Subject:
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Re: Taking shortcuts
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.geek
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Date:
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Tue, 20 Jul 2010 22:59:49 GMT
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Viewed:
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8511 times
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On 10-07-20 04:47 PM, Larry Pieniazek wrote:
> Oh, we're playing "first PC", eh? My first PC had *no* floppies, just a
> cassette, until I added a floppy at horrendous expense. 80K capacity each...
> Foolishly, I bought 2. For the longest time, whatever year it was, a pretty good
> PC seemed to always cost 3000 USD... I think that's going down, at last.
Ooooh - this can be a fun game. :-)
One of my first (sorry, don't remember the order of them) was a computer I built
myself. I ordered the 3-chip set from Intel (8080, the clock chip and the buffer
chip), then used a bunch of SRAMS (no way could I figure out how to wire up a
system that used DRAMS or magetic cores!) and some discrete 7400 logic to make a
"front panel", and away I went. It think it was only 2K of SRAM (8 chips). It talked
to an old 5-bit (Baudot code) mechanical teletype using a GI AY5-1013 (I think that
was it) UART (in a huge 40 pin package).
I added another UART and a bit of filter circuit and tried to make it record and
playback from my audio cassette recorder, but it wouldn't work reliably. It was
only a few years later that I learned that you had to have a special tape
recorder to work properly - e.g. the Radio Shack one used with the TRS-80.
Later I had a CP/M system with 8 inch floppy disks - worked with that for several
years, then went on to the Amiga 1000, 2000, 2500, 3000, 4000T. Now I'm on my second
Linux box, getting ready for the next one.
Ah, the good old days. :-)
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Taking shortcuts
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| (...) Oh, we're playing "first PC", eh? My first PC had *no* floppies, just a cassette, until I added a floppy at horrendous expense. 80K capacity each... Foolishly, I bought 2. For the longest time, whatever year it was, a pretty good PC seemed to (...) (14 years ago, 20-Jul-10, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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