Can you remember life without the 'net?

[socal_rattler]

First computer I worked on was a Burroughs B3500. It was a mainframe with a teletype for the console... . the thing took a whole good-sized room to hold it. Most processing was done from tape(we usually had 6 stand-up tapes drives), as disk was too expensive, although we did get some disk packs and it had head-per-track disk.



It had 'core' memory that I was trying to explain to one of my techs here at work the other day and he looked at me like I was crazy.



My first PC was basically a keyboard with the proc and RAM inside. You attached a TV and a casette tape to it. Don't remember who made it.

 

[klenger]

I remember studying about core memory. Please excuse any errors in my descrition as I never actually worked with it, just read about it. Each bit was stored on a ferite core (kind of like a miniture donut) with several wires through it. One wire for read, one for write, etc. Electrical current through the core magnatized the ferite as either a north-south or a south-north. The state of the magnetic field determined if the bit was set to 0 or 1. Eight cores made a byte, and a goo-goo-plex of them made up the core memory (probably about 16 kb). This is where the term "core memory" (that is still in use to describe RAM) came from.

 

[socal_rattler]

Hey! Somebody actually heard of it besides me! You are right on.

 

[jponder]

I started a thread about what you used to connect the first time at https://www.turbodieselregister.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=96490



I dont remember the old radio shack computers having a modem but i guess they must have. I still have an old vic modem