Ah, those olden computer days

[DenGar]

Computers and newspapers in "primitive" 1981: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WCTn4Fl ... r_embedded

[HansV]

Oh, that internet thing was just a fad, it never became a success...

[ChrisGreaves]

Computers and newspapers in "primitive" 1981

It'll never get off the ground.
Not with a rotary phone.
And an acoustic coupler.
And why would you WANT an online newspaper without ads, huh?
I'm with Hans on this one.

OTOH if the lady news announcer could just get her lip-sync right, ....

P.S. I like the fact that you can choose what font color you like best - green or blue.

I should add that I do envy that Richard Halloran guy; he has his own computer. Looks like he's one of those multi-millionaire guys, so I shouldn't really be surprised. He has his head screwed on right, though, because he has grasped the great value of being able to read the news online and then print it out onto paper!.

I would have thought that it would take a lot longer than two hours to download the newspaper, so at least we are making great progress in some areas. It sure beats having to buy one off the street on the way into the building.

[BobH]

Didn't you just love the Trash 80, too!

[John Gray]

I suppose you could call that YouTube video a "Kron job"?

Of course (late) 1981 was famous for the coming of the original IBM PC with the 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 and as much as 64 MB of memory, and one or two 360 kB diskette drives.

When you think of it, we haven't really advanced very far in technology in nearly 30 years...

[BobH]

Of course (late) 1981 was famous for the coming of the original IBM PC with the 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 and as much as 64 MB of memory, and one or two 360 kB diskette drives.

I believe my first IBM-PC - purchased in December 1981 -was as you described except that it had 256 MB of RAM. I can remember that, some time later, I purchased a 5MB Hard Card disk drive that plugged into an expansion slot and thought I'd gone to Nirvana.

I also have a set of the original Windows software shipped on 5.25" floppy disks that I tried to run on that PC. I was not impressed and resisted Windows in favor of command line usage even after I'd upgraded to a 386 machine. I didn't change my mind until I discovered my then 6 yo daughter playing with Paint and using the mouse like she was born with it in her hand. To my knowledge she had never seen Windows or Paint until that day - or so she claimed.

[jstevens]

My very first computer and it still works. I purchased it in the early 80's and it was a dual-floppy system. I believe when the first hard drive came out I upgraded it. If my memory servers me right, it was 20 MB. Woo Hoo!

photo.png

It brings back fond memories and a tear to my eye. That darn green monochrome screen was hard on the eyes.

Regards,
John