what was your first work station

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

what about printers?

 

the commodore had one with a plain roll of papers having holes in the twoo sides..I dont know what was its fate...even I can hardly remember its shape!

the next was an HP inkjet with the PIII ,followed by a series of epsons till now.

 

i had a 24 pin dot matrix printer. it was awesome (not really). i can remember printing out artwork that was done in a simple program similar to paint. perferated tear offs on the paper so it could feed through the printer.

[rmoore97]

first computers: vic 20 followed by the commador 64 (still love the games)

 

first serious machine: 75mhz, 8 meg hard drive i think, and 16 meg ram that gateway decided to use 4 - 4 meg chips which made upgrading very expensive.

[Brian Smith]

the TRaSh 80

[Christopher Nichols]

I used an Acorn BBC computer at primary school in the 80's. I loved it and pleaded with my parents for my own so they eventually got me a Sinclair ZX Spectrum with 48K! of RAM.

The wealthier kids had Commodore 64s but I loved my Spectrum (still do)

 

Ahhh the memories.

 

 

Hah!!! I beat you there... I had a Sinclair too

 

It was the ZX81

 

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=263

 

Had a proc of 3.5 Mhz

1K of RAM

8K of ROM

[STRAT]

yup, i still power up my speccy now and then too

 

but proffesionally, my first workstations were 086 and 286 pc's.

[e-YELLOWCABS.COM]

hé hé...the best of all

amiga500 with one mega of ram software sculpt3d...

[Elliot]

This is an interesting thread.... Similar story on this end:

 

Altair

TI 99

Comodore 64

Kaypro

IBM PC 8088

Compaq Portable

 

Autocad 1.14

Visical

Lotus 123

Word Perfect

Paradox

 

Lots of memories. Our engineering department refused to use the computers and AutoCAD. I worked in marketing and decided to take over their workstation. After 3 or 4 months they started looking at what I was doing and one day the computer was taken back to engineering without telling me. Eventually one of the drafting guys finished mechanical engineering and he customized AutoCAD for our needs. That was an incredible jump in our production. It reminds me of the IBM Charlie Chaplin movie. At that time I used to live next to the IBM PC Headquarters in Florida. If I am not mistaken the president and several executives of that division died on an aircraft accident and that started the downfall of the IBM PC division.... there were other factors as well.

 

Incredible memories.....!

 

Regards

Elliot

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

this reminds me of a story that comes out occasioanlly in geekier office conversations. it was before my time, so i don't know the details, such as the computer name or anything.

 

our firm decided to take on computer drafting. the bought a mamoth machine that requred a its own room and halon system. the machine had either 4 or 8 workstations with massive digitizers the size of a small drafting table. the drafters had to work in 3 shifts, first shift, second shift, and 3rd shift.

 

they used this system for several years before starting the switch to desktop PC's.

 

the problem... according to the story, the company paid a quarter of a million dollars for the drafting machine, and when it came to to get rid of it, no one wanted it. they had to pay to have it hauled off in back of a dump truck.

[Elliot]

We had one of those expensive Techtronics machines. Now I am 55 years old, at that time I was 27. The unit required air conditioning and our VP of Engineering will not allow more that two people inside the room at the same time. It was a very primitive machine. It needed an operator who was an engineer.

 

By age 34 we had the small PC and AutoCAD. That's when I worked at a company were the group abandoned the the PC. I started using it and we made it do some primitive stuff which everybody liked. From then on the PC became a necessary evil in our office. The new engineers we were getting were trained at their school on AutoCAD and from then on the world has never been the same.

 

It seems to me that every 8 months we need something new. A new computer, eight months later a new software and 8 month later a new Cad operator.... He he he he

 

I still work with architects, some of them 50 years old, who do not know AutoCad or any other CAD package. In most of the AE firms the staff is very CAD oriented. I am from a group of people that refuse to work from actual blueprints, I only work from digital. Some old architects refuse to work straight from the computer and will request "Blue Prints"......

 

When I started working, on a typical trip I will carry a roll of blueprints. On the old Eastern Airlines DC-9's you inmediately knew who in the plane was an engineer. Then by FAX. Then FEDEX came upon us and I will mail the Blue prints ahead of the trip. Then AutoCAD and I will carry the floppies (a million of them). Then the CD's. Later on the internet and if I had smart client he would have a 28kbps modem and I could email. What next...?

 

My current email address I have had for 15 years..... It was almost yesterday when I got it..... Some of us remember when AutoCAD went Windows instead of DOS.

 

The secret is to continue evolving along with technology..... I am in the process of building a new workstation to replace my 1.5 year old dual Opteron......!!! Perhaps I will have to wait for the Quad cpu's

 

I am an old amateur radio operator.... At 13 years of age when I got my license.... I use to communicate through MORSE CODE, then teletype, then packet and now I talk with my brother through Skype with Audio and Video at the same time.

 

Regards

Elliot

[maryam]

This is a very interesting thread.

my first computer was an apple macintosh laptop,it was 1991,a power book 100.the monitor is i think 8 inches.i am ashamed that i dont know much information about it,becoz i was a kid.now when i look at it,it is more like a simple calculator.i know its design is one of the top 10 industrial designs of 1990's.but mine doesnt work any more.i wish i could start it one more time!i didnt have commodore,but i had atari & tvgame ,then,,nintendo,sega,microgenius,playstation....what a memories!

[gods418]

1995

my first pc is a 386 dx (cant remember the number) must add a math co proccesor to use autocad r9... i still remember the 3dstudio (without max) release 3 for DOS.....windows that time still run in dos...... sold it and get a cyrrix k6 ....

 

i wont forget the ROLLAND pen plotter ITS A PAIN IN THE ARMPITS coz my boss dont want to buy new pens and we keep on shaking the pen up and down until our armpits gets swollen, oh they upgraded it with the texas instruments pen plotter but still its the same thing then after a year or two like mana from heaven the company i work for that time become a sole distributor for OCE GRAPHICS ink jet plotters.............

 

this topic is nostalgia..............