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When computers were sexy: Hilarious vintage ads from the early days of the PC (LOTS of graphics)
The Daily Mail (U.K.) ^ | April 1, 2012

Posted on 04/01/2012 6:21:36 AM PDT by Stoat

'Maybe even sexy': This glamorous 1971 advert is trying to sell a modem, of all things

 

Girl power: Technico Inc also used sex appeal to sell their 'microcomputer' in 1978

 

Sex sells: Film character Elvira was recruited to depict a desktop as a chainsaw tearing apart the old ways of doing things in this bizarre 1991 advert

 

What indeed? Three decades on, scenes like this are a thing of the past as email has become ubiquitous

 

Hot shot: Bill Gates teamed up with Radio Shack in 1985 to promote computers carrying Microsoft Windows

 

Star power: Sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov was another well-known spokesman for Radio Shack in the 1980s

 

Handy? In 1976, this chunky briefcase was the equivalent of the modern laptop, complete with tiny screen

 

Giant? This RAM card from 1977 was fast for its time, but had 30,000 times less power than the latest iPhone

 

Mail order memory: System Industries charged an annual salary for enough storage space to hold half a film

 




(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Computers/Internet; History; Science
KEYWORDS: computers; computing; history; tech
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To: Stegall Tx

A hard drive would have been a definite improvement over all the disk swapping I did, maybe worth trading for a bw monitor. Actually mine was 4 colors including black and white. The other two were red and cyan. I feel a little guilty over selling that computer, however. It has a “turbo” function which I forgot to tell the buyer about (Ctl-alt-+). He probably never found out.


21 posted on 04/01/2012 7:21:01 AM PDT by Telepathic Intruder (The right thing is not always the popular thing)
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To: Snickering Hound

I still have my programming manual for the Apple II.


22 posted on 04/01/2012 7:22:16 AM PDT by Aevery_Freeman (Typed using <FONT STYLE=SARCASM> unless otherwise noted)
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To: Snickering Hound

Apple ][ had Basic in the ROM, so he could have just booted to that and typed for a half hour or so. Hope there’s no power glitches in the neighborhood!


23 posted on 04/01/2012 7:23:01 AM PDT by cryptical (The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.)
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To: gieriscm

ping for a walk down memory lane... I feel old.


24 posted on 04/01/2012 7:26:09 AM PDT by BCR #226 (02/07 SOT www.extremefirepower.com...The BS stops when the hammer drops.)
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To: bcsco

You go back before me then. The 8086 preceded the 8088. Actually I did have an Odyssey pong machine before that, which was like the predecessor of the x-box type game machines.


25 posted on 04/01/2012 7:26:50 AM PDT by Telepathic Intruder (The right thing is not always the popular thing)
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To: Stoat; Ernest_at_the_Beach; blam

:’) Somewhere I think I saved some suggestive ones. Wait, did I type that out loud?


26 posted on 04/01/2012 7:27:32 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him)
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To: Aevery_Freeman

My first computer was a 128 K Macintosh with no hard drive that cost like $5000! I’ve had a lot of computers since then, but I still have the original Macintosh and every once in a great while I still turn it on and it boots from a 3.5” floppy.


27 posted on 04/01/2012 7:29:17 AM PDT by Astronaut
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To: Stegall Tx

The PC Transporter coprocessor card for the Apple II I have around here somewhere, uh, I think it is, anyway, that used an NEC Vsomething processor.


28 posted on 04/01/2012 7:29:32 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him)
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To: Stoat

Couldn't have made it through grad school without this thing.

Magnetic interference from the monitor would interfere with the floppy disk drives, so you had to separate the two with a stack of phone books.

29 posted on 04/01/2012 7:31:11 AM PDT by martin_fierro (< |:)~)
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To: Snickering Hound

The Disk ][ was too boxy-looking for Steve Jobs, so isn’t in the picture. That, or they loaded this off the cassette tape. ;’)


30 posted on 04/01/2012 7:31:11 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him)
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To: Stoat


31 posted on 04/01/2012 7:34:42 AM PDT by Chode (American Hedonist - *DTOM* -ww- NO Pity for the LAZY)
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To: y6162

White water Prodigy boards?


32 posted on 04/01/2012 7:34:54 AM PDT by al baby (Hi Mom)
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To: Stoat; Swordmaker

As others noted, hard drive prices looked very reasonable back then, but storage requirements (and limitations) were much smaller also. The Sider 10 meg for the Apple line was $695, but when the 20 meg came out the price was the same, if memory serves. The first ad I saw (in InfoWorld) for a 1 gb drive had a price of $10K, and my geek buddy and I were impressed.

Apple IIgs emulator for the Mac:
http://www.google.com/search?q=bernie+][+the+rescue


33 posted on 04/01/2012 7:35:07 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him)
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To: martin_fierro

I really miss that catalog, along with JS&A Products that Think. :’) My first printer was an Olivetti inkjet, no true descenders, and I got it from DAK.


34 posted on 04/01/2012 7:38:22 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him)
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To: Stoat; All
Outside of the PDP-10 at the University of Pittsburgh and my trusty Texas Instruments red LED calculator, my first computer was a Timex Sinclair. Bought all the extras and then moved up to a Tandy Color Computer again with all the extras including that silly 4 inch wide 4 pen printer.

I used that to access FIDOnet and then Compuserve, GEnie, and a couple other services I dan't recall. One started with a "P", I think that is where I first ran into FReeRepublic in a chat room kinda thing.

Next up was a series of 8086 and 8088 based Tandys, SL and TX 1000 which I heavily modded. There was an Apple something in there too but I disliked it so much I hardly ever used it. Didn't play with Apple again until someone gave me a bunch in the mid 90's. It included an Early Mac SE complete with Grateful Dead sticker. I still have it somewhere.

I was using PC's at work and finally built my own after the Tandy's couldn't be modded anymore.

I can't recall ever buying a complete PC new but I could be wrong because of my partialheimer's. Right now I'm mainly using an IBM ThinkCentre dual core 3.2Ghz and it is rock solid so I won't upgrade until I absolutely have to.

My family is very into tablets right now. Three of us sit in the living room all on our own tablets - mine is an old Edge Pocket Dualbook - which is really silly!

In any case in the spirit of the thread there used to be a website that brought back real memories especially from the UofP and the PDP-10... www.asciigirls.com or.net or .org. It seems to be gone now, it's not even on the Wayback site.

Nerds like me would sit in the basement of the UofP punching cards and making ASCII art of Snoopy, Garfield and of course what we imagined REAL girls to look like.

After hours you'd end up with a print out that you could hang on a wall, stand back ten feet, squint and enjoy.

THOSE WERE THE DAYS!

Of course there's ASCCI art now on other sites but it's not the same...way too graphic and it's already coded for you...sigh.

35 posted on 04/01/2012 7:39:45 AM PDT by prisoner6 (Right Wing Nuts bolt the Constitution together as the loose screws of the Left fall out!)
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To: Stoat

Was that Gates in the Tandy Radio Shack ad?


36 posted on 04/01/2012 7:40:40 AM PDT by X-spurt (Its time for ON YOUR FEET or on your knees)
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To: y6162

37 posted on 04/01/2012 7:42:53 AM PDT by Kartographer ("We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.")
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To: rdb3; Calvinist_Dark_Lord; Salo; JosephW; Only1choice____Freedom; amigatec; stylin_geek; ...

38 posted on 04/01/2012 7:43:34 AM PDT by ShadowAce (Linux -- The Ultimate Windows Service Pack)
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To: bert

Lucky guy.

I couldn’t afford that much memory awesomeness.


39 posted on 04/01/2012 7:43:49 AM PDT by smokingfrog ( sleep with one eye open (<o> ---)
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To: SunkenCiv
DAK: STILL WITH US!!
40 posted on 04/01/2012 7:43:58 AM PDT by martin_fierro (< |:)~)
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