Continuing the discussion from VHS library, what to keep:
Oh ya!,
I got started on BBS-ing on a Sega dream cast before I even owned a computer, while stealing dial up internet from net zero. I learned how to steal internet by using my high schools library computers!. Typing with a DreamCast controller was so hardcore!
Obligatory
This is my first 8088 pc xt
Bought it in 1986 for $2000
Not sure if we had the 4K or 8K version.
I ran a 32-line BBS called Dial-A-File for almost 10 years. Morphed into a small ISP, got killed by the big guys when the Internet caught the attention of the general public and sold the thing to Internet Direct somewhere around 1995. Not sure who ate Internet Direct.
My first computers were home brew S-100 bus CPM systems using 8080’s & Z80’s back in about '81 or '82. I actually wire-wrapped a working 8086 S-100 CPU board for it! My first “PC” (they were all called PC’s before the IBM-PC came along…) was a bare PC-compatible motherboard and peripheral boards that I bought from some outfit in Toronto that I had to source all the parts for and solder together. Built a few of those. You had to know someone who would allow you to copy their bootleg BIOS EEPROMs to get those things running. Built a lot of Apple II clones back in those days, as well.
I worked at a computer repair depot all through the '80s doing warranty repairs on Apple, Compaq, Corona, Hyperion, Kaypro, Columbia,Osborne, OkiData, Roland, Diablo, HP, Wyse, Televideo and pretty much everyone else so I had ready access to recycled parts and components. Oh, and I have the dubious distinction of the being one of the first 3 Novell CNE’s in Canada which was actually a big deal back in the day. 
OK, I’m old…
Ooh, I remember DAF!
Was that by any chance you, that triggered a big public meeting with BC Tel re multi-line BBS’s? IIRC, BC Hell wanted to start charging Business Line rates; and did not go over well with the BBS community.
My (older) brother got a real IBM PC XT, with a full-height 5.25" floppy; Seagate HD with a whopping 10 MB capacity; Hercules monochrome card; 12" monitor (I forget the name-brand).
I promptly crashed it by wiping out the MBR on the hard drive. To say that my brother was mad at me, would have been an understatement…
I’m almost as old the the other Steve.
I ran a 2 line BBS called “Serendipity” first under DOS/Netware lite and later under OS2.
Fido network, UUCP email gateway to the Internet.
I was also a Novell CNE back in the day
Software?
Although I never built an Altair 8080, I remember reading the Popular Electronics mag in Nov. 1975 (I think) that had plans for the Altair.
Worked in an Atari computer store on Fraser & Broadway in 1980 and got my first computer: an Atari 800 (the Apple was a fad, you know…) and continuing in the same mindset, in 1984 purchased my first big desktop, the mighty Zenith-Z100 that came with CP/M but had MS-DOS as an option (variant called Z-DOS - still have a copy). It used the 100 finger bus for all expansion cards and worked fine. Cost with a 10MB hard drive, dot matrix and daisy-wheel printers and a modem (1200 Baud!!) around $8000!!!
[quote=“mirong, post:7, topic:1116, full:true”]
Ooh, I remember DAF!
Was that by any chance you, that triggered a big public meeting with BC Tel re multi-line BBS’s? IIRC, BC Hell wanted to start charging Business Line rates; and did not go over well with the BBS community.[/quote]
I don’t recall if I triggered that meeting however I never attended it because I already had sort of business lines. There was another BBS sysop I knew who was a senior manager at BC Tel who tipped me off to Metered Service which was a service BC Tel was required to provide but did not tell anyone about. Metered Service were business lines that had a very inexpensive basic charge which was actually a bit less than residential lines. However, you paid $0.25 per outgoing call. Incoming calls were no extra charge. Since the BBS had no outgoing calls I converted all of my lines to Metered Service. It was shortly after that that I was raided by the VPD on a tip from BC Tell because they thought I was running a betting operation of some sort.
I think it’s a child
yeah I think you are right.
No, I think it’s a dot-matrix printer behind that desk lamp.
http://www.vintage-computer.com/ibmpcat.shtml
286 IBM clone?
I don’t have any memories of this machine just the 486 that replaced it. It had 3.5"s and I remember getting diskettes of shareware from Zellers.
Sitting on my floor right now is a nearly identical unit badged IBM Series I System Unit everything else has faded off. I need to find a monitor and a keyboard or some adapters. A 486 is still running the climate control systems on the mushroom farm after all these years. This one here is now just a bulky oddity given that it can replaced by perfect immortal machines that completely exclude atmosphere and moving parts, but I reckon that it and the one on the farm, that’s been sitting in a garage in a swamp for nearly 3 decades will be running longer than anything made in the 90’s. Of course it hasn’t been under any acceleration because it just keeps spinning and I’m guessing that being turned on keeps it from corroding like cathodic protection? Maybe when one of these cost $??? in 80’s dollars more effort went into eliminating failure points pfffffft maybe.
The real challenge would be finding a compatible printer wouldn’t it? Then this thing might have actual utility. Like an electric typewriter, you could market it to offices, features: too heavy to steal and no capacity to fuck dogs.
Is everyone familiar with that slang? I’ve heard it applied to road crews and pipe-liners but lets not forget the cultural explosion of dog fucking that occurred with the advent of multi-task computing. I’ve never worked in an office I’ve just read figures.
You kids…
My first computer was an NEC PC-6001A (aka “NEC Trek”). It was a Z80 machine with Microsoft BASIC in ROM. I got it with a few game cartridges, a 3-into-1 cartridge expansion slot, and a RAM expansion cartridge. For the first few months I had this computer, I didn’t even have a tape drive, so I would type in a program and just leave the computer on for weeks. Eventually I got a tape drive (something like $40 in early 80s dollars!), but never ended up getting a floppy drive.
Eventually (1986ish?) I got an 8MHz XT clone with dual floppies. One interesting aspect of this machine was that the motherboard was just a dumb ISA bus, and the CPU and RAM were all on a full-length Ă— full-height daughtercard. I used to buy a box of floppies from Egghead, and go to the VPL main branch and fill them full of shareware from the computer they had set up there for that purpose. I played a lot of Tetris on that machine. At some point my grandma bought me a 2400bps modem for $200 mid-80s dollars, and I became a BBS fiend.
Later, living in the Comox Valley in 1989-90, I spent an entire summer’s wages (originally $270 US, around $650 CAD after tax, exchange and duty) to buy an 85MB SCSI HD, and promptly started a BBS, “the Heart of Gold”. I don’t recall whether that computer ever saw a 14.4k modem.
At the beginning of my first (and only) year at UBC, I spent 1750 1991 dollars out of my meagre scholarship dough on a 386DX-40 with a 105MB HD, I think 1MB of RAM, a Trident SVGA card, and my first colour monitor that wasn’t a TV. 
That computer played host to my first experimentation with Linux (in 1992), and the Heart of Gold II BBS, initially with a 14.4k modem.
No subsequent computer upgrade has ever felt as revolutionary as moving up from the XT to the 386. One time, I’d decided to add another HD to the computer, and I had the $350 or so it would’ve cost to get another 105MB drive. I went into London Drugs on Robson St., told them what I wanted, and the guy rummaged around in the back, brought out a likely-looking HD, squinted at it, and sold it to me for the price of a 105MB drive. It turned out to be 240MB! SCORE!!
You are not really old unless you remember the “Turbo” button on the 486’s…
rolls up sleeves
Right then, Sonny!
My XT didn’t have a Turbo button per se, but you could press Ctrl-Alt-minus to slow the clock speed down to 4.77MHz so nasty old games that had busy loop timing would still be playable, then Ctrl-Alt-Plus to restore it to 8MHz.
My 386 had a Turbo button, I’m pretty sure at that time it still changed the CPU clock speed.
IIRC, on 486’s that had a Turbo button, it had the effect of disabling the cache, but I might not be R’ing C.
Bah, 386’s and some 286’s had that.
