Reminiscing about technology of old

[OzEire]

Anyone remember punching a hole in the top corner of a 5.25" floppy to double its capacity, to 720kb or something like that.... Or putting tape over the hole to write protect it...

 

[TheRealTMA]

Anyone remember punching a hole in the top corner of a 5.25" floppy to double its capacity, to 720kb or something like that.... Or putting tape over the hole to write protect it...

Seems to ring a bell!

 

[AVC]

When I left school I did an apprenticeship with Telecom (yes, not Telstra).

The exchanges didn't even have a computer to be seen. It was all electro-mechanical. You dial a 3 and a rotary-stepper relay in the exchange went bang-bang-bang, and so on. We were taught how to adjust the tension on the long reed switches like jewellers.

You couldn't walk into the relay room without hearing protection it was so loud. And battery rooms the size of a house. Up to 10,000 amps on full noise in a large exchange. Crazy stuff.

 

[clazman]

Few people showing their age

 

[AVC]

Re: Tr per - hk - jfk - ewr - yow - lax - los - lax - hk - per

My neighbour still uses his old Tandy computer, I think it's a TRS 80.

Uses it for what? Playing Lunar Lander?
I'm pretty sure that's what we used it for back in school days.

 

[clazman]

Anyone remember punching a hole in the top corner of a 5.25" floppy to double its capacity, to 720kb or something like that.... Or putting tape over the hole to write protect it...

Yep I remember, my first security on my disks was to spin the drive motor the opposite way, nobody could copy my disks

 

[wazza888]

George III?
GEORGE (operating system) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Don't really remember the operating system.

 

[wazza888]

Anyone remember punching a hole in the top corner of a 5.25" floppy to double its capacity, to 720kb or something like that.... Or putting tape over the hole to write protect it...

I think on the 3.5" 1.44MB floppy there was a latch where you could push either left or right to make it writable. I still have the game Doom on floppy somewhere in the house.

 

[clazman]

Re: Tr per - hk - jfk - ewr - yow - lax - los - lax - hk - per

Uses it for what? Playing Lunar Lander?
I'm pretty sure that's what we used it for back in school days.

Lunar lander the hours of fun

 

[TheRealTMA]

Yep I remember, my first security on my disks was to spin the drive motor the opposite way, nobody could copy my disks

And how did you do that?

 

[TheRealTMA]

Slightly OT But for those on this thread,

Thunderbirds Are Go review

watched it tonight. Hilarious. (IMHO)

 

[clazman]

No ideas,best mate was a electronics guru

 

[Cossie]

Re: Tr per - hk - jfk - ewr - yow - lax - los - lax - hk - per

Uses it for what? Playing Lunar Lander?
I'm pretty sure that's what we used it for back in school days.

Believe it or not, he is a surveyor and still uses the attached plotter occasionally, I've told him I want it if he ever decides to get rid of it.

 

[Cossie]

Re: Tr per - hk - jfk - ewr - yow - lax - los - lax - hk - per

Not so old technology, the power supply failed and fried the mother board on my desk top, anyway it was time for an upgrade.

 

[JessicaTam]

Anyone remember punching a hole in the top corner of a 5.25" floppy to double its capacity, to 720kb or something like that.... Or putting tape over the hole to write protect it...

Yep, that way you could turn them upside down and make them double sided.

 

[Pushka]

Floppy discs are modern compared with punch code cards.

 

[AVC]

Re: Tr per - hk - jfk - ewr - yow - lax - los - lax - hk - per

Lunar lander the hours of fun

I actually found an online version just after I wrote that.

I remember the arcade version with the huge metal "throttle".
Another good one was Missile Command. Had that huge trackball.

I have an upright Galaga machine in the living room. Modernised now though. LCD and a 40 game board (still uses original ROMs for authentic gameplay experience).
My coughtail Puckman machine is fully original. CRT and all. And yes, that's not a typo. The original was Puckman, but the kids would obscure or erase part of the P. So on subsequent models they changed Puck to Pac.

 

[JohnK]

Re: Tr per - hk - jfk - ewr - yow - lax - los - lax - hk - per

Hello world ...

Reminds me of Java. Memories I would rather do without....

 

[clazman]

The good old days of Java , were we hung out for Java swing to be released

 

[wazza888]

Any stockbrokers out there remember the Sydney Stock Exchange (20 Bond St) where brokers screamed and yelled on the trading floor. Broker Numbers/Buy/Sell/slips were exchanged in which they later submitted as punch cards to SSX for broker/broker processing.