video and sound card..the one thing that stayed faithful to the cause was "There has been a fatal error" oh no!!😟
 
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Back in the early 90's I noticed that every six months or so the performance/capacity of components almost doubled,hard drives CPU,s,video and sound card..the one thing that stayed faithful to the cause was "There has been a fatal error" oh no!!😟
That was happening through the '60/70/80s as well.
 

Mel

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In the mid 1970s my secondary school introduced a brand new course “Computer Science”. Storage was on hard discs that it took 2 of us to carry and input was on punch card and paper tape.
Being logically minded I was quite good at it and seriously considered a career with IBM as a Systems Analyst. That was until the daft Careers Teacher ( who was actually the Games Teacher with a bad knee) persuaded me that the NHS was the way forward!
I would have been in on the ground floor; Me and Bill Gates would have been best mates by now and I would be well on my way to my umpteenth million. 😂
Mel
 
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Doing my degree in 68-71 there was the dilemma of whether to use slide rule and early calculators or the university main frame. With the latter you would have to produce punch cards and take them across Cardiff. They would then be run overnight as staff and post grads had daytime priority. When you then went to collect the output invariably one card would have had a logic error and the programme hadn’t compiled. So another 24 hours required. Even in mid 70s doing post grad it was a toss up whether a slide rule and programmable Casio calculator were quicker than an early desktop. I hated Algol and Basic.
 
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Doing my degree in 68-71 there was the dilemma of whether to use slide rule and early calculators or the university main frame. With the latter you would have to produce punch cards and take them across Cardiff. They would then be run overnight as staff and post grads had daytime priority. When you then went to collect the output invariably one card would have had a logic error and the programme hadn’t compiled. So another 24 hours required. Even in mid 70s doing post grad it was a toss up whether a slide rule and programmable Casio calculator were quicker than an early desktop. I hated Algol and Basic.
We only had a 24-48 hour turn around on coding sheets sent to the punch room - so we had a hand punch for corrections and frequently used to correct punched cards by reinserting the little chips that were punched out - we could use little "stickies" but some of the machines read electrically so the stickies were ineffective - and heaven help you if you dropped a deck of punched cards!
 
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JTQ

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Have to admit I was a late life scientific slide rule user, thought it was good for the grey cells doing the decimal place computation manually.

My first IMO "proper" electronic calculator acquisition was the TI-59 with programable magnetic slip cards, that expensive calculator I had to buy privately back in 1978. Still have it tucked away somewhere.
 
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I'm sat working on a clients data centre in a different part of the world. On my shelf above my monitors I have a 1979 Atari 400 that started my journey in IT when I was a kid. Money well spent by my parents, a three of us brothers work in IT. I also have it's replacement Atari 800XL and 1040 STE sat on the shelf
 
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I'm sat working on a clients data centre in a different part of the world. On my shelf above my monitors I have a 1979 Atari 400 that started my journey in IT when I was a kid. Money well spent by my parents, a three of us brothers work in IT. I also have it's replacement Atari 800XL and 1040 STE sat on the shelf
Referring back to my #3 post. Similarly, the ZX 81 in question was bought for my son in about 1979 followed by a Spectrum. They helped me in the manner I described. But also helped my son get his computing A level. This went from strength to strength. He now holds a very well paid job in a nearby secret establishment and looking forward to his retirement in the next 5 years.

The A level put him in demand, so Uni was not a consideration. A few years later, the department he was in charge of required a degree as minimum entry qualification. This meant he was the only one in his own department who did not have one.

John
 
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Referring back to my #3 post. Similarly, the ZX 81 in question was bought for my son in about 1979 followed by a Spectrum. They helped me in the manner I described. But also helped my son get his computing A level. This went from strength to strength. He now holds a very well paid job in a nearby secret establishment and looking forward to his retirement in the next 5 years.

The A level put him in demand, so Uni was not a consideration. A few years later, the department he was in charge of required a degree as minimum entry qualification. This meant he was the only one in his own department who did not have one.

John
As a result of the Geoffrey Prime spy trial in 1982 the Government gave up their efforts of trying to keep the lid on GCHQs name. I recall in the trial the ludicrous position of a Government military witness who when shown a picture of the GCHQ entrance sign and asked if it was GCHQ refused to comment. The lid was totally ripped off when Mrs T dismissed staff fir being in a union. It was all over the media for weeks. Secret? I think not.
 
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Sam Vimes

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Like Mel, I could have made a fortune with all my great ideas but while I could engineer them I could never see how to 'monetise' them - to use the modern vernacular.

My biggest failure was thinking that Amazon would never succeed other than at selling books.

I could regale you with many a tale of life in the computer industry so if you're having trouble sleeping let me know.
 
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As a result of the Geoffrey Prime spy trial in 1982 the Government gave up their efforts of trying to keep the lid on GCHQs name. I recall in the trial the ludicrous position of a Government military witness who when shown a picture of the GCHQ and asked if it was GCHQ refused to comment. The lid was totally ripped off when Mrs T dismissed staff fir being in a union. It was all over the media for weeks. Secret? I think not.
One Saturday, around the year 2000, GCHQ suddenly decided to invite family. So this is Pre Donut. We got our invite and turned up. Even an ice cream van in the car park. With many other people we had a good wander around. Our son’s colleague told us that a certain room was open. My son could not believe it but we went to see. Through the library, past an Enigma machine, and through a 6inch thick safe door. We entered the main frame room. Around 10 HP and Cray machines, simple big boxes, few flashing lights, and a glass room full of hard disk cassettes and a robot arm that continually swapped them.

His biggest worry was the a child might switch something off.

The next day they returned to high security and car searches. So far as I am aware, no harm was done.

We were later invited to see the donut just as it was opening. The donut has shops inside including a Greg’s. Staff have to rethink how they pay as phones are not allowed. Perhaps they use money.

John
 
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JTQ

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Clearly you don't have your car washed at a hand car wash, or Chinese managed F&C shop.
Quite right in respect to our cars, no way is anybody else going to wash them; seen them wipe the wheels and valance then with the same grit loaded cloth attack the paint work and in a circular motion! Very "old school" me, follow Autoglym's recommendation only ever wipe vertically where possible. Plus, use different sponge/cloth for the gritty bits,

On the cash thing I am struggling with car parking machines; why are these bastard, [that's non integer for the PC brigade] amounts contrived to be a challenge to find just the right amount; don't respond I have my own idea why.
Experiences of using the array of different "apps" has been a nightmare, why no national standard dictated here? And why use these where at least one of the major mobile providers have no cover?
 
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I'm sat working on a clients data centre in a different part of the world. On my shelf above my monitors I have a 1979 Atari 400 that started my journey in IT when I was a kid. Money well spent by my parents, a three of us brothers work in IT. I also have it's replacement Atari 800XL and 1040 STE sat on the shelf
Ha! love it. I am sat working on my customers network which is all around the world, and behind me in a box is my 1982 ZX Spectrum, with all my tapes. Definitely money well spent! My introduction to digital computing and programming. Sat next to me on my desk is a Nintendo DS light, running a Spectrum emulator, on which I can relive all of my child hood games.
 
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Ha! love it. I am sat working on my customers network which is all around the world, and behind me in a box is my 1982 ZX Spectrum, with all my tapes. Definitely money well spent! My introduction to digital computing and programming. Sat next to me on my desk is a Nintendo DS light, running a Spectrum emulator, on which I can relive all of my child hood games.
I used to love early flight simulators where mountains were just a mix of triangles with sharp end upwards.
 

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