Interesting facts

[plantfit 7,580]

The only place I know where if you buy a new car the salesman asks if you want a "Three point linkage" fitting

 

Rog

[loppylugs 8,427]

3 hours ago, plantfit said:

According to an old English system of time units, a moment is one and a half minutes

 

Rog

h

So I guess 'arf a mo'  is 3/4 of a minute?  

[denshaw 2,871]

Surely arf a mo is either m or o ?

[loppylugs 8,427]

Now you're hair splitting, Den.  

[plantfit 7,580]

Or it could be "N" thats between M and O ,

 

Rog

[loppylugs 8,427]

We're gonna need a slide rule at this rate. 

[Oztalgian 3,270]

I've still got my Thornton comprehensive slide rule. Don't think I can do much more than multiply or divide on it now

I then graduated to a HP45, never really took to the reverse polish notation input. Cost a bomb in the early seventies.

[loppylugs 8,427]

I remember coming home from work one day in the early seventies and the wife said, our friend had bought a computer!  I had visions of a whole bedroom full of big cabinets with tape reels running on them.  So we went up to see it.  First calculator I had ever seen.  Cost over $500.  Long time before I got one.

[denshaw 2,871]

An ex boss of mine had a pocket calculator in 1975, sure it cost about £35. That was about a weeks wages to me.

[jonab 1,644]

Clive Sinclair was one of the pocket calculator pioneers and, in association with Wireless World magazine (I think it was that), they did a construct-it-yourself calculator. 1972 or 3, I think. I built one. Certainly tested one's soldering skills.

[jonab 1,644]

The first 'proper' computer I owned was a Sharp MZ80 which I bought (after queueing for many hours) from the sale at Lasky's on Tottenham Court Road in 1978. It was a great machine for its time and I learned computer programming (Basic) on that machine.

It is described in the link but I'm sure they have the dates wrong. It cost me £100 more or less (quite a lot of money in those days and that was the sale price).

http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/2867/Sharp-MZ-80K/

[philmayfield 6,115]

I’ve still got my Thornton slide rule. It sits on top of the case of my old brass chemical beam balance which I still use occasionally. Oh how I love old technology!

[plantfit 7,580]

New technology won't last as long as the older stuff,nothing built to last these days

 

Rog

[philmayfield 6,115]

I do like new technology though, especially in cars. I’m a sucker for gizmos. They use to call me ‘gadget man’!

[loppylugs 8,427]

First desktop computer I ever owned was an Atari 520 ST  Full colour monitor  and 512K memory.  In many ways a bit before its time  1984.   M$ was still using DOS.  I don't think Atari ever got over its video game image and a lot of folks never took it seriously.  I stayed with Atari to the end and my final one was a four megabyte machine.  Seemed like a lot at the time.  It had desktop publishing software,   Wd processor, etc.  I never could beat the so and so at Chess.  Expensive but reasonable compared to the M$ compatible offerings.  There were many Atarians that thought that MS used the Atari graphic interface to develop Windows.  I don't know if that is true, but Win 3.1 had a lot of similarities

[Brew 5,408]

I built my first computer back in the 80's. The with the second largest hard drive on the market (40Mb) and a whole 4 megs of ram!

The operating system was DR DOS. 

[loppylugs 8,427]

You did well to build it back then Brew  seemed to be a pretty esoteric science back then.

 

I remember the first radio shack computer I saw back then using a friends tv as a monitor.  I remember thinking, interesting but what the heck use is it?  Little did I know.

[Brew 5,408]

I watched some IT guys at work put one together, it was/is ridiculously easy! although the one they put together was a dumb terminal it's the same principal.I can build a quite high end computer in about 40 minutes. Setting up the operating system plus programs about 2 hours.

 

To build a basic machine there are only five components. In the past you needed a separate graphic card, sound card, network card etc. now they are on the mainboard ready to go.

[loppylugs 8,427]

Yes, I built my last one.  Really only for video editing.  Win 7 64 bit, 6 gig of ram and a couple of 1 TB drives.  Took me a bit longer than you but I'd never done it before.  No problems with the operating system and I never connect it to the internet so no virus issues or M$ endless updates to worry about.  It does what I want it to well and I'm happy with it.

[jonab 1,644]

I've built several desktop computers - mainly because it was not possible at the time to buy a ready-made one that had the features I wanted plus the fact that most, if not all, computers until recently were preloaded with rubbish software and games which were of absolutely no use or interest to me.

Building your own computer is not so much a technical exercise in electronics, more assembling a kit of parts. As long as you know which bits are needed and what goes where goes the construction is easy.

You do get a huge sense of achievement when the thing is built - and you know it will do what you need it to do at a fraction of the cost of a pre-made commercial machine and without a load of junk software that you need to delete - although that aspect is not so common now, I believe.

[radfordred 6,284]

Nothing starts with N and ends with G.

[philmayfield 6,115]

Nagging, numbing, nursing, nailing. I could go on!

 

 

 

 

[radfordred 6,284]

43 minutes ago, philmayfield said:

I could go on!

 

Please do 

[philmayfield 6,115]

Try the dictionary. It's a boring read but it does explain every word as it goes along.

[Beekay 5,134]

Started to read BT directory, but soon got bored. Too many characters.