The COMPUTER Thread
 

(there's lots of threads/posts but not a central one)

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CPUs are going 3D. Rare earth metals replaced by silicone glass and common materials.Maybe disbursed with central nodes like human neurons.
The progression chart may go vertical.
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3D spinning fan monitors. The moving parts will no longer be required someday.
CAD will become amazing. Entertainment becomes completely immersive and interactive. Walk through your favorite movie and help the protagonist finish the task.
https://holofanco.com/
https://aiholofan.com/product/hdmi-65cm-holographic-fan/
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Artificial muscles have already been created.

The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley is fast approaching.
"The uncanny valley effect is a hypothesized psychological and aesthetic relation between an object's degree of resemblance to a human being and the emotional response to the object. The uncanny valley hypothesis predicts that an entity appearing almost human will elicit uncanny or eerie feelings in viewers. "

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Just put a new motherboard in yesterday and got rid of the big radiator/fan cooler setup and went with ARGB liquid cooler.

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In my first year of college 1972, I took computer 101
They had just built a new building for the computer....it took up most of the second floor.
Our time with the computer was limited to 10 or 15 minutes each and we used punchcards to feed in our equations at desk terminals on the first floor. (which were connected to the main on the 2nd)

wow that might as well be me! Nailed it. Still have the C64 downstairs!

Same here, on my TRS-80 Mk IV (32k RAM, white case, dual floppies). Even submitted one for publishing to Dragon Magazine (character generator for D&D) but I never heard anything back from them ....

Then later came the dialing into BBSes from my 286 and 386... Then the Internet via local library dialup in late 1993/early 94 on the 386 and 486.

The Abacus 1000 :D?

In '78 ... we handed Fortran and 370 Assembler punch card decks in at the Computer Room window ... and picked up the printouts later. CRT showed up around '80...

All flavors ;)

No PCs until much later ... but microcode on a Motorola 6800 microprocessor based comm device that was similar to a Carrera ECU chip in '84 ... but ours had 18 of them and cost 5 times more than a cheap new Porch 911 :D

The Porch is still cooler :)

I learned the hard way about removing heat sinks. Never could get all these pins to line up so I could put it back together. :rolleyes:
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Dad was at the front of the line for new tech.

-He bought one of the first available VCRs ($1k? $2k?) while mom pinched every single penny to an extreme. This was ironic because our family was in the newspaper for not having a tv at all.
A scrap between my sister and I over the corded VCR remote control led to me chasing her into the bathroom, and her slamming and locking the door.
(I was finally big enough to start winning fights)
The thing is all my fingers, last two phalanges, were in the door jam. I screamed and she opened the door. A black line the height of half a pencil was across them. This went away within a few weeks. Later I looked at the door jam and there was no gap. Maybe 1/8" inch at most. This rightfully should have snapped them all backwards or chopped them off. Darwin has been kind or blind.

-Pop bought a Kaypro II for his education work.
Lots of documents.
I think he used a dot matrix printer or spinning ball, but those laser one were pretty neat.
It looked like a portable desktop box where the keyboard was snapped onto one end with a tiny monochrome screen built in. A precursor to the modern laptop.
I was not to touch. I looked at the manuals and all their gibberish and syntax but never got far into understanding code. I was stuck at the cord going in.

At one point in my life I had a couple of Kaypro's in my possession. When space got too tight they all went to Goodwill.

I still have the receipt for my first VCR....$1395 at Williams Magnavox Furniture Store.
It loaded with a tray that popped up after pushing a button. No remote..too early for them.
The only way to watch a movie was to wait for the store to order one in and hope to get there first to rent it.

The VCR was a heavy brute...I'll bet it weighed 20 lbs. (1980)

We didn't have a TV in our house until '73 when I was 13... it was unusual, but certainly not newsworthy ;).

We had outdoors :D

^^^ You prob had one of those fancy colored tv's.:)
We had black and white with no remote. (I think it was a huge 15" model)

19" Color TV .... no console :(

My outside wuz even bigger tho :)

I was a bit of a computer geek back in the day, but now they are just a tool, a very important one.

My main workstation is getting on - it is a ThinkStation circa 2019. Last year I bought another ThinkStation with i9 CPU, 96GB RAM, etc. Boy am I glad I bought it then. That RAM would be $700 now.

I bought my first computer, a Commodore Vic 20 with 4K of RAM. I knew that was not enough ram, so I bought the 16K add on memory module that would get very warm. It had a cassette tape for program loading and saving, and it was crazy slow. I had a manual dial 300 baud modem. I could watch and read as the text on a BBS was downloaded.

Then I moved up the massive memory of the Commodore 64 and floppy drive. I only bought two floppies as one for all of my programs, and one as a backup. ;)

That was replaced with my first PC, a massive 256K and twin floppies. I quickly added the memory to max it out at 640K and a huge 10 MB hard drive.

I went through a series of 286, 386 and 486 PCs and when I got my first 100 MB hard and 4MB of memory I figured is was about the end of upgrades.

This is typed on my work machine, 18.9 TB ot total storage, 256 GB of RAM and two 19GB video cards, and an i9 9960X CPU at 3.10 GHz. It is close to 5 years old, and runs Window 11 Pro Version 25H2 and the latest updates.

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Only on a few projects have I come close to using all the memory. It churns for days sometime on large aerial photo projects.

I have built all my computers from parts I picked out since the mid 1980s.

My first “computer” was a radio shack TRS-80 pocket computer with a cassette tape drive. I think I was around 10 yrs old. Moved from that to an Apple II clone (forget the name, Franklin maybe?)…after a couple of those I moved to an IBM personal computer - can’t recall the model but I remember it had a 10mb hard drive which I thought was all the memory one could ever need! This was in the days of 2400 baud modems, and you went and made a sandwich while you waited for a page to load, lol. Fun times. In my 20’s I felt like there was an ever so brief moment when I was “up to speed” on all things computer related, now I feel lost in the wind….amazing where tech has gone in 40 yrs…

Videos of this are going to be a great boon to YT, TT, etc... as folks continually walk into spinning fans.

Or days, for very little to happen. We got our first PC (a Commodore 64) in the fall of 1982. Yes, there was a manual that came with it that had programs to type out, and my dad had some magazines that had programs to type out. I never attempted it (I was 12 and had better things to do than type for days). My dad did attempt it, and due to his typos and/or typos in the program, he then spend a ton of time debugging it to get it to work. When it finally worked, a red circle bounced on the screen.

Basic was a major turn-off of programming for me. Too much work for too little result. I wonder if something else would have sparked my interest differently.

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I remember going to a Commodore club meeting and meeting a guy that had just bought his Commodore 64. He had no programs and was looking to find out where to get them. He did have a modem, and we exchanged phone numbers.

When we got home I called him and gave hime two lings to a program to type in. He did, and ran that program. That allowed me to upload a real terminal program to his computer. He could then run the terminal program to visit the many local BBSs in the area. He thought I was a super genius, but it was just what someone else figured out.

We sent Fido mail to each other and it was some of my first email. We both only had floppy disc readers but he made a funny but embarrassing typo. He meant to ask me if I yet had a hard disk, but he typed hard dick. I about fell on the floor laughing, and when he saw his typo, he avoided me from then on as he was so embarrassed. It was not until I got my 4.7 MHz PC that I bought the 10 mb hard disc.

I thought I was all set when I bought my Radio Shack 'CoCo' color computer.
Can't remember the year...but they had just released it.

The internet hadn't been invented yet.

.

I've been into computers only enough to use them. I had a Vic20. I've programmed in Fortran. I was playing Pole Position with my son on my Commodore 64 as the clock struck midnight on Dec 31, 1999 just to laugh at the rest of the world. I have built a few from parts. I've got an SGI 550 in a box in the garage if anybody is interested.

It's crazy how cheap they've gotten. I just picked up a second-hand Dell Mobile Precision 7540 to run Linux now that I'm tired of Windows - 16GB RAM, 12 core Xeon at 3.1 GHz, 512GB SSD, 4GB nVidia graphics card - <$300...

I'm similar to many of you. First PC was a C64. We bought the C64 when it first came out before a floppy drive was available, so used a cassette deck for a few months until the floppy drive was released. It mostly ended up being a game machine. I did not get into programming and although my dad did type a program in, I was thoroughly underwhelmed by the results of days of typing.

I got my first "IBM compatible" (running MS-DOS) PC in the fall of 1988 when I was in college. It was a Tandy 1000 TX with 640k RAM and "Tandy Graphics" (16 colors, but CGA resolution). I did learn a bunch about computers and making it run as efficiently as possible, and loved "computers" with that. I upgraded it by adding a "hardcard" (HDD on a HDD controller card that plugged into an ISA slot) IIRC. My next upgrade was a VGA card with a meg of RAM that I upgraded (via individual chips) to 2meg. I added a soundblaster card. When I moved out of the dorms, I got a modem (probably 9600 or 14400). I spent a lot of time on dial in BBS'.
I've built a few computers from scratch over the years, but the last two have been all-in-one purchases (HP running MS Win, and now a 27" iMac).

I've dabbled with various OS over the years including various flavors of Linux, and had access to Solaris Unix at work. Now at work, I have access to servers running Redhat, and still enjoy working in the CLI. For work for the last 25+ years, I've supported various types of network equipment, mostly via CLI.

I haven't tried running Linux for a home PC in years. I enjoyed learning and tinkering with it in the past, but I prefer something that does what I need and is stable which I have been getting for the past 15+ years. And now that I'm on Mac, I also have a *nix style CLI if I want/need it.

My next laptop, I’ve decided, is the Asus Zenbook Duo. It has two screens and the keyboard can be magnetically attached over the lower screen or lifted off and set on the desk.

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Just curious .... how many of y'all are just "users" of computers ... who plug & play (hardware) and software (OS/Apps) to do a task or tasks?

They are just tools ...

I loved to invent from scratch ... and if the code doesn't exist to get the job done....

Then I would learn it, and then produce it ... and did ... my whole IT career.

370 Assembler is/was my benchmark ... if one can master that ....

The rest is SOOO easy peasy ...

Computer geeks are :D

Me too. I was 10. Thanks dad. Got a 128 after that.

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So heres a great one


When I was 10 I wanted to learn about computers

Craig, one of the slightly older kids at the synagogue mentioned this after school place tgat was half arts/cradts and half programming. Loved it

Craig went to the IB program for high school, I smoke dope and chased skirts.

Craig graduated and went to college (Stanford), I got out of hs didnt have a plan so I got a job in a hospital


1996 Craig was asked to do a start up for a killer business idea involving this new Internet thing. He declined, wanting to finish his masters but said to call him when they were ready for their first real employee.

That little internet nbusiness is still going, you may have heard of Google ....

same here!

I loved the c64 for games. got a lot of years out of that thing and enjoyed every second of it.

The closest I ever came to programming was some fancy batch files.

I helped develop the 100K film recorder the did 8x10, 4x5 2.25x2.75 and of course 35mm recording. I had the prototype and I made all the factory samples for potential clients around the world. I made myself several complex batch files to modify the Autoexe.bat and SYS.bat file in the DOS days. I still have my DOS 1.1 and 2.2 discs.

It was cool to talk to a real programmer and have him walk me trough the modification of the proprietary code in assembly that ran the recorder.

Now I just run very expensive aerial photo programs, and surf the internet.

In the early 90's a guy bought the house next to my parent's lake property.
(The neighborhood was still mostly little summer cottage shacks back then. Good location.)

George was a big-wig inventor of early Compression Algorithms, to my understanding.
also possibly dealing with cancer
I'd see him occasionally and say hello. Nice guy. Very reserved and well dressed.

George rebuilt into a nice place with a heated sidewalk and everything. Had a chill full time fixit guy who hung around a bit baked doing this or that. Super cool everything. His smoking hot daughter stopped by one day and I checked out the leaking oil pan on her beater Ford. That was a slow ball down the center which I watched go past. Sigh.

My father had some kind of permanent sand-in-drawers issue over George's new porch railing partially blocking our full view. Rules and standards. It was a 1-direction war.
Pop loved computers and new tech. I had a lot of IP ideas.
But that was that.
(The neighborhood later rebuilt into giant hideous McMansions breaking ALL the HOA rules.)

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Started on a C64. Couldn't afford a lot og gams so I programmed a lot myself, including a CAD program.

Also got hired to write a program for a local farmer that had Angus beef cattle so they could track a bunch of stuff I no longer remember. I was glad they had a C128 because the sequential database took a lot of RAM, or so I thought at the time.

Who else had an Amiga or two? They were awesome back in the day. Wish I had the money at the time for a Toaster to go with it. The local TC station had one.

IBM clones after that.

I had one. It cost a thou$snd. I had to finance it. I set it to record Dick Cavet who I think was on a 4pm PST. IDT I rented movies. Maybe.

I figured I was probably the first Pelican to know about Google ... before I was a
pelican ... I started using it from about day 1 ... purely by accident ;).

I was on a jam band listserve and this dude started posting "his" menu and joked about trading cookies for worthless potential stock option to geeks at 3am ... all in jest.

He was Charlie ... the first, and new Google Chef ... like employee #60 or something ... also cooked for the Grateful Dead's circus a bit.

Wish I'd never met Kimmie before they married and she was handing out Gmale invites tho' .... the regerts of being "on the road" :D

I just sorta "fell into" computer science ... back in '78. Had no clue where it would lead ... for me, it was data communications, systems, networks, automation, copper > fiber, etc.

Then came the Internet/Intranets taking over in bigly corporate networks ....

And Steves ... more Steves than I could ever count :D

In binary ...

I loved being a systems programmer, and networking stuff ... the REAL techie stuff, and had access to the hardware, etc. like few others. Like the consoles (inside of the Big Blue boxes) and had total access to state-of-the-art comm front-end processors (later routers/switches) and literally just about everything that was "bleeding edge" ....

I had a blast :D

Long ago... ;)

The computer class 101 in college taught me nothing...except it was an expensive waste of credit.

A couple years after college I took a semester of digital electronics at a trade school for almost zero tuition. I learned way more practical stuff in that semester than the college class.

First was a Commodore 64, when the kids got older our first real computer was a 386-40 with 2mb ram and a 80mb hard drive. At work our first machine was a 286 for estimating, painfully slow.

My first computer was a 286 that my sister-in-law used at her work that quit working due to a blown up power supply. Her late husband was able to get it for me when I was laid off way back in '92. I figured I'd better learn how to work a computer if I was ever going to get a job again.
I got a local company to redo the 286 into a 386-40 I think it was. I struggled with it using a monochrome monitor (remember thouse?) and 2mb of RAM. Finally bit the bullet and got it up to 4mb of RAM and got a bootleg copy of (what did Catia replace as the go to engineering drafting program? Damn, I'm getting old.) to work on it, sort of.
Learned how to install hardware as well as some software and make it all work. Was able to become comfortable opening up a 'box' and seeing what was up inside hardware wise.
Bought a HUGE hd of 200mb for $200 or so which was a lot of money back then for an out of work guy who had two young kids and a wife to support.
Now days I'm happy to have a working computer that's pretty fast even for it's age. I do need to get my HD cleaned up as I'm fast running out of space given that my cameras make such large photo files. And I do like taking pictures.

EDIT : AutoCad, that's the program.

Back in the day.....yes PC Magazine was thee reference for hardware, software such as games/apps/ETC and Intel had come out with the NEW 386 based 32 bit computer CPU. Well it was expensive and needed a whole new motherboard with 32 bit data paths. Soooo after all the grumbling Intel made a 32 bit IO CPU (386DX) and a 32 bit CPU with 16 bit IO the new and wonderful 386SX. Of course the problem was Intel had sped up the 80286 CPU and in PC Mag's test the 386sx and new and faster 80286 turned out the same results!

Well PC Mag had their technical wizard named John Dvorack following all this and he seemed to hate both IBM and Intel and every issue he'd raise hell about this or that. Well I remember an issue where it seems the computer engineers in Tiwan had figured how to make the 80286 CPU run much faster than even the 386DX! Whoa....so off to the far east went John and he found that their CPUs were exactly the same speed as older ones....they had found a way to rig/modify the PC Mag benchmarks so their results were skewed! Boy was he initially MAD with capital letters but then he got even by handing out those white pocket protectors to everyone in the company. They had none before they po'd him!
John Rogers the oldracer

Spent way more of my life than I ever expected to trying to make silicon do as it was told.

The problem is ‘told’ is subjective and what I want and what it does is not always the same.

It's worse with an LLM - they aren’t even deterministic, so getting them to play nice with one another is a joy.