My first computer (1970)

[Rolf]

Hi,

here 2 images and something to smile. This was my first computer I worked with. I was a student and to finance my study I worked at the IT department of a large company.

This computer was a UNIVAC 1050-III of the Sperry Rand Corporation. The central processing unit (2nd image) have had 8 KByte !!!! internal memory.
You can see the memory block below on the right side.

The company employed at that time approx 8000 people and millions of Deutsch Marks sales etc. The IT department was able to write invoices, the complete accounting department, salery accounting ec.

Programming language was not Fortran, Cobol, PL1 or something like this, it was a strange mnemonic code with unbelievable instructions.

The IT department had a chain printer. With a special programm it was possible to change the speed of the chain and in combination with a nice printing programm the printer was able to make "music" when he printed a picture.

That was the best programm we used when outside visitors have had a look into our department. It was a great time.

[LucisPictor]

Great, Rolf!
Fascinating pictures.

My first own computer was this one:

Source: http://www.henseleit.de/bilder/800px-Commodore64.jpg

And the first I have ever used was this one:

Source: http://www.old-computers.com/MUSEUM/photos/apple_IIe.jpg

It seems, I'm a lot younger than you are.

[Nesster]

Oh that's cool. I did manage to learn Cobol and Assembler on punch cards... and one of my first jobs entailed programming a MICR reader. But no pics

I was reminded though of another vintage pursuit - all things tube. Vacuum Tube Valley (located in Silicon valley of course) was/is an excellent resource, I think the magazine's long gone... they had a couple of fantastic articles on early vacuum tube computers.
http://www.vacuumtube.com/

[Attila]

Great ! I did start lot more later with ZX Spectrum.

[Rolf]

Never owned Commodore C64, Sinclair or Atari. Between 1970 and approx. 1980 I worked (but not as an IT man) only with larger computers like IBM 360 etc.

My first own PC was a TRS80 from Tandy Radio Shack with a Z80 CPU in it, operating systems was CP/M. A short time later I founded my first own electronic company and in 1982 we built for our in-house usage our own PC´s based on an IBM clone (Intel 8088, 8086 and then later 80286).

My company was in 1982 one of the first customers of NOVELL here in Germany with a fully working local area network with a lot of PC based on ARCnet.

I have in my desk an old private telephone book with hundred and thousands of telephone-numbers. One of them is a number in Utah of Novell where I called at that time if there were problems we couldn´t solve.

I remember that there was a nice guy on the other side of the line who was very happy that his software had reached good old Germany.

It was an exciting time, every day new technologies, new products, new ideas and so on.

And today ? I´m sitting behind my nicely designed IMAC and take sometimes photos with lenses which were at 1970 already older. Crazy world.

And no, I´m not sentimental

[Attila]

That was a great time.

[poilu]

great portrait,
no, I don't think that you are sentimental
btw, have you a punched card reader on your imac

[hinnerker]

[cooltouch]

I too still own my first computer, which I bought in 1985. It is a PC XT clone with a 4.77Mhz 8088, 640kb of RAM and a 20MB hard drive. Shortly after I bought it, I also bought the 8087 math coprocessor chip for it. Hercules graphics card and monochrome monitor.

I have written often for publication and to me getting a computer that I could use for word processing was a god-send. I was very productive on that computer. Wrote a few books and countless articles with it, using WordPerfect v4.2.

About a year after I bought it, I installed a 1200 baud modem, and discovered the world of online computing. BBSes. I was sucked in rather quickly, and really haven't looked back since.

[shauttra]

i rememmber my first computer, it was russian BK 0100 (attached to TV), program language Focal or Basic-86. It was funny!

[Rolf]

When we have had enough experiences with our in-house systems i decided to start with an additional new business modell for our company.

In 1985 we rented a very prestigious store in our town and a short time later we opened the first computer store there and tried out this business.

At that time the IMB AT (80286) was new few weeks on the market and for such a system the customer has to paid with monitor and printer sometimes more than 10.000 Deutsch Marks.

There was nothing with cash & carry or moving the PC over the counter or saying to the customer, if you have problems with your PC you have 1 year bring-in guarantee.

It was a real investment for the customer and therefore it was necessary to make the business in a more dignified ambiance (greetings to Apple )

The PC was shipped with a technician to the customer including a first training of several hours.

But the business changed rapidly and more and more the low-cost box-pusher came on the market. Prices down, service down and insufficient quality.

We decided to stop this business experiment and concentrated on our primary business. At that time one or two other competitors started with their business, one of them was VOBIS - in the 90´s one of the largest computer dealer here in Germany until they made some wrong bsiness decisions.

Here 2 images of our computer shop at that time

[cooltouch]

Oh yeah, brings back memories. Hehe, the old monitor, 5-1/4" floppies, that old XT-style keyboard -- with the function keys arranged vertically on the left, where God intended them to be. I still don't like, and have never gotten used to, the horizontal row of function keys.

Oh, and I remember very well the screen shot in the first pic -- the famous Autocad image of the Space Shuttle.

[Rolf]

Hi Michael,

as I can read you are an "old" expert of those things too. That is now 25 years ago - unbelievable !! Good to see that I´m here not the technical grandfather alone

Yes - it was the famous Autocad image of the Space Shuttle. One of the companies out of that time still existing. The monitor was one of the best you could buy it here in Germany with a VGA resolution. If I remember correct the price was above 3.000,00 Deutsch Marks.

On the desk beside the monitor is a plotter. Due to the fact that we have had a lot of customers with technical background it was necessary to demonstrate how they could plot their drawings.

[cooltouch]

[Farside]

My first brush with anything like punched media was paper tape in '69 or 70 - dead easy to read in its native format. Some years later I was aghast to find my local college was still teaching about punched cards, when they'd long since died out in commercial use. What a pointless waste of teaching time that was.
I still have (and am still using) the keyboard from my first IBM AT machine - a Model M from about 1986, still going strong. No modern keyboard is anything like it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_M_keyboard

[Scheimpflug]

I have a still-sealed box of brand new 8" floppies back home. I've been saving it, waiting for the day they skyrocket in value.

[greg]

Personal: Timex Sinclair purchased at the neighborhood drug store - one kb of memory if I remember correctly. Could use assembly to program.

Professional: #5 Crossbar and #1 ESS at New York Telco.

[Jieffe]