Blast from the past

ClippyBeer

ClippyBeer

Moderator
I was looking for something else one some old DVDs and came across this PDF I downloaded a long time ago.


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I have never seen a magazine dedicated to Windows XP (this magazine was available in the UK) but they are now defunct.
It's fun to read through some of these old mags and see what was a high spec PC back in the days. This one is from 2004 so is primarily focused on Service Pack 2 but has lots of neat tips and software recommendations for XP.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/wqkix90zh1ghi78/Microsoft+Windows+XP+2004-12.pdf/file
 
Ah, the sweet scent of the past!

Thank you Clippy! You brought me back to the good old days when you could still believe Microsoft was primarily a software company... when you could still buy software rather than having to rent it for a monthly fee... when your data were kept safe in your computer rather than stored somewhere in a "cloud" where nearly everyone skilled enough may get them... when you didn't have to put a piece of tape on your webcam before kissing your girlfriend near the PC... when your name, data and preferences weren't sold to the best bidder to flood you with crappy ads... when you were still master and commander on your own ship... and, yes, when we all were 18 years younger:D

But way too soon the sweet reverie ended and reality hit back hard and mercilessly: in a few minutes I'll have to turn off my faithful XP, swap the hard drive with another expendable one and reboot into Win7 if I want to read the news, join my colleagues overseas in a Zoom conference and run my latest 3D software :rolleyes:

Bah, πάντα ῥεῖ , such is life... :(
 
I thought I had a blast from the past when I booted my laptop a couple days ago. Core Temp said my CPU was only running at 5 MHz!

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Here's another blast from the past

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I always coveted that front panel.

I did not have one of those, but a little later did build my own micro based on Zilog Z80 CPU.
There were a couple of publications for DIY with Z80, one being by Osborne, that included PCB schematics for photocopy and etch production.

Input/output was switches and LEDs, although I later evolved the design to 7-segment displays and a HEX keypad.

Once I had the basics, most of the further development was based on articles in 'Byte' Magazine, especially the regular feature entitled Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar.
 
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Mea culpa: a thousand apologies.

I have just dug out the books on Z80 DIY, and the aforementioned book is not by Osborne at all!

My memory of the 1970's is clearly not as good as I believed it to be.

Out of the selection of such books that I can lay my hands on, the best is one by Steve Ciarcia, of Byte mag and circuit cellar fame. It is less of blindly following recipe, and more telling you what you need, to look further into options which you could develop.
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https://www.amazon.co.uk/Build-Your-Own-Z-80-Computer/dp/0070109621/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=Steve+Ciarcia+Z80&qid=1654625018&s=books&sr=1-2

Perhaps I should sell them. I did not realise the astronomical prices that they are fetching.
 
I still have my original copies of the Jan & Feb issues of Popular Electronics. The January issue is famous because it introduced the world to the possibility of having your own microcomputer. I wonder if these magazines are worth much?

That 1974 date for Steve Ciarcia's machine is not possible because the Z80 wasn't available until 1976. Even then it was quite expensive. It was probably a few years after that before it was affordable to buy.

In 1980 when I was working at NASA I had the the use of a couple IMSAI 8080 computers. These were clones of the MITS Altair 8800 shown in the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics.

I thought of building something but decided to buy a pre-built computer instead. In 1979 I bought a TRS-80 Model I. In the end it was quite expensive. For example, the dual 8 inch floppy drives was $1200 US.

Picture 1: My brother playing a game of Star Trek on my TRS-80 Model I.
Picture 2: My TRS-80 Model I upgraded to using dual 5-1/4 inch and dual 8 inch floppy drives.

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priscus said:
It has not been stated that the 1974 machine is a Z80
Click to expand...
You are right. However, you confused things by talking about the Z80 and referencing a book about a Z80 computer.

I found a reference to the source of your picture.
Here is my 8008 computer built in 1974. It ran at a blazing clock rate of about 200 kHz and had 4 KB of static RAM, 4 KB of EPROM, serial and parallel I/O ports, and a tape cassette “mass-storage” interface.
Click to expand...
Steve Ciarcia's computer
https://circuitcellar.com/how-it-all-began/
 
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I still have 3 working 9x machines. Two "upgraded" from 98 FE to SE to ME one upgraded from SE to ME.
Using 98 Lite and being on a mission to stream line/strip, they are lean and mean. One is a DAW, one is a CD burner tower (x 3 CD drives) and one is my old office/dial up which is now an offline archive file repository. Ah I loved tweaking those 'puters...
 
The first computer that I ever bought was a W95 machine, which had been updated (graphics card add-in) to W98SE. It was bought, second hand.

I had previously had self built, scratch built machines, and PCs assembled from the usual components, but this was bought for a partner, who is no longer with me.

Later, I maxed out Ram, and upgraded CPU to its limit. It just satisfied requirements for XP, which I replaced the 98 OS with, but it ran XP very poorly. (I had XP machines available to me at work, so I was aware just how sub-optimal was its performance.)

Next, I replaced motherboard. It then became a regular 4GB Ram, Prescott CPU, XP machine.

Now, this was originally, a very cheap 'Medion' brand machine from Aldi. I ceased regular use of it, circa 2006, when I assembled a couple of (then) state of the art XP machines.

It has languished unused for some years now, but I cannot bear to throw it out. The interior metal work, ie chassis/case is of a quality that I have not seen in any other machine. Not a single sharp edge: every corner is radiused, it is German Engineering at its best! It will need some increased fan provision to suit modern processors, If I only can get the time to do such mods....
 
I have had a computer since 1979 but didn't buy a PC until January 1995. I didn't like Windows for Workgroups 3.11 so in March when Microsoft said they were looking for beta testers for Windows 95 I jumped on it. Sure Windows 95 beta was buggy but it sure beat WFW 3.11. Initially Windows 95 beta came on maybe 30 floppies but eventually was released on a CD. That saved a lot of time installing it. My only regret was a gotcha in the video properties dialog. I forgot it show all setting possibilities even those not supported by your monitor. I changed to a setting that was too high and killed my monitor. Fortunately, the Windows 95 release in October fixed that and only showed the settings that were compatible with your monitor. I think it used Plug-n-Play for that.

A year or two later I installed Slackware Linux on it as a dual-boot. I can't believe how primitive it was back then. Linux had to scan for hardware every time it booted up and load a driver for them. That meant booting Linux was very slow. Since it didn't have Plug-n-Play it was sometimes hit or miss whether it guessed the right hardware.
 
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