40 Years of Computer History - Commodore, Apple, Atari, & More, Ft. AkBKukU LTX 2019
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Date: 2020-05-06
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Comments and reviews: 10
FrankTheCat
So the disk spindle motor seizing and sending platters flying was a thing, albeit uncommon. The datacenter in my office building dates back to the mid 1970's, and we had an incident in there in 1982, if I remember correctly, where the spindle motor on a disk pack seized, sending platters flying. In their flight, they gouged the hell out of several of the raised floor tiles (which are a sandwich of melamine, 3/4 plywood, and 20GA aluminum, so quite stout and heavy) and went through a drywall partition into an electrical closet before stopping. While the wall damage was finally repaired in the late 1990's when the datacenter was repainted and shrunk down a bit, the damaged tiles are still there, hidden under a couple of the racks after being moved. Funny anecdote to that story; the subsequent investigation lead to the demotion and lengthy administrative leave of one of my coworkers (who's now retired) but not for the reasons you'd think. When they started pulling floor tiles to remove the damaged disk unit and its cables, several six packs of beer were found in the crawl space under the floor. Turned out my coworker had been leveraging the 54F/12C temperature setpoint they used to keep the datacenter at to chill beer for his overnight operations shifts, since crawlspace was used for air handling as well as cable management. Apparently rolling out a sleeping bag in the crawl space to take a nap out of sight wasn't uncommon either.
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So the disk spindle motor seizing and sending platters flying was a thing, albeit uncommon. The datacenter in my office building dates back to the mid 1970's, and we had an incident in there in 1982, if I remember correctly, where the spindle motor on a disk pack seized, sending platters flying. In their flight, they gouged the hell out of several of the raised floor tiles (which are a sandwich of melamine, 3/4 plywood, and 20GA aluminum, so quite stout and heavy) and went through a drywall partition into an electrical closet before stopping. While the wall damage was finally repaired in the late 1990's when the datacenter was repainted and shrunk down a bit, the damaged tiles are still there, hidden under a couple of the racks after being moved. Funny anecdote to that story; the subsequent investigation lead to the demotion and lengthy administrative leave of one of my coworkers (who's now retired) but not for the reasons you'd think. When they started pulling floor tiles to remove the damaged disk unit and its cables, several six packs of beer were found in the crawl space under the floor. Turned out my coworker had been leveraging the 54F/12C temperature setpoint they used to keep the datacenter at to chill beer for his overnight operations shifts, since crawlspace was used for air handling as well as cable management. Apparently rolling out a sleeping bag in the crawl space to take a nap out of sight wasn't uncommon either.
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Daehawk
I know most of that stuff as I was born in 69 and started computer using around 1980. I still have my Atari 800xl with cassette and diskdrive. The 90s are still my all time favorite by far. That 486 dx4-100 of your's is strange that it chugs Doom or Doom II. My first major PC was a 486sx33. so no flpu and 33mhz and it ran the Doooms flawlessly. In fact it ran everything until the ground mission of Wing Commander 4. I then upgraded it to a AMD 486dx4-100. I dont know why your's chugs on Doom at 33mhz. I only had 4megs ram too. I liked those InWin Q500 cases under the VooDoo card. The first case I bought in 1999 when I built a full new system was a Q500. Huge case. I think its 26 lbs empty. Had the box for it the longest time and lost it. Still have the case though. I used it until 2010 when I got this StormScout case. That mouse looks like a dented up version of my old MX700 wireless Logitech. I know its not really dented. Lots of work and a beautiful collection there. Feel the love.
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I know most of that stuff as I was born in 69 and started computer using around 1980. I still have my Atari 800xl with cassette and diskdrive. The 90s are still my all time favorite by far. That 486 dx4-100 of your's is strange that it chugs Doom or Doom II. My first major PC was a 486sx33. so no flpu and 33mhz and it ran the Doooms flawlessly. In fact it ran everything until the ground mission of Wing Commander 4. I then upgraded it to a AMD 486dx4-100. I dont know why your's chugs on Doom at 33mhz. I only had 4megs ram too. I liked those InWin Q500 cases under the VooDoo card. The first case I bought in 1999 when I built a full new system was a Q500. Huge case. I think its 26 lbs empty. Had the box for it the longest time and lost it. Still have the case though. I used it until 2010 when I got this StormScout case. That mouse looks like a dented up version of my old MX700 wireless Logitech. I know its not really dented. Lots of work and a beautiful collection there. Feel the love.
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Seth
Basically turbo button started as compatibility feature in time when you basically had software tied to CPU speed and it just wouldn't work properly on faster CPU, because that was not what software was written for, so you would turn on turbo and older software would start running fine. Like in games timings would be off because they weren't written for as fast speed. And if you wanted new software you would turn it off and run full speed. Though I think they actually switched on and off state before turbo was gone, since a lot of people thought turning turbo on would make PC faster. :-D Also fun fact about those frequency displays, they didn't really show actual frequency measurement, but just numbers set by jumpers, based on position of turbo switch. Though back then to much younger me, that looked so awesome. :-D
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Basically turbo button started as compatibility feature in time when you basically had software tied to CPU speed and it just wouldn't work properly on faster CPU, because that was not what software was written for, so you would turn on turbo and older software would start running fine. Like in games timings would be off because they weren't written for as fast speed. And if you wanted new software you would turn it off and run full speed. Though I think they actually switched on and off state before turbo was gone, since a lot of people thought turning turbo on would make PC faster. :-D Also fun fact about those frequency displays, they didn't really show actual frequency measurement, but just numbers set by jumpers, based on position of turbo switch. Though back then to much younger me, that looked so awesome. :-D
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gittyupalice96
All I remember as a kid was the jump between Windows 98 and Windows xp systems(I can't identify the processors so using windows to date them. It was like going from a Core i3 to a Core i9 lol. and now days if I try to turn on a XP system I'm horrified at the amount of time it takes from turning it on until you actually have loaded the internet. Reminds me of how I used to make phone calls to pass the time on my phone with a 25 ft long cord I had to fish under the door so I could have a private conversation (until my sister picked up the other phone in the living room)
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All I remember as a kid was the jump between Windows 98 and Windows xp systems(I can't identify the processors so using windows to date them. It was like going from a Core i3 to a Core i9 lol. and now days if I try to turn on a XP system I'm horrified at the amount of time it takes from turning it on until you actually have loaded the internet. Reminds me of how I used to make phone calls to pass the time on my phone with a 25 ft long cord I had to fish under the door so I could have a private conversation (until my sister picked up the other phone in the living room)
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Andy
some absolute gems here. my dad still has his ZX Spectrum somewhere. i remember getting it out and playing text adventure games once i got old enough to appreciate computing history a bit more. my first experiences were with an HP midtower running win98se (pentium ii, 64mb ram etc) and a Gateway running XP (pentium 4 3ghz ht, 256mb ram upgraded to just over 1gb, and aside from the higher performance/lower power and heat/slicker ui/qol features we have now things feel very similar. i guess that's what standardisation does, along with the market domination of x86 and windows
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some absolute gems here. my dad still has his ZX Spectrum somewhere. i remember getting it out and playing text adventure games once i got old enough to appreciate computing history a bit more. my first experiences were with an HP midtower running win98se (pentium ii, 64mb ram etc) and a Gateway running XP (pentium 4 3ghz ht, 256mb ram upgraded to just over 1gb, and aside from the higher performance/lower power and heat/slicker ui/qol features we have now things feel very similar. i guess that's what standardisation does, along with the market domination of x86 and windows
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Jon
I've had so many consoles since the Atari and Intellivision, but my buddy had that same Mackintosh Classic and I remember this AWESOME game for it, was a little dirtbike/motocross game with little Kawasaki KX's that you could go in and change all the values for horsepower and suspension rate and damping and wheel sizes and everything. that game was so damn fun and in-depth for the time, I just wish I knew what it was called. you could even make your own tracks if I recall correctly. I'd love for a port of it for Android or PC or something. anyone remember that game?
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I've had so many consoles since the Atari and Intellivision, but my buddy had that same Mackintosh Classic and I remember this AWESOME game for it, was a little dirtbike/motocross game with little Kawasaki KX's that you could go in and change all the values for horsepower and suspension rate and damping and wheel sizes and everything. that game was so damn fun and in-depth for the time, I just wish I knew what it was called. you could even make your own tracks if I recall correctly. I'd love for a port of it for Android or PC or something. anyone remember that game?
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PhattyMo
Ohh, making me miss my old Apple II's. 6: 00 - is that an Okidata printer? I had a couple of those, and one of the, I guess, 80-column versions too. it was bigger (wider) and REALLY HEAVY. Gotta love the sound of the old 9-pin printers, pure ear-rape. Fond memories of the Compaq portables too. Man, lots of foggy memories coming back to me now. I always thought the turbo button dropped the CPU back down to the 'base clock' (often 8Mhz) for compatibility with older software/hardware. I dunno, too long ago for my brain to recall.
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Ohh, making me miss my old Apple II's. 6: 00 - is that an Okidata printer? I had a couple of those, and one of the, I guess, 80-column versions too. it was bigger (wider) and REALLY HEAVY. Gotta love the sound of the old 9-pin printers, pure ear-rape. Fond memories of the Compaq portables too. Man, lots of foggy memories coming back to me now. I always thought the turbo button dropped the CPU back down to the 'base clock' (often 8Mhz) for compatibility with older software/hardware. I dunno, too long ago for my brain to recall.
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Will4May
I had a spectrum ZX81 as my first computer, spent all day entering code to make a space invader that fired exclamation marks as bullets upscreen to shoot 0's of enemy ships. Also owned a VIC20, spent all night programming in a game only for it to come up with an error when run, lost all the data and couldnt be bothered to start again. went through Spectrum 48k rubber key vers, and spectrum 128k +2 (an ex friend stole it, atari st, amiga 500, and A1200 (still have it, before moving onto pc with 486 onwards
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I had a spectrum ZX81 as my first computer, spent all day entering code to make a space invader that fired exclamation marks as bullets upscreen to shoot 0's of enemy ships. Also owned a VIC20, spent all night programming in a game only for it to come up with an error when run, lost all the data and couldnt be bothered to start again. went through Spectrum 48k rubber key vers, and spectrum 128k +2 (an ex friend stole it, atari st, amiga 500, and A1200 (still have it, before moving onto pc with 486 onwards
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Czech
The turbo button controlled the CPU multiplier. Pentium 90MHz had a multiplier of 1. 5 (bus running at 60MHz) and turning off turbo would switch it to multiplier of 1, resulting in 60MHz. For 33MHz 386 with multiplier of 2, it would downclock to 16MHz (multiplier 1. Not sure if I remember this correctly, it's been a while. :) I remember rewinding the casettes on z80 (Sinclair) in the early 90's, as well as on the walk-man. The younger generations could not even imagine the inconvenience of that shit. :)
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The turbo button controlled the CPU multiplier. Pentium 90MHz had a multiplier of 1. 5 (bus running at 60MHz) and turning off turbo would switch it to multiplier of 1, resulting in 60MHz. For 33MHz 386 with multiplier of 2, it would downclock to 16MHz (multiplier 1. Not sure if I remember this correctly, it's been a while. :) I remember rewinding the casettes on z80 (Sinclair) in the early 90's, as well as on the walk-man. The younger generations could not even imagine the inconvenience of that shit. :)
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DroyLabs
I'm a little bit disappointed, do yoy make a video about pc histpory without any mention of the real fisrt PERSONAL computer. I mean if it wasnt for that guys I dont know if now whe were at this point with the hardware industry, they have made a way to write and read programs in your house and before them coputers were gigantic machines operated by guys in whyte coat. Im obviusly referring to OLIVETTI programma 101.
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I'm a little bit disappointed, do yoy make a video about pc histpory without any mention of the real fisrt PERSONAL computer. I mean if it wasnt for that guys I dont know if now whe were at this point with the hardware industry, they have made a way to write and read programs in your house and before them coputers were gigantic machines operated by guys in whyte coat. Im obviusly referring to OLIVETTI programma 101.
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