First computer and first flight sim experience

Ahh yes good memories! C64 and TRS80. Using Poke and Peak commands I found
many Commodore's with faulty memory

But what I really remember was my first IBM PC with the green phosphor
screen. Staring at those green images for hours on end must have fatigued my
eyes. Driving home at night the white letters on the freeway signs had a
markedly pink tint to them. Must have been a short term chromatic aberration
as my vision seems fine now.

Jim Mac Millan
P.S. Did anyone ever play with the SPO256 speech chips? Had one hooked up to
the parallel port of the first IBM PC.

"HermanNelson" <nobody DeleteThis @charter.net> wrote in message
news:ZU5_g.390$iA1.267@newsfe05.lga...
> It has been fun following all of the different experiences that everyone
> has been having with FSX. I haven't made the upgrade yet, but probably
> will in the near future.
>
> The main reason for this post is to see how many of you go back to the
> early days of home computers. We brought our first computer home almost
> 25 years ago. An IBM PCjr. It was loaded. Memory upgraded to 256 kb. A
> 300 baud modem. 16 color graphics. The works. Part of the PCjr package
> was what had to be one of the first versions of Flight Sim. I was
> immediately hooked. Many nights were spent practicing landings at Miegs
> Field. I felt like I was flying the wings off that little Cessna. I knew
> it was time to go to bed when I'd hear the morning newspaper hit the front
> porch. Total bliss! Our first version of Windows was 2.0 which we ran on
> a Tandy 1000 with a 20 MB drive. Ahhhhhh, the good old days. Happy
> flying.
>
> HermanNelson
>
 >> Stay informed about: First computer and first flight sim experience 

Hey, my first computer was a Radio Shack Color Computer. It used a
common TV for the monitor and had a blinking cursor that was a large
square blob about the size of the end of a person's small finger. 32
characters per line!

Memory was 4 K not M...but K!

Storage? A common tape player so all storage was sequential! If you
needed to change a record in a file, you would load the entire file off
tape into memory, make the change and run the entire file back out to
tape! Whew!

I remember typing a letter and RAN OUT OF MEMORY on page 3 of the text!


Well, the boys at Radio Shack saw me comming and was I dumb but hooked
I upgraded to 48K ...not M,( less that 1/20th of ONE LOUSY Meg!)
for the bargain price of 1100 dollars US!! Was I drunk or what?

No wonder the Radio Shack guys were smiling (and probably laughing
their A_ _ E S off.

Mad Mike

_________________________________________________________
Posted via the -Web to Usenet- forums at http://forums.simradar.com
Visit www.simradar.com and try our Flight Simulation Search Engine!
 >> Stay informed about: First computer and first flight sim experience 

Mad Mike, I know what you mean about the Radio Shack guys seeing you coming.
When I bought my first HD it was for my Tandy (Radio Shack) 1000. It was a
20 MB (not GB) drive mounted to an expansion card. Plugged into an
expansion slot. And you had to type a command to park the head before
shutting down. Price - $595! I paid over $3600 for my first 386 based
computer. It had 4 MB of memory, a 40 MB HD and an Orchid Pro Designer II 1
MB memory graphics card. I later paid almost $400 for another 4 MB of
system memory. At the time, it was all money well spent. These days, my
first question when making new system or peripherals purchases is, "How will
it run MSFS?"

HermanNelson
 >> Stay informed about: First computer and first flight sim experience 

First computer i had was BBC Micro.
First flight sim was called Aviator,all wire frame but it was pretty good.

regards,
dAVE
 >> Stay informed about: First computer and first flight sim experience 

Ah yes a blazing MHz 6502 and 16K or 32K of memory. I did a lot of the
design work for Acorn and their subsequent RISC machines....

"DB" <noone.TakeThisOut@nowhere.co.uk> wrote in message
news:U6ydnWT7EL7LaqXYnZ2dnUVZ8tqdnZ2d@bt.com...
> First computer i had was BBC Micro.
> First flight sim was called Aviator,all wire frame but it was pretty good.
>
> regards,
> dAVE
>
 >> Stay informed about: First computer and first flight sim experience 

Yea, I still have my 5 1/4 disk for my Tandy 1000, and
I know what you mean about flying till the sun comes up.
Speaking of comes up, remember when you would fly
cross country at low altitude, and the ground would shoot up and
smack you out of the air? Glad those days are over!

--

SeeYaa:) Harbin Osteen KG6URO

When American Citizens with dual citizenship pledges allegiance
to the flag, to which flag do they pledge allegiance too?

-
 >> Stay informed about: First computer and first flight sim experience 

My earliest flight sim was the Sinclair Flightsim for the old Sinclair ZX81
(back in 1981). All flights were at night and there wasn't much to see! That
said I played it loads.

--
RobP
'There are only 10 types of people in this world - Those that understand
binary and those that don't'

"HermanNelson" <nobody RemoveThis @charter.net> wrote in message
news:ZU5_g.390$iA1.267@newsfe05.lga...
> It has been fun following all of the different experiences that everyone
> has been having with FSX. I haven't made the upgrade yet, but probably
> will in the near future.
>
> The main reason for this post is to see how many of you go back to the
> early days of home computers. We brought our first computer home almost
> 25 years ago. An IBM PCjr. It was loaded. Memory upgraded to 256 kb. A
> 300 baud modem. 16 color graphics. The works. Part of the PCjr package
> was what had to be one of the first versions of Flight Sim. I was
> immediately hooked. Many nights were spent practicing landings at Miegs
> Field. I felt like I was flying the wings off that little Cessna. I knew
> it was time to go to bed when I'd hear the morning newspaper hit the front
> porch. Total bliss! Our first version of Windows was 2.0 which we ran on
> a Tandy 1000 with a 20 MB drive. Ahhhhhh, the good old days. Happy
> flying.
>
> HermanNelson
>
 >> Stay informed about: First computer and first flight sim experience 

"Jim Mac Millan" <Fly_Boy_Jim.RemoveThis@Yahoo.moc> wrote in
news:w18_g.33439$tO5.729@fed1read10:

>
> But what I really remember was my first IBM PC with the green phosphor
> screen. Staring at those green images for hours on end must have
> fatigued my eyes. Driving home at night the white letters on the
> freeway signs had a markedly pink tint to them. Must have been a short
> term chromatic aberration as my vision seems fine now.

An IBM PC wa also my first personal computer. I had completed my MS
in Comp Sci and we had many Intel 8080 or Zilog Z-80 systems that
we used CP/M on. Also a nice compiler PL/M. I was going to build an
S-100 bus system when IBM announced the PC on the 8088 which sounded
much better than anything I could put into an S-100 chassis.

The IBM PC came with a "technical reference" book which included
schematics for the motherboard and all the addon boards, plus a
complete listing of the BIOS source. In addition, the PC-DOS manual
contianed all the "OS" function calls available for programs. There
was also the embedded BASIC interpreter which pretty much all
micro-computers had at that time.

I optioned-out my PC (pretty much) with dual, single-side 5.25"
floppies (I think they held 140kb, there also was the concept of
"flippy" disk where both sides were used but you had to remove the
floppy disc and reinsert upside-down to read the 2d side).

I had a "full" 64k of memory populated and the "MGA" card which
provided text display and also included a parallel printer port.
BTW that was about $3500 in 1982 dollars. Cost more than my car.

Some time later I replaced the IBM green phosphor monitor with a
Princeton amber one. I also got a card (Hercules maybe, or STB?)
which could display "EGA" as "grayscale" on my amber monitor.
This I used to run FS 2 with the keyboard. By this time I think
I was up to PC-DOS 2.0 which allowed dual-sided floppy disk
(360kb). Also I bought an Intel addon card with 512k ram on it.
I also did an O/C (soldered a chip socket on the MB that allowed
a new clock generator) so I could go from 4.77MHz to about 7.25Mhz.
(In those days the bus was synchronous with the system clock.)
Also I got the NEC V-20 CPU which was supposed to be a little faster
than the Intel 8088.

scott s.
..
 >> Stay informed about: First computer and first flight sim experience 

Actually, you are right in that early equipment was really pionner stuff and
costs would have been far higher vs. performance. I am amazed at the fact
I purchased a 120GB drive for about 60 dollars today!
MM
<raamman DeleteThis @hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1161360048.811291.192990@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
>
> Mad Mike wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Well, the boys at Radio Shack saw me comming and was I dumb but hooked
>> I upgraded to 48K ...not M,( less that 1/20th of ONE LOUSY Meg!)
>> for the bargain price of 1100 dollars US!! Was I drunk or what?
>>
>> No wonder the Radio Shack guys were smiling (and probably laughing
>> their A_ _ E S off.
>>
>> Mad Mike
>>
>
>
> No, if we did not invest in the technology in those days, we would not
> be where we are today. Thank you for your help.
>
 >> Stay informed about: First computer and first flight sim experience 

"Rob Pollard" <robertapollard.TakeThisOut@hotmail.com> skrev i en meddelelse
news:Og8_g.99$3x1.10@fe1.news.blueyonder.co.uk...
> My earliest flight sim was the Sinclair Flightsim for the old Sinclair
ZX81
> (back in 1981). All flights were at night and there wasn't much to see!
That
> said I played it loads.
>
> --
Oh glorry days )

First computer experience was a mashine the size of a closet, it had a
build in 5" B&W screen, and storred programes on a strip of paper with holes
in it, I was actually able to read those strips then, and the language of
the time was Basic 1.0. The wildest game on it, was a random number guessing
game.

The net one spoke in Comal-80, the screen was now a green monster at 12", it
was the same size as my new Thermaltake meditower, and it had a floppy
drive!
Games stepped up a notch, to a scroll down flying inverted "V" flying
between blocks and $ signs, we eaven constructed a maze game for it )

Then I got my own C-64, and later the C-128, and got hooked on flightsims
;o)

Why oh why did I stop studying computers back then, man I could have been
richer than Mr.Gates to day, and he only dremt about his Spectrum at that
time )

But tell the yung people of today, about those wonderfull monster kick a**
machines, and they think you are lying, and laugh at you /

And I'm still playing "Pong" every now and then, when there is nobody around
)

Tommy C



----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 >> Stay informed about: First computer and first flight sim experience 

We had a number of them in our office. I believe they 2 - 340K floppy
drives....WOW!
"Jim Mac Millan" <Fly_Boy_Jim RemoveThis @Yahoo.moc> wrote in message
news:w18_g.33439$tO5.729@fed1read10...
> Ahh yes good memories! C64 and TRS80. Using Poke and Peak commands I found
> many Commodore's with faulty memory
>
> But what I really remember was my first IBM PC with the green phosphor
> screen. Staring at those green images for hours on end must have fatigued
> my eyes. Driving home at night the white letters on the freeway signs had
> a markedly pink tint to them. Must have been a short term chromatic
> aberration as my vision seems fine now.
>
> Jim Mac Millan
> P.S. Did anyone ever play with the SPO256 speech chips? Had one hooked up
> to the parallel port of the first IBM PC.
>
> "HermanNelson" <nobody RemoveThis @charter.net> wrote in message
> news:ZU5_g.390$iA1.267@newsfe05.lga...
>> It has been fun following all of the different experiences that everyone
>> has been having with FSX. I haven't made the upgrade yet, but probably
>> will in the near future.
>>
>> The main reason for this post is to see how many of you go back to the
>> early days of home computers. We brought our first computer home almost
>> 25 years ago. An IBM PCjr. It was loaded. Memory upgraded to 256 kb.
>> A 300 baud modem. 16 color graphics. The works. Part of the PCjr
>> package was what had to be one of the first versions of Flight Sim. I
>> was immediately hooked. Many nights were spent practicing landings at
>> Miegs Field. I felt like I was flying the wings off that little Cessna.
>> I knew it was time to go to bed when I'd hear the morning newspaper hit
>> the front porch. Total bliss! Our first version of Windows was 2.0
>> which we ran on a Tandy 1000 with a 20 MB drive. Ahhhhhh, the good old
>> days. Happy flying.
>>
>> HermanNelson
>>
>
>
 >> Stay informed about: First computer and first flight sim experience 

Those paper tapes were probably coded in hexidecimal machine code. Man,
things have gotten better....much better!
Mad Mike

"TOCA" <virker.TakeThisOut@ikke.dk> wrote in message
news:45394dc1$1$936$edfadb0f@dread12.news.tele.dk...
>
> "Rob Pollard" <robertapollard.TakeThisOut@hotmail.com> skrev i en meddelelse
> news:Og8_g.99$3x1.10@fe1.news.blueyonder.co.uk...
>> My earliest flight sim was the Sinclair Flightsim for the old Sinclair
> ZX81
>> (back in 1981). All flights were at night and there wasn't much to see!
> That
>> said I played it loads.
>>
>> --
> Oh glorry days )
>
> First computer experience was a mashine the size of a closet, it had a
> build in 5" B&W screen, and storred programes on a strip of paper with
> holes
> in it, I was actually able to read those strips then, and the language of
> the time was Basic 1.0. The wildest game on it, was a random number
> guessing
> game.
>
> The net one spoke in Comal-80, the screen was now a green monster at 12",
> it
> was the same size as my new Thermaltake meditower, and it had a floppy
> drive!
> Games stepped up a notch, to a scroll down flying inverted "V" flying
> between blocks and $ signs, we eaven constructed a maze game for it )
>
> Then I got my own C-64, and later the C-128, and got hooked on flightsims
> ;o)
>
> Why oh why did I stop studying computers back then, man I could have been
> richer than Mr.Gates to day, and he only dremt about his Spectrum at that
> time )
>
> But tell the yung people of today, about those wonderfull monster kick a**
> machines, and they think you are lying, and laugh at you /
>
> And I'm still playing "Pong" every now and then, when there is nobody
> around
> )
>
> Tommy C
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ----
> Jeg beskyttes af den gratis SPAMfighter til privatbrugere.
> Den har indtil videre sparet mig for at få 57 spam-mails
> Betalende brugere får ikke denne besked i deres e-mails.
> Hent en gratis SPAMfighter her.
>
>
 >> Stay informed about: First computer and first flight sim experience 

My first was a Commodore VIC20 with 5K of RAM of which the operating system
took up 3.5K. Purchased programs were provided on cartridge ROMs, including
the 300 baud VicModem. Self-written programs were saved to a tape cassette.
The screen was 20 characters wide. I was proud to upgrade by buying a 16K
RAM cartridge.

Thereafter I proceeded through Commodore 64, IBM PC/XT (on which I ran early
Windows and was considered a heretic for using a mouse), IBM PCjr, a weird
early Japanese portable the name of which I forget, IBM ThinkPad, Dell
Inspiron.

First Flight Simulator was the first SubLogic version. I forget how long ago
that was.

Barrie

"HermanNelson" <nobody.DeleteThis@charter.net> wrote in message
news:ZU5_g.390$iA1.267@newsfe05.lga...
> It has been fun following all of the different experiences that everyone
> has been having with FSX. I haven't made the upgrade yet, but probably
> will in the near future.
>
> The main reason for this post is to see how many of you go back to the
> early days of home computers. We brought our first computer home almost
> 25 years ago. An IBM PCjr. It was loaded. Memory upgraded to 256 kb. A
> 300 baud modem. 16 color graphics. The works. Part of the PCjr package
> was what had to be one of the first versions of Flight Sim. I was
> immediately hooked. Many nights were spent practicing landings at Miegs
> Field. I felt like I was flying the wings off that little Cessna. I knew
> it was time to go to bed when I'd hear the morning newspaper hit the front
> porch. Total bliss! Our first version of Windows was 2.0 which we ran on
> a Tandy 1000 with a 20 MB drive. Ahhhhhh, the good old days. Happy
> flying.
>
> HermanNelson
>
 >> Stay informed about: First computer and first flight sim experience