Good Stuff about Technology and the Internet

[alicat]

I have just read our little exchange to my French colleague: I think it will take more than a hammer to restore the entente cordiale!

 

[KneesUp]

Trust me, the temptation to take a hammer to the blessed thing has been almost unbearable on more than 1 occasion.

It's a shame really, as it's a lovely practical, comfortable car. The only real fault with is it was built out of recycled egg boxes, by itinerant French peasants. The "electronics" were developed by a half blind hermit, following a water damaged schematic badly translated from the original Mandarin. Oh, and for some reason the gearbox (electronic, computer controlled bollox natch) doesn't like it when it rains, or when you go uphill.... which living in Holmfirth, where both states are not exactly rare means it's permanently on the blink.

On the other hand, it's roughly 300 times more reliable than a BL product with Lucas electrics.

 

[ColinJ]

I can also remember a programme in the late 60s or early 70s that demonstrated a prototype remote control for a TV. Our family thought this was both ridiculous and funny - who could possibly be so lazy as to not get up and walk to the set to change channels?

I bought my first colour TV for about £300 when that was about 4 weeks pay. (My VCR cost me £700 at the same time!) A friend bought a colour TV about a month after I bought mine but his had a remote control ... I remember being totally baffled as to why he would spend the extra money to get it, and thinking that he was a lazy b*st*rd for not getting up and walking to the set to change channels, adjust the volume, (whatever) like everyone else had to!

 

[Drago]

I can remember early videos with a cable remote control.

 

[mjr]

Whenever I get a new laptop am I slightly in awe of it's potential, perhaps as a result of spent a long time using a BBC computer as a kid.

Does anyone remember what the chip socket to the left (I think) of the keyboard was for and what could go in it?

Live international sports programmes were incredibly blurry. Some football matches you could barely work out what was going on and if it cut to a cheering crowd, you assumed someone had scored.

Still are when they're on itv4 on freeview and it's having one of its "low bitrate" moments

 

[KneesUp]

Does anyone remember what the chip socket to the left (I think) of the keyboard was for and what could go in it?

It was for ROM chips - we had the Word processor one because my parents thought it would be useful for us at school - I used to use it to create cassette tape box inlays using a dot matrix printer. Took ages to lay out using tabs but as a parent now I realise that it was probably useful in a way, plus it kept me quiet for hours.

 

[TheDoctor]

The first PC I bought had a 17" crt, a DX5 clock-quadrupled 133MHz CPU, 4MB of RAM (I think) and a 1GB hard drive. It cost nearly £900.
My current laptop has a 1.7GHz CPU, 2 GB RAM, a 64GB SD and will run for 8 hours on batteries. It cost £80.
External keyboard, mouse and 28" LCD monitor, another £80.

Twenty years ago SWMBO went to Kazakhstan and we couldn't talk for a month. A couple of years ago she was in NZ and I went touring Provence on my Brompton. We communicated - phone, email or txt - a couple of times a day. We swapped photos and videos, even though we were as far apart as you can be without getting NASA involved. She had a laptop, I had a £50 smartphone.

 

[Deleted member 1258]

I bought my first colour TV for about £300 when that was about 4 weeks pay. (My VCR cost me £700 at the same time!) A friend bought a colour TV about a month after I bought mine but his had a remote control ... I remember being totally baffled as to why he would spend the extra money to get it, and thinking that he was a lazy b*st*rd for not getting up and walking to the set to change channels, adjust the volume, (whatever) like everyone else had to!

When the first remotes came out I was working for a small local radio/TV retailers. I remember some minor teething troubles with some of them. Two I remember included one customer who changed his channels with his remote and his neighbours set changed channels as well. Another one the TV would change channels if someone rattled the change in their pocket, I remember that one in the workshop and seeing it do it.

 

[KneesUp]

When the first remotes came out I was working for a small local radio/TV retailers. I remember some minor teething troubles with some of them. Two I remember included one customer who changed his channels with his remote and his neighbours set changed channels as well. Another one the TV would change channels if someone rattled the change in their pocket, I remember that one in the workshop and seeing it do it.

Sounds like remotes were ultrasonic - they persisted for a while with cheaper TVs as I recall. My grandparents bought a static caravan when they retired which we used to holiday in and in it was a portable tv with an ultrasonic remote. We used to point it at dogs to annoy them until we got caught.

 

[ColinJ]

The first PC I bought had a 17" crt, a DX5 clock-quadrupled 133MHz CPU, 4MB of RAM (I think) and a 1GB hard drive. It cost nearly £900.

Pah - In 1992, I paid £2,000 for a PC whose spec was something like an 8 MHz 486 CPU, 1 MB RAM, 200 MB hard drive, a 14" monitor and Windows 3.1!

 

[TheDoctor]

Mine might have been Win98. Although I'm sure I had Win 3.1 sometime...

 

[Nigel-YZ1]

I started on the Acorn Electron, loading games from tape. I was the first kid in school to take and pass O and A level Computer Science.

Now I can control the servers at work using my mobile phone from anywhere in the world.

 

[swee'pea99]

Pah - In 1992, I paid £2,000 for a PC whose spec was something like an 8 MHz 486 CPU, 1 MB RAM, 200 MB hard drive, a 14" monitor and Windows 3.1!

There was a period of a decade or more when PCs were getting faster and more powerful and many etcs by the year if not the month, but funnily enough a decent one always cost a grand, give or take.

 

[KneesUp]

Pah - In 1992, I paid £2,000 for a PC whose spec was something like an 8 MHz 486 CPU, 1 MB RAM, 200 MB hard drive, a 14" monitor and Windows 3.1!

I had an IBM PS/2 286 with 1MB of RAM *plus* a 2MB expansion card (with took up one entire side of the case) and a physically massive 30MB 'Winchester' hard drive in the centre - seriously that thing was about about 4 inches thick. It was about the lowest spec you could run Windows 3.1 on I think. It was lovely.

EDIT - should add I got it second-hand through a friend of a friend who worked 'in IT' and was able to access refurbished office PCs - no way could I have afforded it new!

 

[classic33]

Where'd the large floppy's go?