EBME Forums Forums Free discussion Out of Hours Technology Classic Computers

Don’t you just love 'em? Believe it or not, this was the most successful British computer ever made (in terms of numbers sold, that is).

Meanwhile, all your favourites can be found here (forgive me if I’ve given that link before - and be warned that it doesn't always work - due to site maintenance, I should imagine)! Also this one (there are many others). Enjoy!

What about computers in medical equipment? As we know, many machines are actually built around PC's these days. Anyone come across any "interesting" ones (eg, some old clunker still hidden away in high-end medical kit)? What about software? I have seen all flavours of Windows being used (not sure why), plus Linux and many examples of DOS still being used. Also some nice proprietary systems, often as firmware (which, to my mind, is how it should be done).

Lastly, I keep coming across "faults" (on medical kit) being attributed to "corrupted hard-drives". Why is this, I wonder? How many times do standard PC’s suffer from this affliction (answer:- I have had many computers pass through my hands, and can’t recall a single corrupted hard-drive apart from the odd one or two I had deliberately been playing with)? Why aren't medical systems more robust, I wonder? Haven't they heard of Norton Go-Back? And I have yet to experience a catastrophic failure on PC's running Win 2000. It always seems to self-recover, despite my most determined attacks!

It seems to be a bit of a "slow news weekend" (now that election [not] fever has subsided), so let's get this one back onto the front page, as it were (probably a bit more interesting, too)!

But how's this for sad? Well, not at all actually, as I note that all the kit is in full working order!

But, hold on! There's a bloke called Jeremy Mehrle who has a collection of over a hundred Macs in his basement! Cool (...but I wonder where these guys get the money to do this stuff?).

Puts my Roberts Pumps collection to shame, really <sigh>.

I was talking to Huw about the first computer i ever bought - The commodore 64. I sold it after a year for £200. This must have been in about 1983. Not a bad return considering i'd paid £220 for it in the first place!

Ah yes, we remember them fondly (!)
I built my first computer from kit , an "Acorn Atom"!
A surprisingly good machine for it's time. A real keyboard, decent interfaces and the potential to expand as your budget/knowledge allowed. I doubt there are many "young bucks" out there now that even know what Machine code is!
I wish now that I'd kept it as a momento of a time when I did "real" electronics....

I learned Machine code and Basic on the BBC micro - happy days

BBC Micro - it was great to be able to "roll your own" utilities for different purposes! I rue the day Acorn produced the Archimedes, it was impossible to "roll your own" that would fit neatly into the WIMP!

As to today's PCs - less said the better!

It was a shame that BBC basic seemed to die out. Quite a powerful tool AND they improved the instruction set to make ir more structured.
Yes I remember many a happy (?) hour spent in the intricacies of 6502 machine code.
Basic or windows might have been easier but there was nothing like writing your own piece of code and then watching it run.
As I recall the usual bugbear was that it ran too fast and you had to put in lots of "Slow_it_down" loops!

That was a fair amount of money back then, John (what would it be today?). Just shows what a bargain modern kit is, really.

Meanwhile, all this talk of "star commands" and MODE 7 etc. has prompted me to fire up my C-64 and BBC Model B emulators. So now I'm looking at blinking cursors as well as this forum! Makes a nice change from staring at the XP desktop. Happy days indeed.

Me too Huw. (I Loved all those BBC Basic DefProcs etc!)

It was also a great machine for interfacing with other kit. I remember developing lots of stuff on it for special needs kids. It was amazing what you could do with the basic 32K of memory! Happy Days indeed.