75ZT Community

I had a computer "expert" visiting me late this afternoon and he decided to give me his "professional" view of my Main PC

Sort of clammed up a bit though, when he saw the screen. I had opened a command prompt and expanded it full screen.

I asked him what he thought it was and should I be worried

Nice guy though, he suggested that my PC had a "hardware fault" causing a "faulty display"which he offered to diagnose for me for a fee of £35. Wasn't that nice of him

I still remember the days when a black, or even green, screen with a C prompt was all you saw after boot-up. You could do exactly what you wanted and so very fast and WITHOUT all the different error messages you get with a GUI.

You seem to be reminiscing a lot over older computers lately Paul. Next you'll be dreaming of abacuses and ready-recconers!

SpongeBob wrote:You seem to be reminiscing a lot over older computers lately Paul. Next you'll be dreaming of abacuses and ready-recconers!

I already have a sand-box and stick

Funnily enough Martin and I were discussing Sinclair, Acorn and BBC computers today....oh and my 386 Amstrad!

I like simple!
Once wrote the complete controlling software for the machine that cuts the rod type FORD car keys and stored it on one 16k eprom with room for all the differs data too. It was in a bespoke Z80 based controller of my design as it needed loads of real-time I/O and at the time, there was nothing suitable off the shelf.
It was the second major project that I did after setting up on my own and it worked first time with no bugs!
Couldn't do it now.

Ah! Those were the days.
How many megabytes does even a simple program use now? Too many, because programmers are lazy amongst other things.

Ooooo.

C:/Del. [enter} Legitt............

Zeb wrote:Funnily enough Martin and I were discussing Sinclair, Acorn and BBC computers today....oh and my 386 Amstrad!

What about the Commodore 64 oh! and the C16 and lets not forget the VIC20 just luv those brilliant PC's. The C64 dominated the market back in its day outselling Apple and IBM, so what ever happened to Commodore International ?

Dallas wrote: and lets not forget the VIC20

Still got my VIC20 in the loft. Along with a CPM based machine called a wren (because it was so small and portable) and a laptop that has not HDD and a 2" disc.

To give you an idea how small and portable the wren is, it has two 5 1/4" floppy drives and an orange CRT monitor built in. Built in modem for prestel, too. (Remeber that?).

Bernard wrote: It was in a bespoke Z80 based controller of my design as it needed loads of real-time I/O and at the time, there was nothing suitable off the shelf.
It was the second major project that I did after setting up on my own and it worked first time with no bugs!
Couldn't do it now.

Dug out my box of Pic controllers Friday to see what I had. There's a Z80 hiding in there if you are desperate! I also have a microprofessor Z80 based kit that I will get to play with one day. Remeber those?

Duncan wrote:Dug out my box of Pic controllers Friday to see what I had. There's a Z80 hiding in there if you are desperate! I also have a microprofessor Z80 based kit that I will get to play with one day. Remeber those?

No, I don't. It was after my time I guess. We started in 1974 after an Intel sales guy had shown us the brand new 8080 chip. He said "All you need is this and a couple more chips, then you write a few words of software and 'bingo', you can do absolutely anything."

Ha Ha! It was 1976 before we had a working CNC system for installation and the support chippery was horrendous. We still had the first viable micro-controlled system in the world though. But due to the pay freeze at the time, we kept losing people as quickly as we trained them, so we stood absolutely still in terms of development, thus allowing the rest of the world to overtake us.

Just confirms my belief that government actions have the opposite result from what is intended.

Still got my Commodore 64 and yes it still works,which is more than I can say about my Windows 7 computer. Motherboard just just gone,so of the a computer fair tomorrow for a new one.Hopefully not to much.

Good job I still have the Old XP,a bit slow. (just like me ,but we get there in the end!!!).

I've recently had a vison .. and am having resurgence of Amigaitis.. and touch of Sinclairicity..
mainly Introducng the grandsons to theses great old puters

Registered on a few more forums! as refreshers . Like ya do!

Mind you I have got ... 12 Amiga's of varying flavours, 6 different amstrads & 20 + Spectrums and 1 ZX81 ( my first computer? hand built by me !! ).. geeky? Mad? magpie ??

Chris

Bernard wrote:No, I don't. It was after my time I guess. We started in 1974 after an Intel sales guy had shown us the brand new 8080 chip. He said "All you need is this and a couple more chips, then you write a few words of software and 'bingo', you can do absolutely anything."

Not much as it was introduced in 1981:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro-Professor_MPF-I

Company that made it became Acer, and you can still buy the thing, if you want to spend 200 notes on something as obsolete as an obsolete thing...