Did anyone have one of these?

Kramer · Post by **Kramer** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 11:18 am

So my dad worked for Compaq from 1982-86 and he brought one of these bad boys home.... it was portable because it had a handle, thing weighed 34 lbs. !!!!!!!

You could choose betweenthe green or amber colored screen I think....

I was fooling with it one day and was trying to free up memory on the hard drive so I was deleting old documents and I saw this one file named "." and "..." something like that, and they were HUGE (like 18K) or something :rofl:

then suddenly the computer screen turned blank....... OOPS

<img src="http://www.old-computers.com/museum/photos/compaq_portable_2.jpg">

Lionking · Post by **Lionking** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 11:26 am

Dude, we still have an engineer at my company that has one and he shows it off to everyone he can. He has the amber version, fwiw.

-Out

:vonk:

Post by **Arlos** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 11:39 am

We had the Green one. Spy Hunter on that 4tw!

-Arlos

dammuzis · Post by **dammuzis** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 11:42 am

i have a working k-pro very similar item

Adivina · Post by **Adivina** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 12:56 pm

Had a green one like that, if my memory serves me right.

Kramer · Post by **Kramer** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 12:59 pm

we would play an olympics game on it, the mile race was a circle with two dots and you whacked two buttons to move your own dot around the track....

the other events like pole vault were stick figures :rofl:

Post by **Tossica** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 1:24 pm

That was "Summer Games".

Kramer · Post by **Kramer** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 2:33 pm

ha! you're right.

Captain Insano · Post by **Captain Insano** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 2:42 pm

pssshhh.

Original Gangsters such as myself played "invisible ninja" on my Commadore Vic 20.

You were invisible (ie: no graphic whatsoever for your character) because you were a ninja and you kinda had to guess where you were to kick and punch the enemies to death.

kaharthemad · Post by **kaharthemad** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 2:47 pm

I had one...had the ASCII vers8ion of Star Trek and a predecessor to MMORPG called Adventure on it.(no not the Atari Version) It was later renamed as Moria.

Also had one that will cause flashback pains in a select group of people...I had "Hunt the Whumpus" on it.

ClakarEQ · Post by **ClakarEQ** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 3:01 pm

I'm certified to work on those believe it or not. It is an old 8088 / 86 intel proc, 4.77mhz maybe 640k ram, if it had a hard drive it was only 10/20MB and it was in a 8bit slot (there should be 3 hrm maybe 4 8 bit expansion slots) as you can tell the 5 1/4 full hieght floppies (2 to boot woot).

They came with DOS 2.21 on them so unless your Pops did something different, it shouldn't have been possible to have a file called "." and if there was one or a newer version of DOS, that would have been the current directory, and if you tried to delete that one of two things would happen, you'd delete some core system files or the current directory you were in.

Find an old dos 2.21 5 1/4 floppy disk, boot from that, you'd be GTG in no time LOL.

Lionking · Post by **Lionking** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 4:11 pm

captain_insano wrote:While typing in code from my Byte Magazine, I'd whack off with my left hand so it would feel like someone else doing it.

However, my penis is so small I had to carve out a cucumber and mount it on my memberlett in order to feel like a real man.

I like the word ninja because it's small enough to tattoo on my dick, but normally I can only see nna.

Just kiddin' with ya man. You are still my hero.

-Out

:vonk:

Post by **Tossica** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 5:38 pm

This was my shit here...

I still have it, it still works and I have been planning on modding it for many years.

I just found this today...

http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/11/0,1425,sz=1&i=118026,00.jpg

This dude did exactly what I wanted to do. Looks totally badass...

Captain Insano · Post by **Captain Insano** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 7:10 pm

LionKing wrote:
captain_insano wrote:While typing in code from my Byte Magazine, I'd whack off with my left hand so it would feel like someone else doing it.

However, my penis is so small I had to carve out a cucumber and mount it on my memberlett in order to feel like a real man.

I like the word ninja because it's small enough to tattoo on my dick, but normally I can only see nna.

Just kiddin' with ya man. You are still my hero.

-Out

hahah... Ok this is sad... The first time I touched a computer was when I was four and it was that Vic 20. My dad had a subscription to byte magazine.... So when I was 5 or 6 he showed me how to type in the BASIC games that were always posted in the back of the magazines. I spent hours coding dumbshit games and then playing them off of TAPE cassettes. Floppy drives didn't come out for a few more years to the mass public. Then I got a commadore 64 and was UBER.

brinstar · Post by **brinstar** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 9:17 pm

captain_insano wrote:hahah... Ok this is sad... The first time I touched a computer was when I was four and it was that Vic 20. My dad had a subscription to byte magazine.... So when I was 5 or 6 he showed me how to type in the BASIC games that were always posted in the back of the magazines. I spent hours coding dumbshit games and then playing them off of TAPE cassettes. Floppy drives didn't come out for a few more years to the mass public. Then I got a commadore 64 and was UBER.

fuck yeah i did that shit too

spend 9 hours coding a game you can beat in 1 lol

Captain Insano · Post by **Captain Insano** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 2:17 am

some of the games just killed me when I finally got them done and working... I was like "WTF!!!" this game sucks and I was only 5.

The worst was making a mistake with the code and having to find it line by line by line. ugh. Thank god for nintendo. I turned my fingers blue and bruised playing Mario Brothers and Zelda and Castlevania but life was good.

Ouchyfish · Post by **Ouchyfish** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 8:38 am

Remember around 1981/1982 maybe 1983 EGM would have pages of basic code to make your own games?

Kramer · Post by **Kramer** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 8:56 am

i remember my older brother learned some basic code to screw with comps on display in stores, we went to the mall and he would start making them do crazy shiz

Jimmy Durante · Post by **Jimmy Durante** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 9:31 am

brinstar wrote:
captain_insano wrote:hahah... Ok this is sad... The first time I touched a computer was when I was four and it was that Vic 20. My dad had a subscription to byte magazine.... So when I was 5 or 6 he showed me how to type in the BASIC games that were always posted in the back of the magazines. I spent hours coding dumbshit games and then playing them off of TAPE cassettes. Floppy drives didn't come out for a few more years to the mass public. Then I got a commadore 64 and was UBER.

fuck yeah i did that shit too

spend 9 hours coding a game you can beat in 1 lol

Same here! I remember byte magazine as well, but most of the programs I entered in were found in the back of 3-2-1 Contact (based on the PBS show).

kaharthemad · Post by **kaharthemad** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 11:43 am

captain_insano wrote:
LionKing wrote:
captain_insano wrote:While typing in code from my Byte Magazine, I'd whack off with my left hand so it would feel like someone else doing it.

However, my penis is so small I had to carve out a cucumber and mount it on my memberlett in order to feel like a real man.

I like the word ninja because it's small enough to tattoo on my dick, but normally I can only see nna.

Just kiddin' with ya man. You are still my hero.

-Out

hahah... Ok this is sad... The first time I touched a computer was when I was four and it was that Vic 20. My dad had a subscription to byte magazine.... So when I was 5 or 6 he showed me how to type in the BASIC games that were always posted in the back of the magazines. I spent hours coding dumbshit games and then playing them off of TAPE cassettes. Floppy drives didn't come out for a few more years to the mass public. Then I got a commadore 64 and was UBER.

Timex Sinclar 1000 here. Tape Drive and 8k of ram FTW. I remeber that. Remember getting all the way thru the damn program and finding the dumbass that posted it did not write it properly and it was causing a syntax error in line xxxxx

Menelvir · Post by **Menelvir** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 11:46 am

ZX Computing was a similar offering from across the pond that had listings in BASIC for Zilog Z80-based
machines (ZX Spectrum and Timex/Sinclair). Speccys had a truly vast software library (approx. 20,000
titles according to Wikipedia, which would put it at roughly double the number of titles available
on the Commodore 64). The T/S 2068 could run Spectrum titles with the help of a ROM emulator on a
miniboard. I had one of those, in addition to the C64. They were both fun machines.

Jimmy Durante · Post by **Jimmy Durante** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 11:50 am

http://homepage.mac.com/vectronic/apple ... otter.html

Should bring back some memories.

Kramer · Post by **Kramer** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 12:06 pm

that is tight.

alot cooler than what we learned to do in 8th grade computer science.

Ouchyfish · Post by **Ouchyfish** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 12:30 pm

I wish kids today would have to play Oregon Trail on those 5 1/4 floppies with monochrome monitors for 2 years before getting to play modern day MMORPGs.

Makes me want to kick a kids teeth out when they bitch about graphics on a modern game.

Kramer · Post by **Kramer** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 12:47 pm

I used to play King's Quest, where you had to walk to everything and type in /lift rock or /look under rock or /sit on rock/ or move rock/ OR OR OR OR....... Until the 800th version of MOVE ROCK worked and you found out a piece of information that was totally useless....