Comment On What the Ad? - Futuresight

Wow, a real-time clock and calendar... burned on an eprom! The possibilities were endless.

Eight AM on the dot. Fistula!

so we already know there will never be a Time Machine ]I[ ??

venio!

Michael might be a genius (or maybe just in the right place at the right time), but a model he isn't. He should have recruited some jock from the football team and dressed him in a business suit. Or better yet, the head cheerleader in uniform.

Why does the cheerleader need to be in uniform?

A skimpy bikini(even back then) would have been better at getting everyone's attention.

Ah yes, the Sony videodisk. I programmed one of those way back when. Inscrutable manual. Finally had to reverse-engineer the protocol from scratch to get it to work reliably. Years later, MIT musta "borrowed" my code as one of their demos starts up with a certain distinctive "Sony !OK!" message.

appellatio

I suppose it's only natural that the Time Machine 2 would predate the Time Machine 1. Just wait until archeologists discover the Time Machine 3 in some ancient ruins.

WiggyWiggy:

Why does the cheerleader need to be in uniform?

A skimpy bikini(even back then) would have been better at getting everyone's attention.

I'm open to presentation variations. :)

Code Dependent:

Wow, a real-time clock and calendar... burned on an eprom! The possibilities were endless.

Eight AM on the dot. Fistula!

What's the time? I've got it here, what is written on a piece of paper...

PC's Limited Turbo PC

Huh! Why would I want my turbo to be limited? I want an unlimited turbo.

Guess that's why he changed the company name to Dell.

TRWTF is that Leopard was actually released in 2007.

Anon:

PC's Limited Turbo PC

Huh! Why would I want my turbo to be limited? I want an unlimited turbo.

It's not the Turbo that's limited. It's the whole Turbo PC. That's why it can't run a time machine like an Apple.

TRWTF is apostrophe abuse.

I still have disks like those!
Does that make me old?
Unfortunately the player is wasted...
Not sure if those discs will sell well on Ebay

"Futuresight", Mark? Really?

Thg:

so we already know there will never be a Time Machine ]I[ ??

Don't you mean "Time Machine ///"?

TRWTF is "Turbo PCs". A little toggle button to switch from 6MHz to 8MHz, and that's "turbo"???

I actually had to use that button at one of my first jobs. The company timesheet application would crash in Turbo mode. ( I think it was 32MHz/8MHz or something).

Anybody remember a Far Side cartoon with the predators eyeing antelopes marked "Turbo"?

saepius? saepius quam non?

Jamie:

TRWTF is "Turbo PCs". A little toggle button to switch from 6MHz to 8MHz, and that's "turbo"???

I actually had to use that button at one of my first jobs. The company timesheet application would crash in Turbo mode. ( I think it was 32MHz/8MHz or something).

Still, I don't remember too many 6.66 MHz XT-class machines. An overclocked 8088... that's WTF. Or perhaps a bit FTW.

Why, yes, I do remember most of these ads when they first ran. Why do you ask?

JuanCarlosII:

TRWTF is apostrophe abuse.

...in your COMPANY NAME. Argh.

That PC's Limited system that Dell is standing next to was my first computer I ever owned. I still have her and she'll start up no problem. Just wish I had a disk drive that worked.

aah the old turbo switch... and most motherboards used the standard 2-pin plug which you could simply place a jumper close on and permanantly turbo.

of course.. that was the 486DX2/66 days when i got my first computer.

So.. am I old or am I young? :P

The videodiscs in the 80s weren't that big. In the 60s they were as big as a breakfast table and held only 2 minutes of low-quality video or 30 minutes of audio.

DX2/66?

You're young, n00b.

Kazan:

aah the old turbo switch... and most motherboards used the standard 2-pin plug which you could simply place a jumper close on and permanantly turbo.

of course.. that was the 486DX2/66 days when i got my first computer.

So.. am I old or am I young? :P

Pff, I'm 24 in a week ('young' by most accounts) and my first computer was a BEST 8086 clocked at.. oh man... 5 MHz or, with turbo, 10 MHz (yeah I was the envy of everyone on the block). No hard drive, and dual low-density 3.5" diskettes. Ohhh yeah.

Mind you, I spent a lot of time playing "Mixed Up Mother Goose" and "Bagosaurus" on it so I wasn't really capable of appreciating the speed.

Code Dependent:

Wow, a real-time clock and calendar... burned on an eprom! The possibilities were endless.

The RTC wasn't on the EPROM, the RTC was a separate IC, there was an EPROM with functions to make it easier to access the RTC.

So, personal computers back then didn't have RTCs built in. So what? The reason is pretty obvious since it would add $100 or so onto the cost of the computer, for something that wasn't really needed.

IIRC the original PC XTs didn't have RTCs either, that was introduced in the AT in 1984. (The Apple II was released in 1977)

Without the 12" laserdisc, we probably wouldn't have CDs or DVDs as there are now - it was a technological jump from magnetic media to optical media.

I'm not sure what the WTF is with these ads... (Apart from Mr Dell posing in his own adverts!)

Kazan:

aah the old turbo switch... and most motherboards used the standard 2-pin plug which you could simply place a jumper close on and permanantly turbo.

of course.. that was the 486DX2/66 days when i got my first computer.

So.. am I old or am I young? :P

Young.

Kinda sad to see "where they aren't now" -- the Time Machine company at 1879 S Main in Salt Lake is now a parking lot Check out Street View. Though they had an awesome sandwich shop across the street.

***Still, I don't remember too many 6.66 MHz XT-class machines. An overclocked 8088... that's WTF. Or perhaps a bit FTW. ***

NEC V20 CPU most likely -- 8088 compatible. Carefully pry the 40 pin 8088 out of its socket -- remember those? Be sure and remember which end had the orientation notch. Orient the V20 the same way and carefully plug it in being careful not to bend the pins. Not only did it run at 8MHz, but if I remember correctly, some instructions took fewer clocks. Principle problem: the XT bus ran at the same speed as the CPU, and not all IO cards would run at 8MHz -- thus the turbo switch rather than just a motherboard CPU speed jumper.

Kazan:

of course.. that was the 486DX2/66 days when i got my first computer.

So.. am I old or am I young? :P

You're young. My first computer was a 16K TRS-80 Color Computer.

Commodore Super Pet with 8k and a cassette drive to load your apps. No fancy shmancy disk drives!

B1 Bomber got a lot of play on that thing.

Course I think the 8 inch cathode screen probably caused my cataracts.

Code Dependent:

Kazan:

of course.. that was the 486DX2/66 days when i got my first computer.

So.. am I old or am I young? :P

You're young. My first computer was a 16K TRS-80 Color Computer.

TRS-80 Model 1 with the memory upgraded to 32K.

But I was also programming on the university's mainframe.

Whippersnappers.

jmroth:

I still have disks like those!
Does that make me old?
Unfortunately the player is wasted...
Not sure if those discs will sell well on Ebay

Only one way to find out...

ThePants999:

JuanCarlosII:

TRWTF is apostrophe abuse.

...in your COMPANY NAME. Argh.

I don't see what your issue is with it. They're not called grocers' apostrophes for nothing.

Videodisc player that won't box you in?

Ask the guys who converted the BBC Doomsday project:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project

MrsPost:

TRS-80 Model 1 with the memory upgraded to 32K.

avflinsch:

I had a Ohio Scientific C1P as my first computer

Bah. My first computer was an abacus.

vt_mruhlin:

I suppose it's only natural that the Time Machine 2 would predate the Time Machine 1. Just wait until archeologists discover the Time Machine 3 in some ancient ruins.

They already have; Stonehenge is a bit hard to miss. Too bad the instruction manual was lost around 1350 BC.

I got jealous of the guys with abacus’ I just had holes in the ground with pebbles to compute with.

Binary maths with pebbles was easy, we had two rows of eight holes and could add and subtract with a span of up to 256!

When you finished your maths you had to add a handful of 48 pebbles and read it off in ASCii.

Come to think of it the guy who invented the system now works here:
http://www.pebblebay.com/

MY FIRST COMPUTER WAS
A VIC-20 AND IT STILL
WORKS, IN FACT I AM
USING IT NOW WITH MY
300 BAUD VICMODEM AND
COMMODORE DATASETTE, IT
ROCKS ALTHOUGH 22
COLUMN SCREENS HAVE
FALLEN OUT OF FAVOR.

"PC'S LIMITED"

PC is limited? Nice apostrophe.

Actually with regards to the LDP-2000.. those players were indestructible. We had a couple that we ran over 70,000 hours (each) over 20 years, that were still operating flawlessly when we retired them.

They were built like a tank, and probably weighed more than 30 pounds, and took up 3 rack-spaces.

Helix:

...Binary maths with pebbles was easy, we had two rows of eight holes and could add and subtract with a span of up to 256!

Am I the only math geek that read the end of that sentance as "256 factorial" not "256 exclimation point" and then though something along the lines of "WTF, there is no way there are that many pebbles on the surface of the earth"

Now, we’re going to extend the margin even further by offering a 30-day money back guarantee. If that sounds good, it’ll look even better when one of our Turbo PC’s is on your desk.

I don’t think this is quite the message they were hoping to convey.

Alex, those 80's ads are fascinating.

My ex-wife worked for Tandy Corp. in Ft. Worth for a while. She did typesetting for many, many Radio Shack ads for newspapers and magazines. The higher-ups had a thing about letters touching each other, so the huge "Radio Shack" and "TRS-80" words in the ads had to be set with positive kerning in the letter pairs (or whatever the technical term is).

My first home computer was a Sinclair ZX81. I believe it came with 1K RAM. I bought the 16K RAM expansion. Because, like who would ever need more than 17K of RAM? What would you do with it all?

When the 286 came out, one of my coworkers said she didn't like it at all. With the 8086 she used to have, she would start up a compile and then sit back and relax for ten minutes while it ran. But with the 286, the compile would be finished in less than a minute, so then she felt pressured to get back to work.

B1FF:

MY FIRST COMPUTER WAS
A VIC-20 AND IT STILL
WORKS, IN FACT I AM
USING IT NOW WITH MY
300 BAUD VICMODEM AND
COMMODORE DATASETTE, IT
ROCKS ALTHOUGH 22
COLUMN SCREENS HAVE
FALLEN OUT OF FAVOR.

Yeah, my first computer was a VIC-20 too. Awesome! I still remember how excited I was when I upgraded to a Commodore 64.

I actually still have two fully working BBC Domesday systems (complete with 2 sets of discs, 2 LD players, and 2 enhanced BBC Master computers).

I'm also strange enough to have a fully working video disc player and a collection of videos for it (the Domesday LD players couldn't decode the audio of regular movie laser discs)

Six WHOLE date formats? Does it include my favorite, 12-JUN-1981?

Joy!

CaptainOblivious:

The videodiscs in the 80s weren't that big. In the 60s they were as big as a breakfast table and held only 2 minutes of low-quality video or 30 minutes of audio.

A breakfast table? Hmph! Luxury! When I was a lad, our audio was encoded on a 20 ton slab of granite. It took forty slaves to rotate it while another jabbed the surface with a bronze spear to encode the data. If he got a bit wrong, he was thrown into the lava pits. This threat kept errors very low, so we didn't need checksums like today's girly programmers.

OK, the Michael Dell one was pretty good.

Michael looked Jewish. Very, very Jewish.