Aint modern tech wonderful?

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Many years ago I used to work for Systime Computers, a now long gone Leeds based computer kit manufacturer... they made DEC lookalike kit. Anyway, one of the things I did there was fix SMD disk drives. They were quite large devices and it took two of us to lift a 20mb drive. I can't remember what the largest capacity drive was but it might have been either 80 or 120 and they were all mounted on trolleys. Actually I hurt my back trying to pick a drive up one day and I still suffer sometimes and have to be careful to this day.

Later I worked for another company and wonderful things called Winchester disk drives came through the door. I think they were 10 and 20mb and as I remember about half mapped out when we formatted them.

Moving on to today...

I've just received a Sandisk Cruser Blade USB flash drive and it's 64gb, well that's what it said and I wont quibble :D

On the cons side it's a flimsy plastic thing and much more so than any other of these that I've had and I'll have to be careful with it but on the plus side it's absolutely tiny and it weighs absolutely nothing! :D

As electronics was my thing I'm impressed by the changes I've seen in my life.

I've seen computers go from things the size of a large wardrobe to desktop sized and then to laptop sized and now to pocket sized.

I suppose the only downside that I can see is that I used to find the faulty component and cut it out and solder in a new one and if I was still trying to make a living that way I think I'd give up and accept that's just not possible these days and in fact it probably isn't economic to even change a module never mind a component, but hey-ho, I still think the game has moved on massively and mostly for the better.

Any changes in your line of work or interest?
 
Much the same experience as you really Alan.

I remember the RM Nimbus computers we had at school (early 90s) and the really flakey network they "ran" on (use the term ran loosely :lol:

I did an GNVQ Computer Hardware course '95/'96 and we were building 486SX/DX machines with 2mb-4mb RAM and around 400mb HDDs, when I started work in '96/'97 Pentium processors were becoming a lot more popular and we were putting 16mb of RAM and 1GB HDDs in the machines, how much bigger/faster could things get? :lol:

In 20 years the leap forward has been massive. My granddads passed away in 1997 & 2000, both were reasonably tech savvy (one was an engineer and the other dabbled in electronics) but I keep thinking I'm amazed by the gulf between 90s technology and now, what on earth would they make of it?
 
The biggest change I have recognised as we all no doubt have; is that we have gradually moved to 'most' items of equipment, now being regarded as disposable items rather than ever being considered to be repairable.....................:(

I was sorting through some very old receipts recently and was horrified to find one for my first Sat Nav - £970 - Laserjet III printer £1,200, Sony Camcorder £1,500, basic computer 486SX type £3k, MP3 players, Psion organisers / Laptop £1,500 and 2mb SSD memory for ~ £300, even more 'fairly' recent items like HP Ipaq's £450, all now worthless with most gadgets effectively superseded by a typical smartphone.

But although there have been major advancements in computing, some software could well be described as bloatware that demands more and more memory to run basic tasks - a typical Microsoft Office suite requires 2 gig memory - I recall many years ago printing out our Xmas labels using a Sinclair Spectrum with only 16kb memory using a database and mail merge word processor program - amazing how the programmers of the day had to develop such efficient software to run in the restricted memory space. :D
 
lostsoulal2 said:
The biggest change I have recognised as we all no doubt have; is that we have gradually moved to 'most' items of equipment, now being regarded as disposable items rather than ever being considered to be repairable.....................:(

I was sorting through some very old receipts recently and was horrified to find one for my first Sat Nav - £970 - Laserjet III printer £1,200, Sony Camcorder £1,500, basic computer 486SX type £3k, MP3 players, Psion organisers / Laptop £1,500 and 2mb SSD memory for ~ £300, even more 'fairly' recent items like HP Ipaq's £450, all now worthless with most gadgets effectively superseded by a typical smartphone.

But although there have been major advancements in computing, some software could well be described as bloatware that demands more and more memory to run basic tasks - a typical Microsoft Office suite requires 2 gig memory - I recall many years ago printing out our Xmas labels using a Sinclair Spectrum with only 16kb memory using a database and mail merge word processor program - amazing how the programmers of the day had to develop such efficient software to run in the restricted memory space. :D
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Fek!
 
Russ77 said:
Much the same experience as you really Alan.

I remember the RM Nimbus computers we had at school (early 90s) and the really flakey network they "ran" on (use the term ran loosely :LOL:
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Haha! I remember using those computers in the early 90s too. We had 286s, 386s, 486SXs and a few 486DXs. There was always a rush for the best computers back then.

I remember having 3.5" floppy disks. Only saw 8" and 5.25" ones. I remember a friend asking why we ordered a 1GB hard drive because we'd never use all of it (we did!).
 
Ouch, and I remember doing computer studies at school in 1978/79. The whole class shared one terminal that we used to access the County computer via a wooden box with an elastic band that was called the "modem". We would run our punch tape programs on that thing, boy was it fast, it had no screen, just a paper feed and a daisy wheel...
A couple of years later I had a zx81... wow, that was a HUGE step forward... LOL
 
The first PC I used at work was from Apricot and ran OS2. It cost £15,000. Yes, I was working in a government department.....

One of my tasks was to import data from regional offices to build basically a big spread sheet. It arrived on 5.25" disks and the ones from the Highlands & Islands often used to get damaged on the boat they were sent on. A replacement took about a week and the data was urgent. So I used to slit open the disk with a Stanley knife and put the disk in a new case really carefully. Amazingly it often worked.

The job after that used 8" disks. Just like the US nuclear rockets still use. http://arstechnica.com/information-...find-8-inch-floppies-drive-nuclear-deterrent/
 
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JonathanRyan said:
Well, there used to be this cranky old stuff called "film". Horrible stuff. You had to wait days to find out your pictures were out of focus.
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I'd probably still be using film but the quality of prints I was getting back just fell through the floor. I presumed they'd cut costs to compete with digital but whatever the reason I sent a batch back to be redone time after time and still got poor stuff back (and no, it wasn't my shots...) so I just gave up and decided to go digital.

JonathanRyan said:
The first PC I used at work was from Apricot and ran OS2. It cost £15,000. Yes, I was working in a government department.....
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I used to look after government contracts for a 3rd party computer company and I was tech support for Apricot PC's. Happy Days. Some of their stuff was rather good, AFAIK their Qi was the 1st 3rd party MCA machine.

And of the subject of old kit in the forces, I also looked after contacts for the UK airforce, navy and army and some of their kit was so old only I knew what it was. Some of the younger guys had never seen anything like it :D

Interesting comments from other posters...

One thing that got me thinking was lostsoulal2 and the comments about prices. You can get some quite impressive technology these days for very little money and if we look at new kit (rather than end of the line stuff being sold off below cost) it makes me wonder what the cost of kit is as it leaves the factory. Some stuff must be dirt cheap.
 
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woof woof said:
Systime Computers
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Now there's a blast from the past that makes me feel old . I remember my mum getting some replacement tape deck buttons from them for my Sinclair speccy +2 , they were notorious for breaking and systime was the only place she could track them down from . I'm still sure my brother has the computer somewhere .
Now I feel old as that must have been around 25 years ago .
 
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I go back to the early 70's the first mainframe I worked on had 32 k of memory and took up half a football pitch could heat a small village lol.
 
This thread triggered almost nostalgic memories.

In the early 70's my school had a Wang terminal linked to Birkbeck College and we were given an hour a week to "learn" about programming?

Then when I worked in NHS pathology the hospital was one of the first in London to go computerised and they got what I understood was second user kit including barrel drives as well as Winchester drives all housed in an air conditioned room.......trouble was the AC had issues and those barrel drives had head crash issues. Oh, in the labs was our own mini computer linked to the main system. The mini was a DEC and something the size of half a dozen 4 drawer filing cabinets!

On a roll here, about 1984 a company I worked for bought an IBM system 36 and the software developers who scoped our reqs failed to appreciate that we had some very large and unusual customers who had 5 digit telephone extension numbers and they had allowed for a maximum of 4 digits. The problems with that supplier rumbled on for a long while and I think ended up in court?

The fact that I am typing this on a phone with more computing power than you could fit in a large room that many years ago is a wonder.

Oh, before I forget......when I was doing C&G data processing one of the guest lecturers was a lady who was employed at Lyons and part of the team that developed LEO and that I gather filled a whole floor in the Lyons building.
 
It's fascinating how many of us posting in this thread (me included) have/have had a career in computing/IT.

Is anyone going to post that's had a real job? :D
 
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ZoneV said:
It's fascinating how many of us posting in this thread (me included) have/have had a career in computing/IT.

Is anyone going to post that's had a real job? :D
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I'll give it a go. ;) After a 4yr apprenticeship which started in 1979, I worked as a press toolmaker up until 2013, manufacturing and trying out new press tools for car panels. With the advances in machining capability the manufacturing and try out time for a large press tool (around 20-30 tonne) dropped from around 2yrs plus down to around 6 months.
As for computers, other than a ZX81 which I soon tired of but still have, I never touched one until around 2001 or 2002. For something which is supposed to be fast and logical, I still find them highly illogical and painfully slow at times, at which point the old toolmaking fix of a large copper mallet really needs to be employed. ;)
 
I have worked with computers all my working life. I am retired now but I can still look back and think that I have more computing power and storage on my desktop than they had to put a man on the moon
 
Box Brownie said:
The fact that I am typing this on a phone with more computing power than you could fit in a large room that many years ago is a wonder.
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Isn't it said that there was more computing power in mobile phones of several years ago, never mind the new ones of today, than there was in the moon landing of 69. Amazing how technology is advancing.

nilagin said:
I still find them highly illogical...
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I left school in the early 70's & never used a computer until about 10 yrs ago. I struggle to understand most new tech. :banghead: :LOL:
 
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My first phone...
Cost £200 in the mid 80's, had to apply to get it, and once approved there was a waiting list...
Cost £25 pcm + 25p per min or part of a min, the battery life on standby was 8 hours. Talk life was maybe 20 minutes.
It was big and heavy too, carried on a shoulder strap. The actual phone bit was a standard sized household phone that clicked into place on a large base and the battery got very hot. I remember that I had a brand new car with vinyl seats, I had just started a new relationship and had these very long conversations about nothing (as you do) and I put the phone on the passenger seat, plugged the car charger in and didn't notice until too late that the phone had melted the vinyl seat cover:)

But, running a small business as a commercial photographer who was always on the move, it gave me a massive advantage and paid for itself many times over.
 
wave01 said:
I have worked with computers all my working life. I am retired now but I can still look back and think that I have more computing power and storage on my desktop than they had to put a man on the moon
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I gave up.

I worked for Systime (think I started with them at age 20 or 21 so that makes it the early 80's) DPCE and then Granada when they bought DPCE. Worked on many large contracts but every year the salesman signed up more work for less money and contracts that were worth £2m were worth £750K a few yeas later but for twice the work. I suppose it was just a mixture of customers cutting the budget and competition from people who would say they could do the job even though they couldn't. Quality went down, stress went up and I looked for an out and moved to a group of manufacturing companies.

I liked computers but the market just changed too much.
 
Anyone remember the old Spectrum microdrives? pretty near the same size as a compact flash card and held a whopping 100k of data! My first PC had a 40mb hard drive and I remember thinking "I'll never fill that?!", next purchase was 100mb and cost about £150 then just a few days ago I bought a 128gb Samsung usb3 stick for £24.99.
 
A while back, I came across an old receipt from about 1980 for a 4Kb upgrade for my first computer.
The cost was about £65.

Buying 4Gb at 1980 prices would set you back over £68 million...
 
Steep said:
My first PC had a 40mb hard drive and I remember thinking "I'll never fill that?!",
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Some people managed substantial projects and budgets with 10 or 20mb HDD or even duel floppy drives. Things have moved on and are better, no doubt, but I wonder if many people today would believe that you could manage a multi million quid project on an Amstrad PC with a 20mb HDD, a FDD and 512k of memory.

I ran a piece of software called Rapid File on any pc I could spare, often an Apricot 286 pc with a 20mb HDD. Rapid File was great as I could log all service visits and the results, produce contract performance stats and write reports and memos and I could run it from a floppy if I needed to take the HDD out to fix a customers machine with.
 
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Oh yeah, my first car phone fitted in my company Ford Sierra - almost drove off the road using it the first time trying to dial the numbers on the handset looking cool.

My first mobile - a car phone receiver with 2 housebrick batteries. My second mobile phone a housebrick with an aerial like the 80's yuppies had.

My first laptop - sitting in a hotel room in Hampshire looking at a flashing green dash wondering how to type a command to run a program.

My first electronic organiser - think it was a Psion. Before that I'd used a Time Manager International dart system.

My first generation Apple iPod. Still got it somewhere. Still works too :)

Can't believe how much things have changed.
 
All this talk about computers, for a real blast from the past the first automated, so no watch keeping engineers and the engine room unmanned at night, steam turbine tanker I sailed on as Electrical Officer, bringing crude oil from the Persian Gulf back to Northern Europe via the Cape, was controlled using relay logic. Trying to find a fault amongst a 1,000+ relays was, shall we say, 'character building'. :eek:
 
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;)
 
woof woof said:
Some people managed substantial projects and budgets with 10 or 20mb HDD or even duel floppy drives. Things have moved on and are better, no doubt, but I wonder if many people today would believe that you could manage a multi million quid project on an Amstrad PC with a 20mb HDD, a FDD and 512k of memory.
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I remember the SciFi series Babylon 5 effects were done on Amiga computers.
 
Think my first mobile was a pf768 flip style sony ericsson thing. 3 days standby I think. I went into an actual shop to buy it. I remember sending texts on it when tmobile (one2one then) used to charge for data amount so they were daft cheap compared to the flat rate they introduced after. Think they were less 1p each or something silly when they first appeared.

Amiga render farms. I remember it well. I forget what the software was called but everything was done on it. Except big companies used something silly expensive than was only slightly better so they all moved over to what ever this software was. Render Bender rings a bell for some reason but it might have had a more sensible name!

Monkey Island, Lemmings. Real games...
 
When I was a lad we had abbicus and blackboard once I had been going for 6 months I was allowed chalk.

My first home PC was 8gb harddrive and 256mb of ram I think my graphics was 8mb cost me £1300 before that with nephews we would spend hours inputting code for a ball to bounce on a spectrum PC 1 error and it was I think a syntec error

These days I have a bicycle and generater I use for my iMac (I teal lay need electricity installed) :thinking:
 
Oh I remember sitting for hours typing in code from the speccy magazine and then spending more hours going over it all again sorting typos all to get some sprite to move across the screen or summat :D
 
I remember my first few years in IT as well, I started when I was 19 I think.

10mb drives, then kyocera30a which was an RLL drive and there was MFM.
I remember rodeim I think? and the early maxstor 70mb stuff and the huge shoebox 120mb.

I worked on early alloy multiware stuff with kimtrol serial cables.

then moved on to my first novell 2.15.

ha ha strange kit it was
 
You can get a tiny USB stick with 64Gb on it these days, but I remember when USB sticks were 'this' big <holds arms out wide> and took 2 of us to carry.
And you could only store 1 bit of data on it. But don't laugh. You could do a lot with 1bit. And we thought that was a lot after working previously with just 128 millibits.
 
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Mr Bump said:
10mb drives, then kyocera30a which was an RLL drive and there was MFM.
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I knew a guy who came home from work with a written-off 20Mb, 4-head drive that had suffered a head 0 crash.
He opened if up, vacuumed out the swarf/dust/bits of head, then wired the head 0 connections to head 3, and told the MFM controller it was a 15Mb, 3-head drive. It worked.
 
We didn't have a computer at school at all , I left in 1977

I got a phone in 1990 , it was a Panasonic , about the size of a thick book, £25 a month plus 50p a minute on cellnet , the first time it rang in the motorway services everybody stared at me.

The thing that's amazed me the most is TV technology and the price these days

In the 90s when your black box broke you swapped it for a silver box which was basically the same thing, the first big screen TV I bought was a 36" CRT that weighed 80kg.

The first 42" plasma I saw was in currys near J9 on the M6 , it was amazing, I asked the price , £25,000 , within a year they'd come down to £5,000, now you can buy a 60" 4K TV 2cm thick for less than 1/2 that price
 
wack61 said:
The first 42" plasma I saw was in currys near J9 on the M6 , it was amazing, I asked the price , £25,000 , within a year they'd come down to £5,000, now you can buy a 60" 4K TV 2cm thick for less than 1/2 that price
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A while back I did some work for Dixons. One of the people I worked with had been responsible for a massive upgrade to the pricing system for those plasmas. Previously, the maximum price of any item in a Dixons Group store was £9,999.99 :D
 
When he told me it was 25k my jaw hit the floor
Then he said I don't think we'll sell many, how will they pay, nobody has a credit card with a 25k limit , who's going to give you finance for a 25k tv, unless they walk in with a suitcase full of cash we can't sell it

The manufacturers must have given them out on sale or return , who'd have a 25k tv in stock waiting for when the price plummets
 
Steep said:
Anyone remember the old Spectrum microdrives? pretty near the same size as a compact flash card and held a whopping 100k of data! My first PC had a 40mb hard drive and I remember thinking "I'll never fill that?!", next purchase was 100mb and cost about £150 then just a few days ago I bought a 128gb Samsung usb3 stick for £24.99.
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I remember having them. As a kid, they were futuristic and cool compared to the cassette tapes. We had two connected together for highspeed copying. The idea of a ROM drive with the ZX Interface 2 blew me away but we never bought one.

Steep said:
Oh I remember sitting for hours typing in code from the speccy magazine and then spending more hours going over it all again sorting typos all to get some sprite to move across the screen or summat :D
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I remember having a couple of ZX spectrum game books where you sat and typed out a program in order to "learn" how to program and to play games.
 
Steep said:
Oh I remember sitting for hours typing in code from the speccy magazine and then spending more hours going over it all again sorting typos all to get some sprite to move across the screen or summat :D
Click to expand...

Eeeeee by gum, laddie. That takes me back, and how I needed to have the dexterity of a double jointed octopus to use the rubber keyboard layout.

PS: I, too, can remember the Microdrive - and it's own printer which used thermal heated paper for the printout. Very expensive too.
 
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Ian, do you remember the ZX80/81?
You could always tell a ZX owner, 'cos they typed with their thumbs, like they were trying to push the keys through the table.
Membrane keyboards were not the most responsive devices...

Are you thinking of the speccy silver bog-roll printer?
If so, that was electrical, not thermal; you could draw pictures on the paper using a battery wired to a needle and a croc-clip.
 
Does anyone remember the North Sea pirate radio stations? They were broadcasting computer programmes for Sinclair and MSX mainly bust tune in to the radio and set the tapedeck to record. Now that was proper wireless broadband with a very low contention ratio :)
 
Tori_T said:
Are you thinking of the speccy silver bog-roll printer?
If so, that was electrical, not thermal; you could draw pictures on the paper using a battery wired to a needle and a croc-clip.
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Didn't know that. Loved using it but I think the most I ever did was a game's lost cassette insert. :angelic:
 
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