Computer of the Future

[citiboyz]

Y'all will enjoy this bit of nostalgia from 1954. Does anyone know what the steering wheel was for?

[basschick]

april fools?

my dad worked on computer huts when i was little. it took an entire hut a little bigger than my bathroom FULL of computer equipment to do the job of something smaller than a pentium 75 *grin*

but it didn't have a steering wheel.

[Xstr8guy]

Lol, that is hilarious! I just showed my partner the picture and the first thing out of his mouth, "what is the steering wheel for?" And he didn't even read your comment. Haha.

[DigitalJay]

I still really miss my old Tandy CoCo II. I got it when I was six or seven. I replaced it with an Apple IIe and it got buried in a closet somewhere and forgotten. I grew up with those, I can't imagine a computer that dosn't fit on a desk. They weren't very forward thinking though if they couldn't imagine a computer that could.

[GPallan]

Does anyone know what the steering wheel was for?

its for driving to KFC! What's Colonel Sanders doing beside that computer?
ol

Hey Steven!!

[Xstr8guy]

I still really miss my old Tandy CoCo II. I got it when I was six or seven. I replaced it with an Apple IIe and it got buried in a closet somewhere and forgotten. I grew up with those, I can't imagine a computer that dosn't fit on a desk. They weren't very forward thinking though if they couldn't imagine a computer that could.

DigitalJay, aren't you a young guy? I learned on Apple II's when I was in 10th grade... and I'm 40 years old. Didn't they have PC's when you were a kid? I also had an Atari 800 and a Commodore 64... oh, and a VIC 20, .

[Xstr8guy]

its for driving to KFC! What's Colonel Sanders doing beside that computer?
ol

Hey Steven!!

Lol, I thought it was Eisenhower.

[citiboyz]

Hey Allen, and Jim (and DigitalJay, and Patti)

At first, I thought it was Eisenhower, too!

I'm really intrigued by the steering wheel, though. It has me baffled.

:wacko:

[DigitalJay]

DigitalJay, aren't you a young guy? I learned on Apple II's when I was in 10th grade... and I'm 40 years old. Didn't they have PC's when you were a kid? I also had an Atari 800 and a Commodore 64... oh, and a VIC 20, .

Damn, were you spoiled or what? . Those were all expensive when they were new. I'm 25 now, but the Apple II series stayed alive as low-end home computers all through the 80s. Being poor, I had to save money from odd jobs and buy my Apple used. It was a IIe (enhanced), which made it's debut in the mid 80s.

I didn't get my first pc until I was 12, and it took forever to save up for with crummy newspaper routes. It was a barebones system, no hard drive or monitor, so I had to go buy an old XT at a pawn shop and scrap it for parts. So I ended up with a 386 33mhz, with a whopping 8 megs of ram, 10 meg hard drive, and greyscale vga monitor. I loved it though, and I was really proud. My first big "accomplishment" was creating The Barny Virus , a program that bypassed all your startup files and went to a blank purple screen that played "I love you, you love me" over and over. I still have it on a disk somewhere.

The funnest thing I've ever done with old computers was in high school. I bought a HUGE pallete of the old IBM PCjr's at an auction, along with a pallete of 5.25" floppy's (the PCjr didn't have a hard drive.) It was a cute little computer with a color monitor, and the coolest part, a cordless keyboard! I filled the disks up with cute old educational games (math blaster! hehe) and arcade games (digdug, pacman, anyone remember alley cat?), then spent the whole summer giving them out to little kids as an introduction to computing, they all absolutely loved them.

The funny part was, I put up "Computers for kids!" signs in all the stores with tearoffs, and my sisters got damn sick of talking on the phone, explaining to angry women why their husband had a little piece of paper with our number on it in their wallet/briefcase/pocket. Funny shit!

[basschick]

my first computer had no memory at all - it used cassettes - they said you had to use special ones, but i discovered that wasn't true, and saved some money i think it was a trs 80. it didn't display upscale things like graphics. as soon as i didn't have to use it, i stopped using computers until the month we went online, in aug 96.

i used my mom's pentium i think 25 (hotrodded to go faster) with win3.1. i grew to hate 3.1, and my mom wanted her privacy, so we bought a pentium 160 and never looked back

hi back atcha, citiboyz *waves*

[DigitalJay]

my first computer had no memory at all - it used cassettes - they said you had to use special ones, but i discovered that wasn't true, and saved some money i think it was a trs 80. it didn't display upscale things like graphics.

Those are collectors items now The trs-80 was from radio shack, it was grey and all plastic, very cheap and cool looking. My CoCO II was a trs-80 too, after they got color and graphics. It still used casettes though, weren't those about the slowest most unreliable things ever?

[krusher]

Man that steering wheel is for a giant game of pong! Who knows. Funny you guys talking about old ass computers. I also had a vic 20, then a c 64 (the shit). Pretty wild, considering my cell phone has more computer power then those antiques. Ah, the simple life.....

[AusCoding Allan]

My first computer was a 386 with I think 4MB of RAM and a 256 colour SVGA screen. I also had a fantastic 4 Colour Dot Matrix Printer from NEC.

All up it cost my parents somewhere around the 3K mark when I was 5 (1988).

Hmm I think that's right, haven't looked back since.

Am now running an AMD64 3500+ with 4GB of RAM and a total of 400GB in harddrive space and a 19" LG LCD flatscreen.

Haven't computers come a long way even in the short 17 years that I've had one.

Cheers,

Allan

[Gary-Alan]

I love the caption... "With teletype interface and the Fortran language the computer will be easy to use..."

LMAOPIP Any one remember Fortran? LMAO

I know... the wheel is the 1954 equivalent of the mouse! Or maybe something to move that freaking montior. LMAOPIP

[Top Cat]

The photo is funny but... http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/computer.asp

No one loves an iconoclast :-( Why can't I just keep my mouth shut?