"Wayne.B" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 26 Jan 2006 18:46:26 -0500, "Eisboch" wrote:

so I became "Eisboch" because I happened to
be drinking a Coors Eisboch blend that night.

I'll be darned, always thought it was a play on "ice box" for some
reason.

You certainly brought back a few memories with mention of Prodigy and
MIDI. IBM/Prodigy squandered almost as many opportunities as DEC did
with AltaVista. And then there is always Compuserve of course, who
thought they knew it all until they didn't.

I had a Compuserve account back in the early 80s when 300 baud was
high speed and acoustical couplers were high tech. :-)

What was the name of the network utility that you could use to connect
with Compuserve? That was my first inkling that some sort of
universal connectivity might someday be possible.


I think I still have my 300 BAUD modem somewhere in my collection of "No, I
will not throw it away. It's still useful! stuff. I went hog wild when I
upgraded (that word didn't exist at the time) to my US Robotics 2400 BAUD
modem! When I did that I was able to view gifs; one a day.

Eisboch wrote:

From now on I shall be known as ......

"Sam Adams"

Then I should be "MacTarnahan"

"RCE" wrote in message
...

"Bryan" wrote in message
news

"Eisboch" wrote in message
...
I've been using the "handle" "Eisboch" since my early days on the net
back in 1989 or '90. I had a super modern 286 computer, 13mhz clock
speed and a huge hard drive with 20 mbytes of storage space. It ran on
DOS with a pre-MSWindows software suite called "GeoWorks". GeoWorks
actually had a windows type format and even included a word processing
program called "GeoWrite". I signed onto an internet access through
Prodigy and was heavily involved in some of the midi sequencing groups
and "chat" rooms. You had to have a screen name, so I became "Eisboch"
because I happened to be drinking a Coors Eisboch blend that night.

Anyway, it's time to retire the handle. Mrs.E thinks it's stupid, and I
am getting kind of tired of it anyway.

From now on I shall be known as ......

"Sam Adams"

Just kidding.

RCE




Nice to meet you, Mr. RCE.
You started with one of them fancy high-powered 286's of which I could
only dream! I started with the 8086 xt and a 20, yes 20, MB HDD. I
loved my DOS; I didn't understand why people needed all that Mac and
Windows nonsense. DOS: just tell your computer what to do and it did it!
Simple as that. Remember when the excitement of opening a gif meant
starting the process and coming back after dinner to see if the gif had
finished filling in all the pixels? I actually started with an Apple
(was it IIC?), encountered a mac in grad school, and switched to the DOS
world when I couldn't find a mac program that could handle the graphical
representation (believe it or not) of my lab data. Boy that was a long
time ago!


It is. My super fast "Pal" 286 even ran CADD 1, an early cad design
program. CADD was developed through version 6 as a DOS only program then
was bought out by Autodesk (Autocad). CADD was recently re-introduced in
a Windows version and I just downloaded a copy. It's like old times.

The Pal had a normal clock speed of 8 mhz, but had a "turbo" button that,
when pushed, took it to a lightning fast 13 mhz.

RCE


I started out on the Internet with a DEC PDP. Probably an 11/05 but maybe
an 11/34. Still have a great spicy peanut noodle recipe printed on dot
matrix printer. When it was a text only world. Except for ascii art.

"RCE" wrote in message
...

"Shortwave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 27 Jan 2006 00:32:21 GMT, "Bryan"
wrote:



i built an altair 8080 which, well wasn't the neatest thing on the
block, but it worked - i did some rudimentary switching with the
thing. then i went to work for small time mini-computer company and
had my run of minis until about '79 when i bought an apple ii. then
an apple iie. then a vic 20, commodore 64 and into the pc world from
there building my own until five years ago when it became a silly
quest to roll your own when you could buy for less than you could
build.

Had Commodore 64 for a while - replaced my first computer - A Texas
Instruments TI-1 or something like that. It didn't have a disk drive -
had 16k of memory - and you saved your programs to a cheap Radio Shack
reel to reel tape recorder.

In our business, we built a fully automatic vapor deposition coating
system using a Tandy Trash 80. I still shutter when I think about it.

Eisb ..... ooops ...

RCE


TI-99. I think it is still in the gargage. Had the best game for kids.
Alpiner. My daughters loved that game. Tandy had one of the best early
PC's. Had the much superior Motorola 68000 and ran SCO Unix. I think it
was the 16B. We used it to develop a multi computer hook up disk subsystem
with 8 megabytes of Cache. When 8 Megs cost a couple of thousand dollars.

"Calif Bill" wrote in message
ink.net...

"RCE" wrote in message
...

"Bryan" wrote in message
news

"Eisboch" wrote in message
...
I've been using the "handle" "Eisboch" since my early days on the net
back in 1989 or '90. I had a super modern 286 computer, 13mhz clock
speed and a huge hard drive with 20 mbytes of storage space. It ran on
DOS with a pre-MSWindows software suite called "GeoWorks". GeoWorks
actually had a windows type format and even included a word processing
program called "GeoWrite". I signed onto an internet access through
Prodigy and was heavily involved in some of the midi sequencing groups
and "chat" rooms. You had to have a screen name, so I became "Eisboch"
because I happened to be drinking a Coors Eisboch blend that night.

Anyway, it's time to retire the handle. Mrs.E thinks it's stupid, and
I am getting kind of tired of it anyway.

From now on I shall be known as ......

"Sam Adams"

Just kidding.

RCE




Nice to meet you, Mr. RCE.
You started with one of them fancy high-powered 286's of which I could
only dream! I started with the 8086 xt and a 20, yes 20, MB HDD. I
loved my DOS; I didn't understand why people needed all that Mac and
Windows nonsense. DOS: just tell your computer what to do and it did
it! Simple as that. Remember when the excitement of opening a gif meant
starting the process and coming back after dinner to see if the gif had
finished filling in all the pixels? I actually started with an Apple
(was it IIC?), encountered a mac in grad school, and switched to the DOS
world when I couldn't find a mac program that could handle the graphical
representation (believe it or not) of my lab data. Boy that was a long
time ago!


It is. My super fast "Pal" 286 even ran CADD 1, an early cad design
program. CADD was developed through version 6 as a DOS only program then
was bought out by Autodesk (Autocad). CADD was recently re-introduced in
a Windows version and I just downloaded a copy. It's like old times.

The Pal had a normal clock speed of 8 mhz, but had a "turbo" button that,
when pushed, took it to a lightning fast 13 mhz.

RCE


I started out on the Internet with a DEC PDP. Probably an 11/05 but maybe
an 11/34. Still have a great spicy peanut noodle recipe printed on dot
matrix printer. When it was a text only world. Except for ascii art.


I forgot all about dot matrix printers. I realized the other day that my
kids have no idea about the punch cards!

"Bryan" wrote in message
news

"Calif Bill" wrote in message
ink.net...

"RCE" wrote in message
...

"Bryan" wrote in message
news
"Eisboch" wrote in message
...
I've been using the "handle" "Eisboch" since my early days on the
net back in 1989 or '90. I had a super modern 286 computer, 13mhz
clock speed and a huge hard drive with 20 mbytes of storage space. It
ran on DOS with a pre-MSWindows software suite called "GeoWorks".
GeoWorks actually had a windows type format and even included a word
processing program called "GeoWrite". I signed onto an internet
access through Prodigy and was heavily involved in some of the midi
sequencing groups and "chat" rooms. You had to have a screen name, so
I became "Eisboch" because I happened to be drinking a Coors Eisboch
blend that night.

Anyway, it's time to retire the handle. Mrs.E thinks it's stupid, and
I am getting kind of tired of it anyway.

From now on I shall be known as ......

"Sam Adams"

Just kidding.

RCE




Nice to meet you, Mr. RCE.
You started with one of them fancy high-powered 286's of which I could
only dream! I started with the 8086 xt and a 20, yes 20, MB HDD. I
loved my DOS; I didn't understand why people needed all that Mac and
Windows nonsense. DOS: just tell your computer what to do and it did
it! Simple as that. Remember when the excitement of opening a gif
meant starting the process and coming back after dinner to see if the
gif had finished filling in all the pixels? I actually started with an
Apple (was it IIC?), encountered a mac in grad school, and switched to
the DOS world when I couldn't find a mac program that could handle the
graphical representation (believe it or not) of my lab data. Boy that
was a long time ago!


It is. My super fast "Pal" 286 even ran CADD 1, an early cad design
program. CADD was developed through version 6 as a DOS only program then
was bought out by Autodesk (Autocad). CADD was recently re-introduced
in a Windows version and I just downloaded a copy. It's like old times.

The Pal had a normal clock speed of 8 mhz, but had a "turbo" button
that, when pushed, took it to a lightning fast 13 mhz.

RCE


I started out on the Internet with a DEC PDP. Probably an 11/05 but
maybe an 11/34. Still have a great spicy peanut noodle recipe printed on
dot matrix printer. When it was a text only world. Except for ascii
art.


I forgot all about dot matrix printers. I realized the other day that my
kids have no idea about the punch cards!


You want some. I still got a couple of thousand. We use them for note
cards by the phone. No holes in them.

"Wayne.B" wrote in message
...

What was the name of the network utility that you could use to connect
with Compuserve? That was my first inkling that some sort of
universal connectivity might someday be possible.


Oh, man ... I have a hazy remembrance of that, but forget the name or
details. It was some bizarre way to get your computer hooked up ... It
will come to me.

RCE

"RG" wrote in message news:U_eCf.1661$MJ.1652@fed1read07...

Had Commodore 64 for a while - replaced my first computer - A Texas
Instruments TI-1 or something like that. It didn't have a disk drive -
had 16k of memory - and you saved your programs to a cheap Radio Shack
reel to reel tape recorder.


Started with a VIC 20, then upgraded to a C-64 the day they hit town. Hot
stuff. But not nearly as hot as the next trade up to an Amiga. The Amiga
was way ahead of its time, but unfortunately was a Commodore product and
therefore doomed in the marketplace. Commodore, from a marketing
perspective, had the unfailing ability to screw up a one car funeral.
Finally switched to a 386 PC running Windows 3.0 in 1990 I think.

Believe it or not, I was still using Windows 3.0 up to about 1997 when it
finally just wouldn't run any of the newer software. I also had (should
have kept) the original Flight Simulator program. It came on a 5 1/4 inch
floppy disk and the "airplane" was represented by a simple cursor cross.
All the land representations were crude stick drawings. I spent hours
"flying" to exotic places like Derby, Kansas.

The infamous 386 chip really burned a lot of people. The 486 was just about
ready for release but they dumped the 386 on the market just to keep up with
Apple.

RCE

"-rick-" wrote in message
. ..
Eisboch wrote:

From now on I shall be known as ......

"Sam Adams"

Then I should be "MacTarnahan"

All these beers to try and so little time...

Actually, I've always enjoyed the stronger brews but, alas, the beer
drinking days are just about over. Love the taste, but it no longer loves
me. Never acquired a taste for the hard stuff. Looks like it's now an
occasional wine. Starbucks Coffee Liquor with milk and ice ain't bad.

RCE

"Calif Bill" wrote in message
ink.net...



TI-99. I think it is still in the gargage. Had the best game for kids.
Alpiner. My daughters loved that game. Tandy had one of the best early
PC's. Had the much superior Motorola 68000 and ran SCO Unix. I think it
was the 16B. We used it to develop a multi computer hook up disk
subsystem with 8 megabytes of Cache. When 8 Megs cost a couple of
thousand dollars.


That was it - a TI-99. Best thing about it was that you had to learn how to
write stuff in Basic, although I think it was called "TI-Basic". I
remember doing the examples from the manual - the little stick figure that
walked around and the program that was supposed to emit ultrasonic
frequencies to keep mice away. I kept looking at the dog to see if he
noticed. He didn't.

My oldest son (now 32 yo) was about 4 or 5 at the time. He decided to drop
a dime into one of the air vents on the TI-99 and it went up in smoke.

RCE