Old tech vs. New tech

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#57

My first hands-on experience was a Malay-Chinese friend I met at college, the Sinclair ZX-81:

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Like the one in the picture, he had bought the 16Kb expansion pack - which would get so hot you would have to disconnect and put it in the refrigerator to cool down!
My first experience of a PC was when I was a Health and Safety Officer for a Trade Union. It was Windows 3.1 but when you booted it you were met with a DOS prompt and a flashing cursor - I had to ask someone how to boot into Windows "You just type Win." Awful machine! Tulip computer with 5 1/4" floppy drive!
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The first computer that I owned was the Sinclair Spectrum 128 with heatsink:

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I borrowed a book about programming the Spectrum from the Library - there was a Budget program I could write for it with 1,000 entries - I wanted 10,000 but the system just beeped at me! This issue was a known bug, plus the idea of colour screen gaming was 3 bands of colour! So I sold it at a profit about 18 months later! Purchased it for £55 and sold it for £70.
Then my favourite computer of all time was purchased:
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This came with 1 Mb Ram and Cost about £549 and 2 Amiga Floppy Drives - bigger than a pc floppy - 1.76 Mb!
Then I had a lot of diecast model cars - Corgi and Dinky, plus Action Man x 3 and lots of auxillary stuff sold at Christies Auction House in London and with the proceeds I upgraded the Amiga to have an Oktagon SCSI controller, and 2 Mb Zip RAM and a 1 Gb SCSI drive - the latter item costing £219! The controller was about £80 I think.
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Philips made a dedicated monitor for the Amiga:
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Which I purchased some time later, prior to which it got plugged into a Philips 14" Portable CRT TV!
Then my first PC was a Pentium 120 with 16 Mb RAM running Windows 95 - just before MMX came out - Resellers of were scalded by Consumer Watchdogs by not informing joe public of the newcomer processor - they couldn't have as Intel had informed resellers of 'grey' machines that if they let slip of the new CPU they would no longer be allowed to purchase processors from them! I upgraded it with an Evergreen AMD 400 Mhz Processor:
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The fun thing with this was that Windows 95 could not support anything above 200 MHz and it needed a DOS.EXE file to be installed to the hard drive before Windows 95 could be installed! Graphics card I upgraded from the run of the mill 512 Kb S3 to a Matrox Mystique 220 card Matrox Mystique Promotional Video - YouTube, later upgraded with Rainbow Runner 128 add-on for video capture, and Matrox 3d card then some years later I bought Matrox TV card - analog - just before analog was ditched for digital transmission! D'OH!
Then I built my own PC which had a Motherboard whose name I can't remember (manufacture) but basically AMD 400 MHz board with 128 Mb RAM, Some Nvidia Graphics Card and Sound Blaster Mega Card - I wanted the AWE but none available at the time so got the one below it which later expanded with 12 Mb RAM. And with old kit being cast off at work the memory got upgraded to 384 Mb RAM - and the Amiga with now 4 Mb Zip RAM booted quicker than this rig!
Next build used a server tower and has an Asus A7-V333 Motherboard in it (and a drive with Zorin 6 still in there I believe! LOL! This has 3 512 Mb Memory slots but I think only one bank populated. I had to get the original board repaired under warranty as I managed to set it on fire by putting the firewire adapter connection the wrong way round! I always thought that closed face was opposite the open face - not so and the Manual was never clear on the correct orientation! My last build was an AMD 2.1 GHz board with AM4 Athlon Processor inside a very nice Cooler Master Silencio 650 case image
which now houses my ASUS Prime X470 Pro Motherboard with AMD Ryzen 7 16 thread CPU and 16 Gb Corsair RAM at 433 Mhz.
As for Gaming Consoles, my first one was an English made one with Pong built in - Teleng!
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Controllers:
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which you connected via the aerial socket of your black and white TV - I was still at home with my parents when I bought this - or rather Dad did!
Then sometime after I bought the Amiga 1500 I bought this:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x839h6z
Amiga CD32 Advert on Dangerous Streets CD - YouTube
Commodore AMIGA CD32 advertisement promo video (1993) - YouTube
Commodore UK rented the billboard outside SEGA UK hq with the slogan for the CD32 of "Too be this good takes AGES" - note AGES is SEGA backwards!

3 Likes
#58

I watch the 8-Bit Guy, as well as LGR on Youtube, so I've seen some of this stuff that you've showed. Plus, I've personally used some of which you didn't show. I think its really amazing seeing how big things used to be, giving you the illusion of massive capacity, when actually they weren't lol.

And then you look at stuff today, and it just gets smaller and smaller, and higher and higher in capacity, as well as performance. But I adore pictures and video of older tech as well. Thank you for showcasing your older machines, as well as the backstory on them.

And Cooler Master still make excellent cases today, you can get some really nice cases for 200 or bellow. But Fractal is kind of stealing the limelight on computer cases, for who can make the best case design. Well, thats Fractal these days, but they sure don't come cheap! lol

2 Likes
#59

Who here has an Android Phone?

#60

Let me guess. You hate Android and want to put Zorin on it. Lol :joy:

1 Like
#61

I no longer use Googled Android, I use a 'de-googled' Fariphone 3+ that I purchased through 'e.foundation' founded by Gaël Duval creator of Mandrake Linux:

There is something called micro-G (micro Google) that I have disabled - no issues and got rid of all that stupid stuff in the backend like warn me of imminent danger - If I am going to die my number is up - period!

#62

I figured I would place this video here. Its about a high schooler who has cancer, and for his Make A Wish, he gets a top end gaming machine from LTT, with a video card that costs more then most computers! Well, at the moment of the video where Linus is having a talk with the kid, they discuss differences of new tech vs old tech a tiny bit. Either way, this is a video worth viewing.

I had a brother that I never got to know, he died at the age of 5-years old due to Leukemia, before I was born. While cancer research has made great strides since then, we still do not have a cure for it yet. I am truly hoping that in all our research into MRNA vaccines, we might eventually find a cure for it.

This was an awesome video, if there is anyone who deserves the best in this life, its most certainly someone who has cancer.

#63

Do you love hard drives? I do! Modern mechanicals are practically silent, and SSD drives are most certainly silent. But there was a time when hard drives were noisy, and the further back in time you go, the noisier they get.

Ahhhh, nothing like the sound of a jet engine in the morning, when you power on your computer. Original IBM owners will totally remember this lol.

#64

Still I using NAS hard disk WDRED

#65

You are rich!
I am still using WD Green in my home-made NAS :wink:
Housewives love economy.

#66

I have some Synology NAS DS215j not using but it was fun what is there and little learning html,php5,css, mysql on serwer are many interesting software for administration.

1 Like
#67

I love mind.in.a.box R.E.T.R.O. album and this song in particular:

Read the blurb under the video - nice Windows blue screen during the video where they fall about laughing!

#68

Well, I don't know about Blender but there are lots of vector artist and digital artist uses phones. It depends on what application you use. There's a lot of 3D application in phones, but merely for creating poses but not yet creating 3D from scratch. But then, if you can easily create poses from scratch now in 3D application with phones, for sure sooner you can also create 3D models from scratch because you already get the concept of x,y,z scaling, rotation, panning, meshes and so on. Just not been able to edit manually the vertices of those dolls.

Anyway, whatever the gadget is, phone, tablet, laptop or desktop, you can do things you want to do "except" there is always a limitation like speed and features.

By the way, if you guys will wonder why there are those who will do difficult things in phones than in desktop, its because, there are those who can afford to buy a tablet and phone but they cannot afford to buy a desktop pc even they cry blood.

1 Like
#69

In other words... they do it in phones, struggling with lack of proper tools, because they cannot afford the computer. If they could afford the computer easily, do you believe they would do any vector graphics on a phone?

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#70

We always talk about it in our group. And those who got their first PC immediately leave phone. It is also the reason why I rescue my laptop from windows crashing because I'm about to enter phone digital artistry that is kinda too hard and stressful. And I'm avoiding stress.

1 Like
#71

Exactly. I mean, you can, technically, use a screwdriver as a hammer. But you wouldn't if you had a hammer and the screwdriver would make a very poor hammer.
What tablets and phones can do these days is pretty amazing. And as long as the user only does what the manufacturer wants to limit them to, they are mostly user-friendly.
But once you step outside of the manufacturers preset controls, things get difficult, very fast. Mobile and Tablets are designed with lack of the proper tools in mind, creating a situation of using gestures and touch to navigate and control, instead of commands, keyboard and mouse.
Touchscreen mouse is cool and pretty fine when it is a phone you can wipe off real easily.
But on a large monitor, a touchscreen covered in sebum is not on anyones wish list.

I kid you not... I installed the terminal on my cell phone.
It makes it a lot easier to be able to take control of the thing.
Because jumping through the touchscreen navigation hoops to find and adjust the settings you want on a droid phone is like sifting through haystacks trying to find pieces of straw sometimes.
While the menubar on a desktop Logically follows with categorized sections, the menu in an android phone is amalgamated into One. It's not a bad system for reading the news on the subway train, but it's not good for efficient workflow.
And for manipulating vector graphics in Inkscape or Raster in Gimp or Blender? Cases where I am making a change even down to 1px by 1px?
Forget about it. Not gonna happen. I would save up for the computer.

2 Likes
#72

The problem that I really see in society, is the modern cell phone got sold to everybody in America as this convenience device. Many people buy phones just for the use of the camera's themselves.

Which I've never understood, cause I have a Canon SX620HS pocket camera, that takes better photo's then most cell phones. And DSLR's, will most certainly beat any cell phone camera, I mean honestly, how could you compete against those giant lenses? Exactly! lol

So with that said, this little mini computer of convenience, people got sold on a lie, that the phone, will easily replace your computer, and do everything you need to do. Its like, well........ Yes and no!

To a consumer who doesn't do anything professionally, a cell phone might be able to pass as their computer everywhere they go sure, because they don't do anything serious enough to require the power of a full computer. 99% of all people who own cell phones, use them for social networking, while some take pics, and check emails as well.

But professionals don't have all time to wait to do production. Time is money in the professional field. You don't see Linus Tech Tips editors using cell phones. No, they are using 24 to 32 core Ryzen Thread Ripper CPU's, with 64GB to 128GB of RAM, and are pulling from a enterprise grade storage NAS server in his company at LMG.

They are moving 8K and 12K footage around the timeline, and editing on the fly, this requires serious horse power and Ram to accomplish. This is our professionals do it, production I mean. You can't do that on a phone.

And those camera's they use to record that 8K and 12K footage, those are 30,000 dollar camera's yo. Sorry, not even the Iphone 13, or the Google Pixel 6 can offer any solutions to compete in that territory.

1 Like
#73

About the inkscape, and any artist tool, you can do it but it takes a lot. I even gave up. I said I can do it less than an hour using laptop when I do it in phone it took me a day, not even finished. Making my whole body ache. :sweat_smile: . I don't know how those artist survive the life in phone before they got their desktop but I understand now why some artist gave appreciation to them. Because digital art with phones takes a lot of patience and effort than in laptop and desktop.

1 Like
#74

In my place, which is one of the beautiful third world country, hahahahah, technology is quite cost a lot. Most of technology here, only the rich people can afford. Not even get a touch with MAC, Iphone or Ipad, except in their store. This is the country where laptops can go working till 20 years. 2gb ram still acceptable for companies. (no joke. I work with companies like that). When you got a gaming PC spec desktop you are called a millionaire. Hahahaaha.

This is why there are people who can't use the right thing. Like "that is the right thing but will you give me money to buy that right thing?"

Those who aren't professional will not understand the camera thing and those DSLR etc and most of them just love to do selfies. My mother love to take pictures so she have phones with nice camera but she never understand those DSLR thing.

2 Likes
#75

Now that, is another side to the story. Because now were entering a new territory, of how things are done in one country, vs another.

On that level we really cant compare. Cause one countries problems, or successes, isn't always the same for other countries.

Even in 1st world countries we have problems. Perfect example, places like like Europe, Canada, Japan, all have universal healthcare. America, were still stuck on garbage healthcare.

Another example. Most of Europe have blazingly fast fiber optic internet, speeds between 200MBPS to 1000MBMS over fiber optic line. Guess what most of America has? Coax line, and were paying 88 dollars per month for 90MBPS, thats less then 100MBPS!

So ya, even in 1rst world countries, we can have our problems too compared to other 1rst world countries. But like I said, its not really fair to compare our country with a 3rd world in that department, we will always win and thats not fair.

But I will say this though. Take India for example, their children get to go to collage, isn't that amazing? And India is really becoming a leader in the tech industry when you look at the sheer number of students that enter the tech field and become successful.

America? Oh man, do your research, and you learn how we are falling behind all other countries, and how we are failing our kids. Collage is a boooming private industry in our country that makes outrageous levels of profits for the education sector.

The result is, any unfortunate soul who decided to go to collage, they are now 250,000 dollars or more in debt. Many of these students never get out of the debt, and some end up homeless, and have to move back in with their parents just to survive.

In America, we are failing our kids. In India, a complete reversal. So, thats why I say, take that 1rst world vs 3rd world country stuff with a grain of salt. Cause when it comes to certain things, even India is doing it better.

Sad to say, but its true!

1 Like
#76

Yeah, different country, different successes and struggles. Its up to the citizen how to adjust in their convenience to move on. (Just like how I turn my chair to a table. hahahahah. )

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