The march of time

[NomoneyNohoney]

Today I was looking at a copy of Elektor magazine, dated July/August 1983 (I'm a slow reader!)
This carried the following advert from Maplin:-

"Computer Shopping Arrives

As from June 1st you can place orders directly with our computer from your personal computer. The computer shopping revolution has arrived!

To communicate, you'll need a modem (our RS232 compatible modem kit is LW99H price £39.95) and an interface (our ZX81 interface LK08J price £24.95 is already available with many more for most popular micros coming soon.

Just dial us on 0702 552941 and you'll be able to interrogate our stock file then place your order, type in your credit card number and a few minutes after you hang up your order will print out in our warehouse ready for packing. And all without saying a word.

Try out the future way of shopping now! You'll see immediately what stock we've got available and you'll discover how easy it is to ensure your order is exactly right. And you'll see precisely what the current price is for each item and what total amount will be charged to your credit card.

It all helps to make buying easier. So give us a ring now!"

[CommissarJones]

Today I was looking at a copy of Elektor magazine, dated July/August 1983 (I'm a slow reader!)

By coincidence, I was recently watching a television broadcast of WarGames, which was released in the U.K. in August 1983, according to IMDB. It was rather amusing to see Matthew Broderick handling those big old floppy discs.

[AleisterCrowley]

It was so much more fun in those days ....
I see Maplin are still going - they've got a shop in Slough, but they seem to have moved into ready-built bits and bobs more, and away from components (although they still sell some )

Elektor was a bit odd - wasn't it a Dutch(German? Belgian?) mag translated?

I can remember;
Everyday Electronics
Practical Electronics
Practical Wireless (which had general projects in until they refocused on radio)
Wireless World (for grown-ups/audiophiles)
Hobby Electronics
Short Wave Magazine
Ham Radio Today
Amateur Radio
- think that was it.
[edit::just remembered ETI]

[moorfield]

I just about remember the Prestel pages - my old man at that time was writing software to download stock prices and compute things called coppock curves - I think that's where my own programming and investing bug germinated from.

In my first year at university one mate (a computing undergraduate) was using something called email to write to his mates at another university computing dept.

In my last year at university same mate had acquired a brick sized nokia mobile phone. I bought my first mobile 2 years after graduating from the Carphone Warehouse on Moorgate/London Wall - it's still there today!

[Alaric]

As from June 1st you can place orders directly with our computer from your personal computer. The computer shopping revolution has arrived!

Being able to call up a remote computer via a telephone line was 1970s technology. If you were employed somewhere that had a business use for the service, you could use IBM's Call 360 service to write and execute programs in Basic and one or two other languages from around 1973 or 1974 onwards. This used a command line teletype rather than a screen.

Maplin was and still is a store that sold the "experimental" kit that might or might not be tomorrows mainstream.

[UncleEbenezer]

I bought my first mobile 2 years after graduating from the Carphone Warehouse

it's still there today!

Doesn't sound very mobile.

I bought my first mobile in Rome: that was straightforward (I lived and worked in Italy at the time). Then I returned to Blighty and had a devil of a job getting on to any UK network. PAYG had yet to reach the UK telcos, and after several years abroad I couldn't get a contract because I had no credit history in Blighty. Ended up both paying a substantial deposit and getting my dad to sign up as guarantor. Even that only worked because someone at Cellnet was eventually prepared to apply commonsense and override "computer says no".

This used a command line teletype rather than a screen.

That takes me back. Had a teletype like that in my first job after graduating. The line noise was often more than the signal. And we had to use it for the complete programming cycle!

Though it was only about six months before they upgraded us to an in-house computer with a VDU terminal.

Maplin was and still is a store that sold the "experimental" kit that might or might not be tomorrows mainstream.

I always thought of Maplin as the shop for DIY electronic components.

[bungeejumper]

1983? That's going back a long, long way by PC standards. It was in 1983 that I bought my first "home computer", a Camputers Lynx with a massive 48K of memory and a full-colour display. And some rather good sound capabilities. Trouble was, it was up against the Sinclair Spectrum and the BBC micro, and it didn't have a chance because the idiots didn't supply any meaningful amounts of software to go with the machine. I guess they were expecting that users would fill in the gap with programs of their own? Some hope.

I could, apparently, have bought a 2 megabyte "Winchester" hard disk drive for another £200 (which was a lot of money in 1983), but I never bothered. I dunno, though, I had fun designing full-colour video games in Basic for my girlfriend's children, and 34 years later she's my wife, so I suppose it was worth the exertion after all.

Meanwhile, the Lynx 48K has become a cult computer which is apparently sought after by museums. Mine's in the loft, in its original packaging, waiting for the day when I get the phone call. Maybe I'll plug it in, just to see whether it goes bang? Then again, maybe not.....

BJ

[bungeejumper]

On another level, in 1983 I started working in London for a world-famous publisher that still used in-house typesetters ("comps"). The technology was already available to download a disk from your electronic typewriter and put it straight into the production system, but instead we had to type our stuff laboriously onto an IBM golfball typewriter, whereupon the typescript went downstairs so that somebody else could type it all over again into a telex machine. Brilliant.

We spent our lunchtimes on the pavement outside Morgan Computers on the Tottenham Court Road, just ogling the hardware. Sad, eh? But even the cheapest "PC compatible" setups would cost you a grand or so, which really was a lot of money in 1983. We all knew not to go to Laskys unless we wanted to be locked into an own-label hell that would impoverish our children and their children as well, but it was all a bit of a jungle all the same. And the financial risks of buying the wrong system were quite severe.

Around about that time, I was taken to a semi-derelict stately home in Somerset, where a bunch of wild-eyed enthusiasts were sat round assembling home computers in the morning room, while the stuffed tigers from the Raj stared at them from the walls where they'd been hanging for the last hundred years or so. It was a glorious time, in a way. You never quite knew which way things would develop. Disruptive technology? Pah! The millennials haven't seen the half of it.

[AleisterCrowley]

My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81 back in the early 1980s. I spent hours programming it, and trying to save the results on a cassette.
The first computer I actually used was a Commodore PET - I think, as school had one. One of the physics masters had a Sharp MZ-80K which he let us 'enthusiasts' play with during dinner break.
Maplin were around in the 80s - based in Rayleigh I think. They were very much a component seller at the time, although they now seem to sell more general consumer electronics, with the components etc as a smaller part - similar to Tandy / Radio Shack if you remember them!
I was lucky that my small home town actually had an electronics 'shop' - run by one bloke up several flights of rickety stairs just off the High Street. There were also several in nearest big town (Wolverhampton) : Waltons rings a bell.
I'd occasionally visit London with a fellow radio ham/electronics buff - at the time there was a cluster of electronics shops up Edgware Road but they seem to have all gone now. Must be the rents/rates and online competition. Apparently the post-war mecca for radio /electronics surplus shops was Lisle Street

[staffordian]

It is quite incredible how quickly things change. My first foray into computing (apart from trying to write a program in Fortfan in 1973 or1974 to print out a table to look up goal average for football league tables!) was an Amstrad CPC464 in the 1980s, which, unlike the lowly ZX81 came with its own colour monitor. No hogging the tele with this one!

Great memories of waiting ages for the games to load from a cassette tape whilst listening to the whistling noise the loading programs made. Games like Hang On, Harrier Jump Jet and Flightpath 737. Now, no doubt long forgotten, except by me...

But memories too of writing programs to, for example, log and calculate my car's mpg, and to track and analyse my bank account balance and spending. Having to swap cassettes from the program cassette to an unprotected one to save the data, it seemed the cutting edge of technology at the time, especially when I also treated myself to an Amstrad DMP2000(?) printer.

I can well remember how proud I felt after managing to master the primitive word processor and print rather than write our Christmas cards one year.

Memories...

[AleisterCrowley]

Seems like the fun has disappeared now - or is it just me getting older? I'll have to get myself a Raspberry PI...

[UncleEbenezer]

Seems like the fun has disappeared now - or is it just me getting older? I'll have to get myself a Raspberry PI...

Your raspberry pi will of course be vastly more powerful than anything you had in the 70s/80s.

A few years back I wanted to try building some stuff on an ARM-based system. So I installed sshd on an old Nokia and logged in to it from my desktop 'puter. Then I created a filesystem on a large tempfile on the desktop, and NFS-mounted it from the 'phone as workspace. It all worked, and I was able to build and run server applications on the 'phone.

[AleisterCrowley]

What does amaze me is the cost/size of memory compared with the good old days.
I eventually got a compatible 16K RAM pack for my ZX81 (as the standard 1K was a bit restrictive!) - £35 IIRC. The 'genuine' Sinclair 16K RAM extension was over £50 I think
Now I can get a 16GB USB stick for a tenner

[JMN2]

As a side note, isn't it strange that even in modern films when a detective asks a computer expert to zoom in on screen to see a suspect or find any kind of information, the computer expert uses 10 fingers to type on a keyboard for 5 seconds or so in a very rapid manner...instead of just using a mouse?

[AleisterCrowley]

Films never get it right - when someone is using facial recognition software the screen flashes up every possibility and when it finds a 'match' it beeps and flashes green! Usually with some 'computer font'* flashing text saying "Suspect Matched - Alert!



* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_(typeface)

[XFool]

Oh well!

Here's 'my' first computer. OK, it wasn't mine - but I wanted one! I learned to program it at work:
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/histnf ... tems/0021/

I got bought a smaller version later: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-25

Then again, I still have all my Amateur Computer Club (ACC) newsletters. 'The ACCumulator': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_Computer_Club

Anyone remember Galdor Computers? http://www.i-programmer.info/history/ma ... ml?start=1

[stewamax]

When I was travelling on business I use to take with me a heavy 'laptop' (no screen - just a teletypwriter) with two huge rubber 'ears' at the back - an acoustic coupler in to which you inserted a landline phone handset. Following which the other end would, with luck and no interference, happily warble back and forth to the laptop at a maximum of around 4000 characters / second (and usually a lot less).

[DiamondEcho]

In my first year at university one mate (a computing undergraduate) was using something called email to write to his mates at another university computing dept.

Yes, I had an out of hours part-time job at uni [83-86], doing work based in the office of one of my tutors. He had a BBC computer* that could connect to the internet. Via that we could communicate via e-mail but the only other people who had it were also in academia. It was also incredibly laborious to write a message. As I recall [roughly]:

10 You had to write out a message
20 almost in 'line code' like this,
30 add other codes for start of message,
40 end of message, and so on.
50 Then cross your fingers and hope.

* I recall it or the set-up being called something like 'BBC Gold'.

[UncleEbenezer]

Yes, I had an out of hours part-time job at uni [83-86], doing work based in the office of one of my tutors. He had a BBC computer* that could connect to the internet..

It wasn't called the Internet back then. Were you on JANET, or another of its predecessors? Was your email address in reverse order (you@uk.ac.wherever)?

I think my first electronic mail address was a Prestel address that looked like a telex number. Went through JANET and BITNET before I got my first address in the format we recognise today.

* I recall it or the set-up being called something like 'BBC Gold'.

There was a network called Telecom Gold in the 1980s. They were the other option when I got Prestel from home. Could that be it?

[vrdiver]

Fond memories!

Our school had a vax PDP 11 that I did my physics A level project on in 1982, and then in 1986 I bought a Sinclair QL to do my Chemistry thesis. It had dual micro-cassette drives that jammed if you didn't put them in properly, but it meant you could back everything up, or put programmes on one tape and data on another. Hours spent typing in magazine programs, then more hours debugging them, either from their typo, my typo, or the programme didn't work in the first place!

When the integrated keyboard failed I bought another QL for spare parts. Both are still in their original boxes in the loft; one day I'll be hard hearted enough to throw them out

Work introduced me to IBM's System/36 and the joys of RPG, Cobol and Adibas/Natural before jumping to Unix based systems.

Those were the days, when the challenge was to cut the code faster than the analyst could define the spec