Author Topic: STR$  (Read 12070 times)

Offline vtsteam

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 6466
  • Country: us
  • Republic of Vermont
Re: STR$
« Reply #25 on: December 06, 2014, 08:54:24 AM »
But of course the real mass storage device during the PC revolution was the casette tape recorder, and the monitor: a TV screen. Very crude by today's standards, but exciting to see the prompt come up back then. Your own computer! You could do anything -- all it took was writing a program. Or typing it in from a magazine.

I've been arguing locally, as a member of the school board, that a recent $10K grant we received should be spent on something like your $35 British Raspberry Pi's to keep and bring home for elementary school students. But the District administration IT department won't hear of it and insists on $275 Chromebooks kept at school. They call that "teaching technology."

If you want to teach technology, give a kid a computer that won't do much without programming and building it up into something. And let him/her take t home and mess around with it. If it breaks it's 35 bucks to replace.
I love it when a Plan B comes together!
Steve
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sDubB0-REg

Offline awemawson

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 8966
  • Country: gb
  • East Sussex, UK
Re: STR$
« Reply #26 on: December 06, 2014, 09:51:52 AM »
Thinking back, I used to record "RTTY" (Radio Teletype) signals picked up on my 'HRO' communications receiver on a reel to reel recorder, (using it as a backing store), then process them using a SC/MP development system into teleprinter 80-0-8 volt to drive my Creed 54N teleprinter. I remember recovering a whole load of telegram messages between (of all places!) Russia and Israel in the mid 1970's - got me very interested in electronics and computing as a hobby.

Bletchley Park would have been proud of me  :lol:
« Last Edit: December 06, 2014, 10:55:30 AM by awemawson »
Andrew Mawson
East Sussex

lordedmond

  • Guest
Re: STR$
« Reply #27 on: December 06, 2014, 11:16:45 AM »
Another comment from the past there Andrew TTY
I used a ASR Printer at 110 baud driven from a spare bit on the keyboard port

Stuart

Offline awemawson

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 8966
  • Country: gb
  • East Sussex, UK
Re: STR$
« Reply #28 on: December 06, 2014, 12:12:40 PM »
110 baud came later when I also had an ASR33 - the telex stuff whizzed along at the dizzy speed of 50 baud (but some government stuff was 55 baud)
Andrew Mawson
East Sussex

Offline DavidA

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1219
  • Country: gb
Re: STR$
« Reply #29 on: December 06, 2014, 12:56:26 PM »
My first contact with electronic mail came in 1980 when I was working in Baghdad.  Our office acquired it's own teleprinter. The freedom to just send and receive text when we wanted instead of having to drive over to the local telex office was overwhelming.  The same year I got to try a computer for the first time. But didn't get my own until about 1986.

Dave.