restarting that version took only 8 seconds…
Well that’s good, because you needed to restart it about 20 times a day. 🙂
That was the last version of Windows I used regularly, if I recall correctly!!
Actually Windows 2.0 was quicker to restart …
That was first version I had hands on…
About the same time as also had periodic access to a Mac SE 30, if memory serves – about 4MB shared between us 🙂
http://www.emsps.com/oldtools/mswinv.htm Mac
I guess i’m a little spoiled. I never even had a computer or knew how to use one when i first bought my XP Home PC…so this is all i know. I have used Win ’98 on friend’s PC’s and I hate it !…I can only imagine how rough that ‘older’ version was. 😉
that’s progress
If you’re house cleaning don’t throw it out!!
I have successfully sold many copies of Dos 3.3, 6.0, 6.2 and Windows 95 on eBay. You’d be surprised how much old software sells for if you have the complete package. I’ve still got a couple of copies of Dos 6.2 left, any takers?
JP
wrote:
I guess i’m a little spoiled. I never even had a computer or knew how to use one when i first bought my XP Home PC…so this is all i know. I have used Win ’98 on friend’s PC’s and I hate it !…I can only imagine how rough that ‘older’ version was. 😉
that’s progress
You should try out a computer with Win95 before the first patches! Crashed so often the main function was rebooting…
OmG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Where did you get that.. 😉
Ray
I still have all my Windows related stuff. As I much as I… Don’t like it anymore… (got to be politically correct here…haha!), I kept my PC and its accessories, just in case something would come up and that I’d need a PC to run it.
I still have Windows 1.01, Windows 3.1, 3.11 and Win NT 3.51 (and up, in both cases). I never sold or got rid of any of these. I think I even have an OS/2 version 2.0 somewhere… Window List anyone?
Mac: That link was fabulous !!!!!!!!!! I didn’t remember the thing about overlapping windows in Windows 1.xx (well, I never really used Windows 1.xx , 2.xx I used it in college, a few times). I started with Windows 3.1, and later, upgraded to Windows 3.11 (I really had a home network..)
Ray
Memories.
SO, what was the first HOME COMPUTER and software that you ever bought?
Mine was a Texas Instrument TI-99 4a, hooked to a B&W TV, with a casette-recorder for storage. 16K of RAM and no ‘software’ other than the internal BASIC interpreter. I forced myself to purchase it because I was a real technology PHOBE, but was even more afraid of being ‘passed by’. The first thing I did with this (and really, the only worthwhile thing I did before deciding I needed to upgrade) was learn just enough BASIC to write a small program. It was a little thing, but it compressed 10 hours of boring sh*t work into 2 hours of boring sh*t data entry (it did the calculations, see?). I thought, "THIS IS MAGNIFICENT! A 5-TIMES SH*T REDUCTION!"
On the other hand, the experience taught me that I wasn’t ever going to be a really good programmer. And, you know, I never really got those 8 hours I was supposed to save. The company got ’em. 🙂
Original IBM PC. Double floppy 640K machine.
First thing I ever really did with it was program a 3 projector slide show. Soon as I could press some keys and a projector 10 feet away would light up, I was hooked.
M
I hate to tell you this, Mac, but you got the UPGRADE from the original IBM PC. Try 64K RAM with one, single-sided, 160K diskette drive. The 180K and double-sided 360K drives came later.
Because I’d been so ‘forward’ about computers, the IT department got me one of the first ‘3270’ PC’s. 256K RAM, one 360K drive, a colour screen WITHOUT graphics of any kind, and a 3270 terminal emulation card. Cost? $10,000 Canadian. Those mainframe guys sure knew how to spend!
Sounds like a neat project, though. All the mainframe guys were DYING to do something like that. Another accounting or inventory control program? No thanks!
SO, what was the first HOME COMPUTER and software that you ever bought?
A Commodore VIC-20 with 8k of ram, a cassette deck and a small, used green screen monitro.
Learned how to do pretty well with Basic Programming, though. Even wrote a view programs for stuff around the house.
Dick
Color Computer (a.k.a. Coco 1), 16Kb at 2h00 PM (64Kb at 4h00 PM), cassette deck, b&w 20" tv (that was cool… In fact, it still is, my first "monitor" was bigger than my current one!). It had Microsoft BASIC inside.
The first thing I did was opened up the manual, and looked for the graphics command.
I was satisfied, there were some. 4 colours at hi-res (I think it was 196 x 168 pixels, and the four colours were black, white, red and blue).
A few weeks later, it had a disk drive (160 Kb, it had to be enough, so I thought, at the time…), a printer (DMP-105 b&w, of course!), a mouse (with CocoMax, the best graphics package there was on the Coco).
I mostly did graphics at the time, and a programming (assembler and PASCAL). I also did my homeworks on it (word processing). It was cool, I mean, for the time.
That was in 1983.
In 1992, I was feeling nostalgic and I bought a Coco 3. 512Kb of RAM, 320 x 240 pixels in 8 colours (more if you knew how) graphics. But it had lost its appeal. I switched for a PC 18 months later.
Ray
The 180K and double-sided 360K drives came later.
Of course you are right, John…
But wasn’t the 2 drive 360k floppy machines the first ones generally offered for home users?
Although the first one of THOSE had 512k RAM rather than 640k
It’s hard to remember, yet only about 20 years ago.
I remember the big news at work among us "techies" around 89? was, "Hey, there’s another website out there now…that makes 10 of them!" Mosaic browser, most folks on 286 class machines, some on 386’s, pre Win3.1, either 2.0 or 3.0, more of can’t remember 🙂
M
JNB wrote:
I hate to tell you this, Mac, but you got the UPGRADE from the original IBM PC. Try 64K RAM with one, single-sided, 160K diskette drive. The 180K and double-sided 360K drives came later.
Because I’d been so ‘forward’ about computers, the IT department got me one of the first ‘3270’ PC’s. 256K RAM, one 360K drive, a colour screen WITHOUT graphics of any kind, and a 3270 terminal emulation card. Cost? $10,000 Canadian. Those mainframe guys sure knew how to spend!
Sounds like a neat project, though. All the mainframe guys were DYING to do something like that. Another accounting or inventory control program? No thanks!
I recall putting together the first IBM PC in Fort Worth. It came in 6 boxes, and you had to put it together. Plugged everything up, turned it on, and nothing but a > prompt appeared. Turned if off, checked everything, turned it back on. Same thing. Discussed it while awaiting appearance of smoke. Then ‘>Ready’ appeared. Seems it took about 30 seconds to test the massive 16k of ram. Sigh.
The model had only a cassette drive. Only one I saw without a floppy drive.
wrote:
SO, what was the first HOME COMPUTER and software that you ever bought?
A Commodore VIC-20 with 8k of ram, a cassette deck and a small, used green screen monitro.
Learned how to do pretty well with Basic Programming, though. Even wrote a view programs for stuff around the house.
Dick
Atari 800, 32k, Basic cart., cassette recorder. Cost $1080 in 1981. Used a 13" TV for display. Software? What I wrote.
Yes, Mac, it is EMBARRASSING, the details I’ve forgotten. I wasn’t ready (financially) to purchase an early PC. Earlier I had scraped together enough cash for an Osborne CP/M portable with 5", 52-character wide screen, and two 80K floppy drives. What drew me to it was the software: Basic, Compiled Basic, SuperCalc, Wordstar, and dBaseII. 64K of RAM was plenty for WordStar. But you had to ‘patch’ the software code in ‘hex’ in order to get bold or italic out of your dot-matrix printer. Visicalc had been out on Apple already, but SuperCalc was my first real chance to play with a spreadsheet. Blew my socks off!
Do you remember Quarterdeck’s Desqview multi-tasking for the DOS world?
Do you remember Quarterdeck’s Desqview multi-tasking for the DOS world?
I do, and QD’s various memory managers through the years, even necessary with Win3x.
And of course, when still with DOS, without Xtree you were hardpressed to keep up with everyting on hard drive (although with 10-40MB HD’s it wasn’t too difficult from the command line!).
Btw, I just put quarterdeck.com in brower window: goes to Symantec. Guess they bought them years ago.
M
