Memorabilia

You can buy a CD reader or Floppy Disc reader that plugs into the USB port from Amazon and other places.

Floppy disc?...we call that a thumb drive now...With the increased speed of internet, everything is streaming now, not much need for media storage beyond what can easily fit on the several terabytes of modern hard drives....and you can install a DVD drive if you have a need...I have a blu-ray player so I can watch my movie collection on the computer if I want to...but storage is really cheap now, I have my entire music collection on a 32gb drive that is so small, like a quarter of an inch, I keep losing it...and it only costs a few bucks...

I still enjoy the pops and hisses from vintage vinyl. There’s something about holding an album cover and reading the liner notes.

I still have about 25 Floppies which contain Data from Projects I worked on back in the 90'ties. Have an external Reader.. Same goes für CD's and even still have about 5 USB Sticks. Just can't be bothered to transfer it all to my external 4TB Storage.. not to mention my collection of LP and single records and old Cassette Tapes.

Before the Personal computer there was the PLC for industrial applications, and control. Backup was punch cards, which were a real $*tch to repair when they gave trouble.

I worked on a Sperry Univac 1000,octal,which had a drum drive that spun at 3600rpm,and had 512 read/write heads, one each for each track on the drum.

A true random access drive. Only 1/3600 of a second, worst case to access any data.

Very fast for it's time. It only held 16 k of data

The drive cost over $60000 and if it stopped, it took hours for it to come back up to speed and stabilize.

It used Fortran, and segments of Cobol, Comgen (A proprietary combination, for sure).(https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19900011122) https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19900011122

Memory boards that consisted of 16K of hand-wired donuts(Magnetic core memory.. non volatile.) Each ferrite bead had 3 wires through it. One for write, one for read and one for rewrite, because reading it destroyed the polarity and had to be rewritten.

Imagine 16000 ferrite beads on a single board!

A person had to know about all aspects of computing back then, hardware and software. Now the computer can be operated by anyone because the technology is hidden and user friendly.

This limited amount of memory and speed ran all production machinery in a textile plant. Programming had to be precise and compact and efficient, no space to spare.

Anyone can drive a semi if you give them a 10 lane road and 100 acres to turn it around, but only skilled drivers can do it within a limited space.

Todays computers are focused on time to market. Errors will be fixed with updates. No time for that before it leaves.

And the DEC PDP's? That is another whole story, don't get me started on that.

Someone once said that a machine is a device invented by a genius to be operated by an idiot.

I sometimes miss the old days of computing.

I sure remember punch cards! I sold 2000 virgin cards when I graduated. That size unpunched card still serves me today as a good size to write computer step-by-step "recipes" on. The company I retired from used them for inventory stuff at least into the early 2000s.

When I worked for F......i, many moons ago, I needed a computer and they sent me an 'old' computer built into a desk which had an 8" floppy drive! It went in the skip very quickly and I've never seen or heard of this type of floppy since.

I now have an old second-hand Dell Dimension P901 which didn't have any USB or a floppy drive unit. The PC runs on Windows 95 and I managed to add the floppy drive, now it is in regular use as an automatic Test station running ABI software for repairing PCBs. The DVD slots are used for the Digital and Analogue Test units and it's not connected to the internet so no need for AV junk or updates, but it still boots up and runs perfectly on a 10Mb HDD. This PC originally came out of Edinburgh airport so it's had a long hard life before I bought it from a junk shop for £10.

Never throw old electronics away they will always come in handy one day!

I have several 2 TB USB thumb drives that I purchased on Ebay for $10 with free shipping. Got a couple dozen micro SD cards for cameras, etc., too.

I've also got some new-in-box 5-1/4" floppy disk drives that I'm going to sell on Ebay, if I ever get around to listing them. I picked them up at an estate sale and I've already sold one. These things are still used in some industrial applications. You wouldn't believe what people will pay for them.