Oldest computer in regular use: a Pentium 3-based Compaq Presario for games that don’t like to cooperate with XP or Vista.
Computers that don’t get regular use: a Commodore 64 that was sort of a graduation present (class of '86), a C64C, and a C128D with a bad power switch. Might still have a C+4 around somewhere.
Just curious: do today’s young people know what a slide rule is, or do you have to explain it?
I hate to be such a geek here, but the monitor for an Apple ][ was text based in either a lovely green or yellow color. How does one use it for a TV?
My old Toshiba Infinia from 1997 is sitting in the kids’ closet, purring away running a Mandriva Linux installation, with two 128GB drives in it and 256MB memory (maxxed out).
It’s my home network file server, serving up shared drives via Samba. Solid as a rock.
22:08:02 up 135 days, 23:25, 1 user, load average: 0.08, 0.02, 0.01
I guess somebody must have tripped over the cord while tidying up the closet 135 days ago.
I don’t know how one used it for a TV, but it was definitely not monochrome.
I remember coding in Basic, how in graphics mode you could do colored dots by turning on only certain pixels on the screen, while you turned on multiple dots to get white pixels. If you wanted max resolution, you simply had to accept that your slanty lines would have purple and green dots mixed in with the intended white dots.
You can watch TV in monochrome. At least if it’s NTSC analogue… in electronics school I built a monochrome TV display by feeding horizontal and vertical sync signals to the deflection coils of an oscilloscope, then amplitude-modulating the intensity.
The Apple II puts out a color NTSC (or “NTSC-like”) signal, which a composite color monitor, or a color television with composite video input, can display — all in vivid, glorious, 4-bit color. All you need usually is a cable with RCA plugs on both ends.
Now, there were a lot of monochrome green and amber monitors in use back in those early years, and that might be what you’re remembering. They were cheaper than color monitors, and perfectly satisfactory for text display. (In fact, much better for text display, in the case of the Apple II.) On these monochrome monitors, text would appear normal, but Apple II graphics pixels would render as patterns of vertical stripes rather than blocks of color.
Televisions in the 1970s and early 80s usually did not have composite video input sockets anywhere on them, but many modern ones seem to. If not that, and if you have a VCR, then it probably accepts a composite video signal which it can forward to the TV. I have hooked up my Apple IIs to the family TV this way many a time.
That’s probably cost you $1,000 in electricity…
Still in use? That would be my HP 842c printer, circa '99. Through with ink cartridge costs these days I’m using it less and less…
As stated, the Apple II (In my case a IIc) outputs a NTSC like signal.
My monitor is a Teknika MJ10 Color display monitor. I use a VCR as the tuner (I also have hooked up a DVD player) - I just use the composite out. (and the audio out)
I HAVE used a B/W tv as a tuner. IIRC You can tap the video from the emitter of the video amplifier (need a cap to get rid of DC, and a pot to tweak the voltage to line level)
It is possible to hook a VCR/DVD to a monochrome Apple II style monitor the same way, just isn’t as watchable.
Brian
They’re usually aware of the existence of such creatures, and some of the engineers know that these specific things are slide rules, but usually I get to explain to a crowd of curious onlookers.
Pretty sure Dad kept his metal one, but I have the plastic ones he used in college.