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After the Class of '86

shelldozer

New Member
Joined
Mar 4, 2013
Messages
4
Location
Isle of Man
There is a slightly odd human population distribution in "Vintage/Retro Computing" communities - they seem to be almost entirely populated by people that attended high-school between 1975 and 1986. The IMSAI/Altair generation being the oldest members and the Amiga generation being the youngest.

An entire world of TRS-80, Apple Lisa, Altair, C64, Spectrum, ZX80, Imsai, 8-bit Ataris, KIM-1 kits, an occasional PDP-11 or Rainbow, Osborne luggables, VIC-20, IBM 5150, Apple-II, Mac Classic, Atari ST, Amiga, and their contemporaries; but nothing either earlier or later.

I myself attended high-school from 1976-1982, so I'm in that generation too, but although I have memories of the ZX80, Commodore PET, ICL One-Per-Desk, my Mums' old Mac Classic, the C64 and its' irritatingly unreliable CBM 1541 disk drive, and so on, my current computer collection feels a little out of place here... "vintage" in several cases, but nowhere near as "veteran":

Silicon Graphics' Indigo R3000 (1991)
Sun SPARCstation-10 (1992, upgraded with 1996 CPUs and a 2005-vintage SATA disk drive)
Sun SPARCclassic (1993)
Toshiba 4000CDT laptop (1997)
Sun Ultra-10 PGX24 (2000)

My main day-to-day-use machine is the SS10, now over 19 years old, for which I have a collection of 15 CPU modules of 8 different types. No shortage of CPU spares there!

I wonder what will happen to all the "vintage computer" sites and fora when the human class-of-1986 visits the great swap-meet in the sky... Where have all the younger retro-computing people gone? Were they ever "here" at all?
 
I'm class of '99 and have a garage and 1.5 rooms in my new house dedicated to 80's and 90's computing.

My collection starts around 1983 and goes right up to ~2000. Mostly it's PC based, but I do have a few side shows like the Acorn A4000, Commodore 64C, VIC20 (did anyone else watch that 1980 advert and think DENNY CRANE?), Amiga 2000HD, and I'm wanting an Amstrad CPC if I can get my grubby little hands on it. The IBM 6150 is a nice bit of late-80's office furniture too.

Just wanted to let you know that we're out there. Seen a few members turning up that are younger than me as well.
I actually first started playing with old computers when I was only about 14 - my oldest back then was a CP/M-86 Terminal Server from ICL (Intel 8086, dates were around 1980ish) - I just wish the sensible people never convinced me that they were just 'junk' - fools!
 
The problem is .. who has 1960's computers to tinker with? How to you "fix" a Silicon Graphics mother board? People write about what they can acquire and are capable of working on. Communities grow among those who need help, looking for answers. The 8-bit era dominates most vintage computing boards because there are ample computers to locate cheap, and most people can learn how to fix them. With that in mind vintage-computer.com is actually is one of the most diverse I know of. Check the pre-Altair section of this board, some of the most interesting posts are there.

For you, a April 1965 product announcement for the DMI 610. I have only seen one of these, in a museum.
thm_ACM_April1965_dmi-610.jpg
 
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I went to High School between 1966-1970.
I'm here because I can now afford to buy computers that I only heard about and certainly couldn't afford to buy all that long time ago.
I subscribed to quite a few magazines and spent a lot of time drooling over all the good stuff out there.
Now I am fortunate enough to actually be able to play with some of it.

smp
 
Class of 1998 here. Yes, the age of Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys, and Windows 98 (although I was still using DOS and Windows 3.1 at the time).
 
Class of 1969 here. The first computer language I learned was MPLII which was Burroughs assembler. The first machine I worked on you IPLed it with a papertape. Which reminds me of terms such as "ABEND", "IPL" and "NDL" amoung others.
 
Class of '71 here. I still have my copy of the Jan '75 issue of Popular Electronics magazine that featured the plans & kit for the Altair 8800. I drooled over that but as a young, married, college student never had the money to buy the kit. Didn't get my first PC until 1984.
 
Joining the old farts contingent (my Popular Electronics collection starts in 1957 ;-) ).

Started on punched card IBM tabulating equipment; not quite as old as these:
http://www.officemuseum.com/data_processing_machines.htm

More like these:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/402.html

Like Jimmy, my first computer language was Burroughs assembler; started getting paid for playing with other people's computers around '69 or so and finally bought my first 'personal' computer around '78, a blue-label white-screen chiclet-key PET which is still in the basement somewhere:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_PET
 
Wow, I'm sure glad that the breadth of respondents (ages and gear) was so great, I'm not feeling quite so "out of it" anymore.

Thanks for the interesting histories too; and I guess I must apologize for presuming too much.
 
Well this thread is making me feel - pleasantly young I guess. I'm high school class of '05, but my interest in vintage computing stems from my first computer - a Corona Data Systems XT clone with DOS 1 and GW-BASIC. Got into programming on that thing and kept using it until the power supply died. My next computer was a PS/2 386 (don't know which model number but I suspect it was a 55SX) my dad brought home from the local university surplus - ran that thing into the ground too.

I've always loved tinkering with hardware, and now that I can afford to keep a small collection of vintage computers I figure it's as good a hobby as any for me.
 
My 9 year old son has already expressed an interest in vintage computers....He helps me solder/repair stuff, work on simple electronics. At the vintage computer festivals there are always lots of kids playing with the old machines (games)
 
Class of 84. By 86 I was installing, configuring, and repairing the IBM machines for businesses and the wealthy in Ohio. The compant I worked for had Apple computers as well, but they barely sold. It is nice to be able to own a real IBM 5150 now, instead of a clone that I had to build back in the day. I wish I could have had a computer growing up, but they were rare and we were poor. Mostly I played with electronics and radios back then. I did have a cool job as a teenager setting up arcade games, pinball machines, pool tables, cigarette machines, etc. I even have some of the old games (minus the actual wooden cabinets).
 
I'll be in the high school graduating class of 2015. Got a little ways to go. :)
We got our first computer in 1997, a Gateway 2000 "Mid-tower" system. I got it around 2003 when we got a Dell Inspiron 5150 and upgraded to LAN. My first vintage computer was a Macintosh SE in 2006. Then I ventured into the world of vintage computers and their real value when I got a Compaq Portable III and found this forum.

Vintage technology has not been forgotten by us younger folk. I find it neat that some bands are offering their music on vinyl nowadays. Wonder if movie reels will ever return?
 
Class of 96...but I was exposed to a LOT of older gear through some unusual circumstances, so I've messed with all sorts of stuff at this point. I mess with arcade games as well, some from the late 70s (b&w).
 
Interesting thread; I'm class of '96, but my Dad introduced me to computers before I was in school :)

I know he still has his Quasar QDP-100, running CP/M on 8-inch floppies. And it still works. Need to see if I can get my hands on it. I recently saw an IBM PC Jr. listed on craigslist about a 2 hour drive from my place, and I almost want to get it as I have fond memories of playing jumpman on that system with the wireless keyboard, LOL. I wonder what happened to ours...

Clay
 
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