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I wrote FastBack! (really)
Yeah... it was a major pain, hdd to floppy!
Lloyd
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I should be clear that FASTBACK was one of those tools MS 'borrowed' from the CP/M arena (without any compensation back then.  ) In its original incarnation, it was called "FastCOPY", and had most - but not all - of the features that showed in the FASTBACK version. I think I sold all of about 500 copies... 
In all, it was a fairly trivial utility to write, and having it 'promoted' to officialdom was sort of an honor, back then.
Lloyd
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IBM AT: EGA "Graphics", 512kB RAM on the MB and a 6MHz processor, but 2 20MB Harddrives (5¼" Double height, could be used as anchors) and one 5¼" floppy (1.2 MB)
The 512MB RAM was a very frustrating limitation. So when I upgraded it I had enough money for a DX50 + 16MB RAM or a DX2/66 + 8MB RAM. Being as frustrated as I was with the RAM limits of the old MB I chose more RAM. Just to find out that there were no programs that could use more than 8MB at the time. 
At the same time I also upgraded to an 800MB 3½" HDD supposedly state of the art at the time, just to find out that the old battleships were faster. 
<edit>And the old IBM keyboards were so sturdy you could go to battle with them as a Claymore substitute</edit>
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My first "real" computer was the True-Blue PC AT 8mhz with 640K and the 384K add-on board for TSR programs, 32 MB HDD and 2 1.2MB HD floppies and EGA video. Second hand at a "must-sell all" sale for only $1,100.
Although if moving up from cassette is the only criteria, then it's an Atari 800XL. (Great programming system)
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The DX50 was the better choice, then - it was a true 50 MHz bus machine, whereas the DX2/66 had a 33 MHz bus, clock-doubled in the CPU. So, the CPU was faster, but getting data in and out of it to memory was slower. All for an extra 16 MHz (33%) speed increase. Unless the data you were process could all mostly fit into the CPU's cache (even in the 486 days, not likely), the 50 MHz bus speed was the better deal.
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My first was the IBM System/360-65[^]. I then went to the oldest, which was the IBM 1620 Model I[^]. No cassette tapes on those babies.
I'm retired. There's a nap for that...
- Harvey
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You owned a mainframe? 
Just how big was your house?
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Not that big, really. But it was never cold. 
I'm retired. There's a nap for that...
- Harvey
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Yup. IBM 1620 with hydraulic disk drive that always leaked hydraulic oil on the floor! An I think it had 40K of 6-bit Binary Coded Decimal "digits". Pretty quickly learned how to cold-start it by using the bit switches mounted on the front of the selectric typewriter that was the operator's consol. Punch cards and a 60 lines per MINUTE line printer (upper case only). Those were the good old days.
Roy Williams
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Member 10119140 wrote: Pretty quickly learned how to cold-start it by using the bit switches mounted on the front of the selectric typewriter that was the operator's consol...
You are describing a different machine. The 1620 (either version) didn't have bit switches sufficient to boot the machine. The cold start was done with a punch card in the card reader. I think it was 35000000000... mumble mumble. I used to have the 30 or so digits memorized. Warm start was done by hitting the halt button and typing 4900796"RS" on the console, which was a branch to location 00796 in core (the main monitor loop).
I'm retired. There's a nap for that...
- Harvey
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You are so right - I am remembering the bit switches on the IBM 1130... on the 1620 it was "sense switches". And now that you remind me, I do remember that we memorized the cold start sequence and typed it in....but that was 50+ years ago.
Speaking of cold start cards, we made up a cold start card for the 1130 that worked correctly no matter what orientation it was put in the card hopper. (Really!)
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My first computer was an AMSTRAD 1512 without HDD with CGA (4 colours) and one 5 1/4 floppy drive and 512 MB of RAM. 
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You lot are mere babes 8(
This is the first computer I actually owned (though by no means the first that I used), and I built it myself from a kit...
[^]
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I'm sure that if I would press strong enough that $%&#@ NVIDIA card it's giving me problems would work here...
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...and you make me feel really old.
I built one of these[^] while I was still at school. It's even in a museum!
Now, where's my Zimmer frame?
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Holy Computing, Batman!
I love the specs:
CPU No processor but nine DC operational amplifiers
SPEED 0.5 to 15 repetitive operations per second
So...Doom is going to run a little slowly on that then? 
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Saw that today and got reminded that im too young for this... although my dad gave me his old amiga as first pc, but yeah, just not that old 
if(this.signature != "")
{
MessageBox.Show("This is my signature: " + Environment.NewLine + signature);
}
else
{
MessageBox.Show("404-Signature not found");
}
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Mine was a Commodore VIC20 - was great at the time (I was 8 at the time and got given this at Christmas instead of the Atari console that I'd asked for - wise move)
http://oldcomputers.net/vic20.html[^]
Introduced: June 1980
Released: January 1981
Price: US $299 (cost about the same in GBP)
CPU: MOS 6502, 1MHz
RAM: 5K (3.5K for the user)
Display: 22 X 23 text, 176 X 184, 16 colors max
How do you know so much about swallows? Well, you have to know these things when you're a king, you know.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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Ah, the mighty VIC-20. I still remember that special plastic smell when I first unboxed it, more than 30 years ago.
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1.3 gig hard drive - that's huge!
I think my first PC, back in 1989, had around 20 megabytes of hard drive.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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I don't care if you count it or not, I've had a wonderful ZX Spectrum 48K and I learned (its) BASIC and Z80 assembly with it.
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I sympathise with your feeling.
My first was a Schneider/Amstrad CPC6128[^] with additional external floppy drive (not an original one but a raw 3" drive).
Then I had a second hand not IBM compatible 80186 based Philips :YES[^] with 640 KB RAM, a 20 MB SASI (SCSI predecessor) hard disk and an additional external 5 1/2" disk drive (again not original but one from a defective IBM PC).
Even my first new PC had less power than the P150 from the strip (a 486DX33 with 8 MB of RAM).
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Technically, my first "computer" was an HP 25C (I think that was the model) calculator, but it was programmable - 49 steps.
My first "real" computer was a Commodore IBM - real keyboard, 32KB of RAM, 6502 1Mhz processor, and a tape drive for storage, which I eventually upgraded to dual floppies, each floppy had double the storage of Apple's drive, mwahaha.
Marc
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In that case mine was a TI 59[^] - but I didn't think of it as a computer then!
Good for it's time, but those magnetic strips were sooooo unreliable!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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