Boring old 'puter kit

[anon14766838]

can we change the subject line to “Computer Gear - geek city”

[Ruprecht]

The tone is too high, allow Mr. MWS

[anon14766838]

@Valvebloke

He phoned DEC who had a place over near Reading and they said “No chance, once they’re dead they’re dead. Start again, and back up.” He pleaded. No joy. Eventually he was put through to ‘someone who might be able to help’. The voice at the far end of the phone gave him an address in Reading and told him to be there at 8pm with the disc, a spare and a £20 note (worth something in the 1980’s). The house looked ordinary from the outside but inside the living room floor was covered with electronics. In the middle of it was a stripped-down modified disc drive and an oscilloscope. The DEC engineer took the £20 and my mate’s dead disc and over a period of an hour or so he carefully shimmed the drive mech with bits of tape, using the oscilloscope to detect the residual off-centredness of the disc itself on its spindle. Eventually he got the disc rotating close enough about its centre that he could pull the data off and copy it onto the spare. My mate drove back to the department, let himself in and there and then made a copy. Lesson learned.

roll forward to 2017 - and the consistent stream of computer science students (who really should know better) looking for extensions their final year project, because they have lost a huge chunk of code stored on USB stick or an external drive…it is still equally tricky to recover the data.

[Jim]

omg…Mr MWS inserts himself everywhere…

[KJW]

My Goodness! That’s an Apple IIc she’s got there, if I’m not mistaken!

I used one of those for a while.

[AmDismal]

A computer magazine I used to get in the 80s, when facing falling circulation, took to having a scantily-clad young lady posting with a computer. Alas Google image search has not been my friend, as I can’t even remember the title.

[murrayjohnson]

@AmDismal

Alas Google image search has not been my friend, as I can’t even remember the title.

The technology that fails when you really need it.

[Ruprecht]

I can only apologize Jim, I have yet to find a way to kill him for good.

[Jim]

@Agrail

I have yet to find a way to kill him for good

With sharp knives at Lopwell?

[Ruprecht]

I had considered quietly ceasing to be but then I suspect the inner bastard would simply haunt me ‘alive or no’ as the case may be. I fear this is an inside job. I am told the midlife crisis will eventually abate and I will be left in relative comfort with the march of time to contemplate upgrading my power washer and wincing at the rising cost of muffins.

[Gyroscope]

On my comp sci course, the Unix boxes were so overloaded and old (HLH Orions IIRC) that the geekier folk took to writing assignments in PostScript and sending them to the Apple LaserWriter (?) because it was much faster.

TBH I don’t think I could write a line of it now.

I used to maintain the VMS file system, so DEC kit is, or was, very familiar.

[anon14766838]

@Gyroscope

On my comp sci course, the Unix boxes were so overloaded and old (HLH Orions IIRC) that the geekier folk took to writing assignments in PostScript and sending them to the Apple LaserWriter (?) because it was much faster.

TBH I don’t think I could write a line of it now.

I used to maintain the VMS file system, so DEC kit is, or was, very familiar.

I once taught postscript as a programming language ----

Ahhh VMS - now there is something I have no fond memories of…we were told that VMS was a word game and the prize for mastering it was getting to use Unix (we were always taught Unix before VMS so it may have been a matter of familiarity)…but I hated VMS

[Cambs13]

@A_Touch_of_Cloth

If I mention Golf will this thread get locked?

Ffy

[A_Touch_of_Cloth]

Golf.

[A_Touch_of_Cloth]

Golf

[A_Touch_of_Cloth]

G g g g g g g g g g olf

[htm_1968]

@A_Touch_of_Cloth

G g g g g g g g g g olf

Fu-fu-fu-fu-fu-fu-fu-fu-fu-fu-fucking golfists…

[gthang]

I did my “Computing A Level” in a room that looked just like this.

[A_Touch_of_Cloth]

@gthang

I did my “Computing A Level” in a room that looked just like this.

Dullest post. Like ever.

[gthang]

You sound surprised that a thread titled Boring old 'puter kit contains dull and boring pictures of old computers. Why is that?