I still recall driving from Windsor ON to Buffalo NY to look at a hard drive. Hooked up to a Mac Plus, the thing came to life and plopped itself on the desktop, the room gasped. I put my $795.00US down and bought one on the spot. I waited for 3 weeks to get it. It was heaven. . . . . .
5 MB
I still have my first 128K Mac. WITH extra floppy drive. sn 4016. I am NOT going to say what I paid for that (new) should my ex ever read this and explain why she didn't get that swimming-pool that year....(Wringing hands with glee) Yessir.. 128K of whopping RAM (more in my watch now)
I'm happy with Panther also, but with my wife's XPpro on a big Dell... not enough of a difference to matter. The biggest reason why my Mac is still my #1 box, is that all my Filemaker RDBMS stuff and CAD docs are accessed every day. But the days of having the best computer by miles are gone. So I hung my smug face up next to my Fender Telecaster.
This coming April, this box (G3 B&W) will have been on and running for 4 years without a single crash... and I make it jump through hoops. It went down with a couple of power failures (One big one a cpl of summers back) but it righted itself right after the power came back on. Not a virus or a worm...dead solid, flawless performance.
And as far as the wife's XPpro box at work is concerned? They have an IT department that keeps the hospital humming. All is well.
*whispers* (psssst... she finishes her presentations off at home, MS Powerpoint, on her Mac G-4 Powerbook.... and don't tell anybody, but Bill Gates' 'Residential Compound' was designed on Macs...fact.) Hell, if Mary Matlin and James Carville can live together, I can have a PC and a Mac in my house, right?
1). Teletype connected to University of MN
2). Univac AN/YUK ... can't remember anymore. US Navy, CRPI (Card Read/Punch/Interpreter), reel to reel tapes.
3). IBM CE training on the EAM equipment (029 keypunch, 402 accounting machine)
4). Burroughs L8200 - First in the Navy, 12k RAM, 3 cassette tape drives - ones you didn't have to press "play" to make work.
5). IBM 360/40, with Memorex's version of the 2314 what was it? 29mb removable packs. The Ops manager was so excited as they were the first voice-coil activated drives to replace the hydraulic actuators. The venerable 1403-N1 printer.
6). Brief encounter with IBM 1401, and I think 10mb removable disk packs. To reproduce a deck of cards you had to interleave blank cards with the source. And the printer included some kind of inverted comb.
7). Commodore Vic-20, 4kb of ram, and sprites!
8). Commodore 64
9). PC Junior, stacked with expansion jazz
10). Dual-processor Compaq "luggable" with 80186 daughter board, there wasn't enough oomph left in the power supply to run a 20mb HDD. ...
What a pain those were. I had a friend was standing next to one when a head caught a platter and went through the case and into the wall couple of feet from him.
Mike Patterson Please remove the spamtrap to email me. "I always wanted to be somebody...I should have been more specific..." - Lily Tomlin
Remember the plastic boxes for holding .5.25 floppies. A crappy plastic box with a flip up lid $30. I was making them out of oak with roll tops and selling them for just a bit more to friends in the computer club. I still have my pine prototype roll top and use it everyday. The roll top was made with a chunk of my wife's old blue jeans and 1/8 paneling. It was one of my first ever wood working projects. I'll post a picture in the binary group so youse can all have a good laugh.
Do I get a prize for bringing the thread back on topic.
Me neither I probably have every floppy I ever made from the early 80s.
There's a company online that sells "obsolete media". Google for them, they might be interested in giving you more than nothing for them. If you can't find the link, let me know and I'll find it.
Well, they're mylar and iron oxide, so it's not like they're all _that_ nasty, but of course, I understand.
4-wire dedicated analog modems!) that used RL02s with a PDP11/44, later replaced by 11/70s, later still with a microVax running flavors of RSX-11M.
I was regional tech support for that system for 3 years. It seemed so cool then, but looking back on it makes me wonder what things will look like in 20 years when I retire.
Mike Patterson Please remove the spamtrap to email me. "I always wanted to be somebody...I should have been more specific..." - Lily Tomlin
I got one the first month they were available and recently retired it. (I have a new NK at work and the change in layout of the Home End PageUp... keys changed. I wanted to have the same layout at home and at work.)
It's grungy, showing I spent many hours using it, but you can have it if you want. It was working fine when I unplugged it. Remove the obvious to reply by mail.
Seems that is in the neighborhood of what I paid for my 10-MB external drive for my Epson QX-10 (CPM, much better than DOS, had the opportunity to compare). Like yours, it was heaven. (1984, 85?)
Understood. I still have both of my original QX-10 machines. But then I also have all of the DOS and later Windows machines I bought in addition to my Macs. I don't even want to think of how many computers are in this house/basement/garage! Must remember, however, computers were the base of my secretarial/bookkeeping service bureau, and I had to buy newer/better to keep current. Now, my computers are mostly just for fun. :-) (It is nice to choose when to buy new rather than be "forced" into it by market.) Though what started out as fun has helped me immensely at work. No kidding, I designed my granddaughter's bedside table on InDesign, not even that kind of program, it's a page layout program (publishing, newspapers, magazines). Like a hammer and saw, it all depends on the user what can be created, inventive can result in some unusual results. Note: I *do not* recommend using what is a intricate word processing program for furniture design! I did it more for the challenge than for practical use; but I don't have any type of drafting program, and it worked.
LOL. Methinks the diehard Mac users have something to be satisfied with; like any, it's how it's used that matters. I made the switch in 2000 for iMovie because of my interest in Video. I taught DOS and Windows (all flavors)through my business, two school districts' community ed programs, then at Computer City at Jantzen Beach in Portland until they went bye-bye. Now it's only an occasional Mac class at PMUG (taught one last night) and was college dean for a year or so (that one is volunteer!) until I went to work where I am now. I could not list all of the programs I've taught and even fewer of all that I've used; no one would believe it anyway. My eldest son has even more but started later than me, and hates Windows (refers all Windows requests to other consultants). Each O/S has its place and its champions.
What CAD programs do you use on your Mac?
My G-4 (this one) has been on my desk since August 2004. On it, I've learned iMovie (simple), FinalCut Pro, FileMaker Pro, PhotoShop, InDesign (preceded by FrameMaker and Quark), QuickBooks, and on and on and on. Versatility can be both a blessing and a curse. It's like hobbies, what takes priority, the shop, the garden, the yard, the sewing machine, what?
LOL, I won't tell. I know folks that run emulators so they can use their Macs for business-specific programs (inspectors, florists, etc.) that are part of a corporation environment.
They both have their place. Both my desktop PC and Mac (OS 9 and X) are on their respective desks and powered up most of the time. The laptop (which has Panther installed, previously Jaguar) doesn't get as much use since I have Panther at work. *And* I'm spoiled at work with dual monitors!!!
Windows 3.1 for Workgroups is what I went back to on my PC as it is so much more stable than all the others. I didn't even take 98 out of the box and wasn't interested in the others after I explored them. It does what I need there, *and* I have my Mac for the "fancy" stuff. :-)
All of them have served me well.
Enjoy.
BTW, are you aware of any low-end drafting type programs to be used for simple projects for the Mac? (Middle son, P.E., is a mite busy with work, family and church so not much time to draw for me, and I like to do stuff myself anyway, maybe let him refine it.)
If I hadn't returned it, you could have mine. Everyone raved about them so I bought one, just too entrenched in my hand/finger movements to adapt to it and returned it after two or three weeks of trying. To this day, everyone else I know who used one absolutely loved/loves them. My oldest son has a really bizarre keyboard on his desktop Mac, another which I cannot use. (Old dogs, new tricks thing, I guess.)
There was a joke that went along with the SHELL OIL bit. You would pretend to make several calculations that ended up pointing to Shell Oil having all the money.
Microspot MacDraft PE 5.5 Quartz Edition hands down.
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'll find the environment instantly familiar from the MacDraw days. (MacPaint even..lol) Microspot has never taken the eye off the ball when it came to CAD on the Mac. US$ 116.00 that's for the download version. For the same price, Microspot Interiors for OSX is a lot of fun. Download a demo?
I use Vectorworks 10 by Nemetschek.
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I have been with them since it was designed for a mini computer (You know, the ones the size of a washer dryer) and called MiniCAD. I still have the MiniCAD 1 manuals. *S*
When loyal MiniCAD users were constantly complaining that the name MiniCAD gave the wrong impression of its capabilities, they finally broke down when OS X was on the horizon and called it Vectoworks.
Daniel Libeskind won the World Trade Center Design Study competition in New York City..The Freedom Tower.. another happy Vectorworks user. *VBS*
It's everything anybody could want in a CAD program. AutoCAD has nothing better to offer (for me) and I say this with confidence, because I took AutoCAD for 3 years at the local college and have my 3D-modelling diploma from them. I did that because most industry around here is all AutoCAD.
Vectorworks supports .dwg file formats flawlessly, it is not an issue. VectorWorks is my program of choice because of its versatility and comprehensiveness. Another important factor is that it has been around for a long time with a refined interface and good support. It is also a lot of bang for the buck..... even though it is US 1345.00.. that is with Renderworks included. ( I have a LOT more invested if you add up about 10 major upgrades over the last 15 years... hence.. the Mac. Vectorworks is available for Windows, and people are happy with that.
I am hearing a lot about SketchUp for Mac OSX. I have a demo of it, but I have yet to take the time to look at it. That's under US$ 500.00
I had a TI-30 scientific calculator in about, er, 1979 or so, that came with a "calculator workbook" with a whole list of these silly calculator games in it. The ShellOil one is definately in there, I think I can find the book (scary, that). The calculator itself has long ago gone to the great place in the parts bin, but my everyday desk calculator is a TI-31 Solar that I bought in
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