jwcolby
jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Tue Oct 9 19:25:29 CDT 2007
>Mine had only 64K and only 56 of that was usable! LOL. The board directly supported 256 kbit ram chips. But... if you soldered a chip on top of the bottom chip, and bent the RAS pin up on that top chip, you could solder just that pin down into another trace to add another 256 Kbytes onto the board. So of course I did that mod. Having 512 kbytes was totally awesome at the time. Most of the SBCs (single board computers as they were known) were only 64K or perhaps 128K. I had an 80186 (full 16 bit processor) running at 16 mhz, and this was ~1983. In 1986 I bought the Epson PCXT which used the 8088 (8 bit path to memory) running at 12 mhz. It was actually SLOWER than the machine I built myself but it ran DOS instead of CPM which was dying by then. Plus it has a hard disk and could use extended memory. John W. Colby Colby Consulting www.ColbyConsulting.com -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Charlotte Foust Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2007 7:20 PM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: Re: [AccessD] OT Tuesday? FW: The Most Collectible PCs 512K?? Mine had only 64K and only 56 of that was usable! Charlotte Foust -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2007 8:59 AM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: Re: [AccessD] OT Tuesday? FW: The Most Collectible PCs >My first PC came with WordStar, VisiCalc and dBASE II, plus CP/M. LOL. My first PC I built from a kit. It had 512K or ram and didn't come with anything. I ran CPM on it, and any software of interest that I could download off of the bulletin boards that I dialed into using a 2400 baud modem. Stored them on a dual drive 8 inch floppy (which cost me $750) with a whopping 1 meg storage per floppy. I was writing programs in Turbo Pascal at that time (~1983). My first "PC" pc was an Epson PCXT with DOS, and I purchased Dbase III Plus, Word Perfect and Lotus 123. That would have been ~1986 or so. An XT machine with a 10 meg disk and (gasp) FIVE MEGS of ram, most of which was just used as a RAM disk since DOS did not directly support more than about 640K at that time. I knew I was "famous" when I got a call from a person in New York (I was living in San Diego at that time) who had downloaded one of my programs off of a bulletin board somewhere and wanted me to make some mod or another. My wife harasses me to this day about deleting WP from her computer when I tired of supporting (her using) it after I had switched to Word back in the mid 90s. John W. Colby Colby Consulting www.ColbyConsulting.com -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Arthur Fuller Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2007 11:29 AM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: Re: [AccessD] OT Tuesday? FW: The Most Collectible PCs My first PC came with WordStar, VisiCalc and dBASE II, plus CP/M. I learned WS in two days, VC in two days, and I've spent the rest of my life trying to learn databases LOL. A. On 10/9/07, Rocky Smolin at Beach Access Software <rockysmolin at bchacc.com> wrote: > > Worth a few minutes if you're old enough. Under 30? Don't even > bother clicking the link. > > Easter egg: there's a link in there on one of the pages to download > your own copy of VisiCalc. > > http://tech.msn.com/products/slideshow.aspx?cp-documentid=5428179 > < > http://tech.msn.com/products/slideshow.aspx?cp-documentid=5428179>1= > 10438 > > >1=10438 > > Rocky Smolin > -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com