13 Mar
2001
13 Mar
'01
4:11 p.m.
On Tue, 13 Mar 2001, ajp166 wrote:
Who knows what computers will be like in 10-20 years. Will they have any
semblance to what we consider a computer today? A box with a keyboard and
a monitor, with a mouse and speakers?
Computers of the future may make the ones we use today or even 20 years
ago seem like using a feather and ink to write letters. Know what I mean?
That's all I was saying.
I had the Apple ][ in mind when I wrote this :) I remember what it was
like having crappy joyticks, no color monitor, etc. When I got older and
could go out and buy better stuff for my //e I remember how nice it was to
have a bitchin joystick and a nice composite color display. It made all
the difference with games like Rescue Raiders, and some games you couldn't
play without color (Gumball by Broderbund being one example :)
I had a real hot-rodded Apple //e. In my younger, nerdier days I used to
call it my Power Demon. It had every slot filled.
Slot 1: Orange Micro Grappler+ 64K buffered parallel printer card
Slot 2: Apple Super Serial Card
Slot 3: Applied Engineering Transwarp 3.3Mhz accelerator
Slot 4: Mountain Clock
Slot 5: Applied Engineering RAMfactor (1MB memory expansion)
Slot 6: Disk ][ Controller
Slot 7: Sider Hard Drive Controller
Aux. : Microsoft Premium SoftCard //e (Z80 coprocessor for CP/M)
It also had a 20MB Sider ][ hard drive, a Duodisk, and an Apple Color
Composite Monitor //e, a C&H Joystick, an Imagewriter II printer (color).
The only downside was a crappy 2400bps modem. But man, that was my baby,
the Power Demon!
I still have it set up in my spare room. I boot it up from time to time
to access old files and play old games, like Wizardry and Rescue Raiders
:)
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
You can drive
an old car really fast (perhaps even faster than more
modern
cars). Old computers are slow-assed beasts.
I'm surprized at you. Many of those old slow machines were faster if byy
virtue
of not having four tonnes of nastiness grafted to them. I don't
know that you'd necessarily be hot-rodding them, unless of
course
you'd be boosting their abilities for better
graphics, sound, nice
joysticks, bigger displays, etc.
Feh, PCs are good gamers and all but if I want a good solid machine for
real work it may be far from my first choice. Better is relative. ;)