Quote:
Originally Posted by **********
I am so freakin' impressed with retro technology. check this out
This is a TRS-80 Model 4 that I've had forever. It had stopped working and I kind of gave up on it and tonight, I decided to dig it out and see if it worked. It didn't, but I found a lose wire inside, soldered it back, and Holy shit, it worked!
Not only that, but I was able to boot old versions of DOS (TRS-DOS, MS-DOS, etc) from 5.25" floppy diskettes too!
And not only that, but, I was able to load an old game called Cosmic Fighter, from a freaking Cassette!! Both the cassette and the cassette player are over 35 years old, and they both still work!
(For you youngins' - 5.25" Flopies were THE TITS when it came to reading and writing programs and files. THE TITS I Say! |
This is more or less what we were taught on in high school in the early 1980s.
I was able to take "computers 1" where we spent an entire quarter programming the computer to draw six lines in the shape of a house. I was unable to take "computers 2" because my math skills were not good enough. Instead I took study hall, where I spent all of my time in the computer lab teaching myself how to code in basic, Fortran, and COBOL. While the "smart people" in class were learning how to draw simple pictures in class I was writing entire programs including a contact book where I stored contacts, and a letter writing program which was a super simple version of Microsoft Word.
I went into the military and other than seeing a few computers in our admin area, I had pretty much forgotten all about computers. It wasn't until I started work at the phone company that I saw computers in the real work place and got interested again.