We've Come a Long Way

[Norton]

 

[Bif]

In all honesty there's not a day that goes by that I don't marvel at all the tech in our everyday lives, somedays I wish for the "good old days" again...but all this accessibility kinda grows on you.

 

[Norton]

There's an app available now that tells you what's in your fridge and suggests dinner menu.

The hi tech fridges are only as smart as the person inputting a grocery list for a family of four. Really who has the time? And what about consumables, eggs, milk.. who has the time to input consumables, are the kids going to input that they drank 500ml of milk? And fools are paying $8,000 CAN for these appliances.

Nothing will change I can hear the Moms now OK! Who drank all the milk. LOL Maybe the fridge will say your husband at 3:00 AM LOL

 

[Bighorn]

There's an app available now that tells you what's in your fridge and suggests dinner menu.

The hi tech fridges are only as smart as the person inputting a grocery list for a family of four. Really who has the time? And what about consumables, eggs, milk.. who has the time to input consumables, are the kids going to input that they drank 500ml of milk? And fools are paying $8,000 CAN for these appliances.

Nothing will change I can hear the Moms now OK! Who drank all the milk. LOL Maybe the fridge will say your husband at 3:00 AM LOL

If those refrigerators can track what is in them they certainly can track when things happen but probably not by whodunit.

 

[Wolfie]

The problem with a "Smart" home is that the thieves/hackers are getting wise to it very quickly, they can control your house/devices and you won't even know they are doing it!. This also includes alarm system and entry to the house!.

It does of course have its benefits too but I don't want one, well not yet anyway!:

https://home.howstuffworks.com/smart-home3.htm

 

[davehc]

I would not have even known what a "gb" was in 1981. First real user computer memoy I have, (on PCs) is a 20 mb HD and no storage, somewhere around 1984, I think.

 

[Norton]

Vic 20 64K LOL

 

[Bif]

Vic 20 64K

Ah yes!...fond memories of loading cassette tapes and waiting what seemed like hours!

 

[FJRPilot]

I would not have even known what a "gb" was in 1981. First real user computer memoy I have, (on PCs) is a 20 mb HD and no storage, somewhere around 1984, I think.

HaHa I got you beat. Mine had 30 mb and...wait for it.......Dual 5-1/4 floppies. What a smoker!

 

[Norton]

And Bill Gates said "64K is good enough for anyone" LOL

 

[Tim Locke]

Place I worked in 1982 had those old 300 MB disks the size of washing machines and I remember we had to buy some new drives for another mini-computer. $10,000 for 160MB

 

[Wolfie]

The first time I went into a computer firm, they had tapes on spinning wheels, they were IBM machines but don't ask me what kind, that was in the early 70's!.

 

[Norton]

Yes we had those, huge IBM machines with the I/O in red metal cabinets, and tape drives.

 

[Tim Locke]

It would have been a System/360 or perhaps a 370 depending on how early in the '70s it was.

Nothing like watching a System/360 doing a 4 tape sort using those fast vacuum column tape drives. Reels zooming around, zillions of flashing lights on the console and those tape drives were noisy as well. That was the heyday of the 1403 line printer as well, really fast, 600 to 1100 lines a minute and incredibly noisy.
The only program I ever wrote for an IBM mainframe read an ASCII tape with program listing from a PDP-11 and converted the text to EBCDIC and printed it on one of those printers. In PL/1 whats more. That was in early 1974.

 

[Norton]

Yes it was 1974, IBM 360 it ran an 8 unit 500MW power plant. Being in maintenance, I would occasionally have to do a restart / reset, date-time... I hated having to convert the inputs and then toggle all those binary input switches. When it comes to computers these are the good old days. At least for a week or so. LOL

 

[Tim Locke]

The one I used was in the UK. In those days IBM machines came with 60Hz only power supplies ( arrogant not) so our machine had a motor generator in the computer room to convert 50Hz power to 60Hz power.

The machine in your picture had disks that were the cutting edge in the '70s. Winchesters they were called and there are two tape drives of a type I don't remember mounter above them.

 

[Norton]

Tim My apologies, the computers were IBM 1800s not the 360.

 

[Tim Locke]

All of which proves that my memory is not good for looking at computers over a 45 year period. Since '74 I have only seen one IBM mainframe in the flesh it would have been either a 3081 or the last of the big System 370 range and I don't remember which but I believe it was water cooled. I was a DEC guy. PDPs and Vax.



Anyway. As you say, the good old days.

 

[Wolfie]

The one I saw in the 70's looked like a "Dalek". LOL!.