Reply to: Top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills

[wendigo100]

Ah.... WordStar... it seemed such an improvement on the line editor I used on the General Automation mini... my first introduction to the pc... what joy.

Control-k b, control K k, control k Y...

And stuff.

I could make it fly on the amstrad having setup all the function keys.


Then again, "@1/5,p" seems to be engraved on my memory (lists the first 5 lines of the file you've just opened in the GA editor).

Did anyone else ever use Wordwise, another tag-based text editor which came as a chip for the BBC micro?

[fzbucks]

I haven't seen an Apple computer for 10 years, but they seem to be doing OK somewhere, aren't they?

Anyone remember Apricot computers?

Or any other fruits?

My friend had an apricot - from what I remember it was like an old 286/386 running what looked like an amiga workbench style OS

[wendigo100]

I too have stuck ticker tape back together again.
I remember PDP 11s and Apricots.
Never did the punch card bits though.
Cut my serious programming teeth on Coral66 - now that has to be dead and gone surely?

I have a fond nostalgic aural memory of the sound of Decwriter III printers zipping their way through reams and reams of computer paper.

Anyone else remember Wordstar - one of the first true Word Processors which involved all sorts of control characters to do the fancy bits such as Bold?

Coral - we used that on military systems in GEC. Plus ADA. Don't know what happened to either of them, but I suspect zeity might.

I remember Wordstar. I used it in the late eighties/early nineties, and AmiPro and WordPerfect, before MS Word for Windows took over the world.

Anyone ever used Uniplex?

[miss marple]

I too have stuck ticker tape back together again.
I remember PDP 11s and Apricots.
Never did the punch card bits though.
Cut my serious programming teeth on Coral66 - now that has to be dead and gone surely?

I have a fond nostalgic aural memory of the sound of Decwriter III printers zipping their way through reams and reams of computer paper.

Anyone else remember Wordstar - one of the first true Word Processors which involved all sorts of control characters to do the fancy bits such as Bold?

[wendigo100]

I remember Primes. And various PDP 11s.

Anyone ever use a GEC 4000 machine?

[OwlHoot]

Anyone remember Prime minis, and their operating system Primos? I worked at Prime R&D for several years, measuring disk driver performance among other things. I chucked out a huge stack of PE-Ts and PE-TIs last year - Ex Primates will probably know what those were.

I went for an interview about five years ago, and the guy said they had their last Prime in the basement, decommissioned and waiting to be taken away for scrap - It was the final model Prime ever released, for God knows how much, and less powerful than one of today's high-end PCs costing under a grand.

[Churchill]

So did Windows in those days.

Yes I remember it, I may still have the disks. It was prettier than Windows, and some software (e.g. Ventura DTP) ran only on it and not on Windows; but ultimately Gem was a dead end because it was only trying to be an interface, whereas Windows was trying to be an OS. It took it 15 years but it did get there.

Eventually Ventura did run under Windows...

[Euro-commuter]

Does anyone rember the 'Gem' desktop, it sat on top of Dos....

So did Windows in those days.

Yes I remember it, I may still have the disks. It was prettier than Windows, and some software (e.g. Ventura DTP) ran only on it and not on Windows; but ultimately Gem was a dead end because it was only trying to be an interface, whereas Windows was trying to be an OS. It took it 15 years but it did get there.

[n5gooner]

or...how about to Apollo guidence computer......


http://rocinante.colorado.edu/~wilms...rs/apollo.html

[n5gooner]

how about 'sketch'


http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/retroc...g/ibm/stretch/

[n5gooner]

I haven't seen an Apple computer for 10 years, but they seem to be doing OK somewhere, aren't they?

Anyone remember Apricot computers?

Or any other fruits?

how about Tulip....I know its not a fruit but hey....still weired.

[n5gooner]

My eyes haven't recovered from the CGA monitor on the 1512...

never touched an Amstrad, they were difficult to upgrade, having said that my friend did get a harddrive card, the sort that would fit into an 8bit slot, as soon as I could I binned my Ferranti and aquired an IBM AT, which you could upgrade, and even replace the motherboard.....

[wendigo100]

I haven't seen an Apple computer for 10 years, but they seem to be doing OK somewhere, aren't they?

Anyone remember Apricot computers?

Or any other fruits?

[wendigo100]

Being able to stick ticker tape back together.

Anyone seen one of those plastic braile thingies you used to align the ends? I never used to use them meself...

I've done that. Never used punched cards though.

[n5gooner]

I saw a contract on jobserve a couple of days ago for someone with embedded skills & knowledge of dos...

lol, I had a Ferranti pc at the time running on an 8086 cpu (Dos 3.1), my friend just bought a with 5.25" Amstrad with Gem installed.