sudden hit of nostalgia.. Sanyo MBC-555

[Meditate!]

4 minutes ago, jwhess said:

Floppy drives have been mentioned.  Do you remember  the movie "War Games"?  That Imsai 8080 computer was hooked up to a dual*" floppy drive..  I still have an 8" drive in the garage (and disks).  We had 8" 160 KB disks single sided.  Later 5" disks with several sizes squeezed in.  The the not so "floppy" 3 1/2" hard shelled disks of 1.44 MB.  The Watchtower Society eventually made the NWT Bible available on the "Folio" set of 3 1/2" diskettes (it took about a dozen of them). Here are the memory visuals, first is an actual shot of the Imsai used in the movie, then the disk size comparison and finally a standard 8" drive and disk with a 3 1/2" in the foreground for size comparison...

 

 

Wow Full height Floppies!!!! I do remeber the quality of those drives.. mostly can aluminium. You could build a wall with them!

 

Heard of 8" floppies but never seen one.. although i did rescue an 8 Mb Tandy TRS hard drive from a skip (large waste container UK).. it was massive!

 

Good catch with that image John... yes i remember fondly the War Games movie!...  

 

 

[Qapla]

The first programming I did was with "punch cards" -- there were no "home computers" at that time.

 

My first experience on a "home computer" was the TRS-80 in 1977 (later named the Tandy Model I) with 4K memory, a tape drive with cassette and a monochrome monitor - it ran TRSDOS and BASIC ... MS-DOS was not around until 1981 - well, neither was the IBM PC

 

I moved on to use the Tandy Model II that used the 8" floppies and kept going with the changes as they came. I still have some 8", 5.25" and 3.5" disks.

 

 

Anyone remember GeoWorks? or DR-DOS?

[jwhess]

3 hours ago, Qapla said:

The first programming I did was with "punch cards" -- there were no "home computers" at that time.

 

My first experience on a "home computer" was the TRS-80 in 1977 (later named the Tandy Model I) with 4K memory, a tape drive with cassette and a monochrome monitor - it ran TRSDOS and BASIC ... MS-DOS was not around until 1981 - well, neither was the IBM PC

 

I moved on to use the Tandy Model II that used the 8" floppies and kept going with the changes as they came. I still have some 8", 5.25" and 3.5" disks.

 

 

Anyone remember GeoWorks? or DR-DOS?

Using DR-DOS (Digital Research Disk Operating System) was cheaper than trying to purchase new copies of Microsoft Dos (MS-DOS).  It ran OK on my systems.

 

In 1983 Tandy (Radio Shack) upgraded their system to the Model 2000.  The older 1000 unit had standard Intel 8086 4.7 Mhz CPU.  The new 2000 unit upgraded to the Intel 80186 8 Mhz CPU.  It was one of the few companies that ever mounted the 80186.  Our college leased these units in 1985 to run the AutoCAD program.  This computer was far advance in graphics and ran a color monitor at VGA graphics standards.  It was amazing.  But it did not share the regular IBM slot architecture and this eventually led to the demise of the 2000.  Then everybody moved on to the Intel 80286 (IBM AT architecture) and the race was on.

 

This is a catalog shot from around 1984...Look at the color graphics on the screen.

 

 

[On the huh]

My school's computer room had a 8 inch drive.  All the computers were networked to the main one with the drive.  So whenever the teacher wanted to load something in the computers, it all came from the main one.  It took ages to load onto all the computers.

 

A PC I wanted but never could afford was the Amstrad Mega PC.  It combined a PC with a Sega Mega Drive (Genesis)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_Mega_PC

Here is a picture I got from google.

 

Edited July 10, 2019 by Jonathan77

[pnutts]

Remember the Zip drive? Looked like a very think 3.5" floppy.

Held about 100 Mb.

Edited July 10, 2019 by pnutts

[On the huh]

I had an LS-120 Super Floppy drive.  It stored 120mb on a disk, and the drive could also read 1.44mb.  It was supposed to be the next generation floppy drive, but didn't catch on.  I think the zip drive was one reason, it was more popular, but CDRW's and USB drives were also making their way onto the market.   A new model LS-240 was also released, but it was too late, the floppy drive was on its way out.

[Qapla]

The TRS-80 II was aimed a bit towards businesses. It had the 8" drive

 

You could "upgrade" it with the "drive bay" that had 3 8" drives in a single case

 

This made quite a professional looking computer desk with a printer attached

 

Then they added this

 

Many thought that there would never be a need for more storage space than this setup provided for a small business - how things have changed

 

 

 

I used to do some programming work for a guy who had this setup

Edited July 10, 2019 by Qapla

[jwhess]

I was researching something else and I came across this notice in the November 1997 Kingdom Ministry.  It is announcing our having information available on an internet website.  We were using www.watchtower.org as the location for all JW contact.  More than 22 years ago. Someone posted a previous picture from that time.

 

*** km 11/97 p. 3 Good News on the Internet ***
Good News on the Internet
In our technological age, some people obtain information from electronic sources, including the Internet. So the Society has put on the Internet some accurate information about the beliefs and activities of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Our Internet Web site has the address http://www.watchtower.org and contains a selection of tracts, brochures, and Watchtower and Awake! articles in English, Chinese (Simplified), German, Russian, and Spanish, as well as in other languages. The publications on this Web site are already available through the congregations and are in use in the ministry. The purpose of our Web site is, not to release new publications, but to make information available to the public in electronic format. There is no need for any individual to prepare Internet pages about Jehovah’s Witnesses, our activities, or our beliefs. Our official site presents accurate information for any who want it.
Although our site has no provision for electronic messages (E-mail), it lists postal addresses of branches around the globe. Thus people can write to obtain more information or to receive personal assistance from Witnesses locally. Feel free to share the above Internet address with any who might be inclined to begin learning Bible truth from this format.

 

This sight no longer works (it has gone dark).  It used to redirect you to JW.ORG but does not do so now.