Technology..

[guitarpete247]

I borrowed a computer of a mate in the late 80's when he was moving home. He bragged it had a speed of 25 mHz.
My first computer had a harddrive of 1/2 gig and the guy I bought it off said I'd never fill it. I had a 1gig drive fitted 6 months later.

 

[newfhouse]

In 1980 I got my first PC at work, a Hewlett Packard HP85. The US price was $3250. It had a massive 16K of RAM. View attachment 502072

Yup. Ours had a GPIB - or HPIB - bus for controlling test equipment. Cutting edge back then.

 

[TheDoctor]

I still remember the double-speed-poke for the Dragon 32.
That would get the 6809 CPU running at a mighty 1.8 MHz iirc.

 

[ColinJ]

Data formats tend to have a life of 20, perhaps 30 years tops. I doubt an archaeologist will be able to download the correct drivers to read this page of CycleChat 100 years in the future.

I can't even find a driver which enables me to make a reliable connection between my 5 year old smartphone and my Windows 10 laptop! (Which reminds me - I must keep on looking, because I need to do it.)

 

[Shut Up Legs]

Could you imagine 30 years ago you could get 256GB of data on your finger nail!.

I had an Amiga A500 in the early 90's and that coped extremely well with 512kb (Microsoft eat your heart out!).

Everytime I use this USB memory stick it amazes me (little things please little minds and all that)..

View attachment 502025

I've been a software developer for some time, and the technology advances amaze me also. When I first studied computer science at university, I don't think the term "software engineer" even existed, and some of the lab classes at uni required me to type code into a computer with a monochrome (orange) text display, i.e. the computer certainly had nothing resembling a graphical user interface.

 

[classic33]

I can't even find a driver which enables me to make a reliable connection between my 5 year old smartphone and my Windows 10 laptop! (Which reminds me - I must keep on looking, because I need to do it.)

Bluetooth?

 

[DCBassman]

In 1980 I got my first PC at work, a Hewlett Packard HP85. The US price was $3250. It had a massive 16K of RAM. View attachment 502072

Yup. Ours had a GPIB - or HPIB - bus for controlling test equipment. Cutting edge back then.

Used them for certain calibration tasks at my last formal employment. They were getting quite flaky by 2003...and you could get GPIB cards for PCs by then.

 

[Joey Shabadoo]

All these advances but the symbol for saving documents is still a floppy disk.

 

[alicat]

Doubt there will be any future paleontologists either, the way we are treating the planet.

 

[winjim]

And to think I have trouble at work trying to

Doubt there will be any future paleontologists either, the way we are treating the planet.

Extinction drives evolution. Something will fill the niche and may well evolve intellectual curiosity and the ability to dig up our fossils and potentially our old tech.

 

[Dave7]

Aye, it's all well and good but all it's doing is helping us bork the planet more effectively than ever.

If I knew what "bork" meant I think I would agree with you

 

[Alex H]

Could you imagine 30 years ago you could get 256GB of data on your finger nail!.

36 Years ago I started work with Sperry Univac as a computer engineer. There was no concept of GB of data.

This is the first computer I worked on.

There would normally be another orange cabinet on the RHS that held a disk drive with a fixed platter (about 15 inches in diameter) and a removable one of 10MB each.

 

[Joey Shabadoo]

My HND Arts Management course used these:

Desk Top Publishing was done on this:

 

[Drago]

The police national compute is due for replacement in 2023, by which time it will be 50 years old. its awkward to use and doing searches is a bit like entering commands in DOS, eg, surname/firstname/middlename/dob/gender/ethnicity etc, but it is pretty reliable and does work well once you've got your head around it.

What the betting the replacement will be late, massively over budget, and not fit for purpose?

 

[oldwheels]

When I was a student the very latest thing had bits of paper with holes punched in them and we had to learn about binary something or other.