Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/03/20
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]My first personal computer was the Apple II+ in 1979. That was a huge investment for us then. I believe it was around $2000 with 48K of Ram, a green monochrome monitor and I think a 5 1/4 floppy drive that held something ridiculous like 160K. We eventually bought a second floppy for about $500. My wife was in Real Estate. We bought a 300 baud modem to connect to the Board of Realtors data base. Now that was fun. I eventually got a CP/M card with 64K of it's own ram. Then we ran Supercalc and Wordstar. In 1985 I sold the whole thing for $500 including all the software I had. We bought an 8088 machine. At work we were high class. IBM sent us a prototype pc to develop a modem for them. It was hand wired, one of the first prototypes. The operating system was on a cassette tape. I don't know if we ever made the modem as I was assigned to a project that we were putting into production. As I recall the IBM had 256 K of ram. Len On Mar 20, 2007, at 2:34 PM, Jim Nichols wrote: > Marc, > > Working at a government installation, my computer choice was made > by others. My first computer that they provided was a Xerox, model > forgotten, that used two 8-inch floppies, one providing the CP/M > operating system and the second handling the application software > and data. It provided a good introduction to spreadsheets. Their > next generation purchase was a Zenith 286 PC, which I was able to > get with two 20MB hard drives. IBM PCs were only available to those > who could justify them on the basis of some particular project need. > > Jim Nichols > Tullahoma, TN USA > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marc James Small" > <marcsmall@comcast.net> > To: "Leica Users Group" <lug@leica-users.org> > Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 11:04 AM > Subject: Re: [Leica] First computer > > >> At 02:16 AM 3/20/2007, Adam Bridge wrote: >> >TRS-80's were ROM based, Marc. They had a BASIC in ROM. Their mass >> >storage was to cassette. There was a 2nd generation (and beyond) >> that >> >had a DOS but I don't remember what it was. I don't think it was >> CP/M. >> >> Thanks, Adam. >> >> The "laptop" that Radio Shack marketed in the early 1980's was a >> CP/M machine. I went from a Sinclair to a Commodore 64 to one of >> those laptops (model number forgotten) to my first PC. >> >> Marc >> >> >> msmall@aya.yale.edu >> Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir! >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Leica Users Group. >> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information > > > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information