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AN UNMITIGATED DISASTER

I cannot remember which year I was supposed to get it, but commodore did hit financial issues not long after it was released, it may have been related.
 
Rroff said:
I'm surprised how quickly people seem to have forgotten the last few launches. I quickly learnt to sit back bide my time until the price and availability was right for me for what I need.
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Pascal was bad I remember some ridiculous queues lasting many months Turing not so much iirc presumably because of the price gouging apparently sales were poor until lockdown then everyone wanted to build a PC at least thats what GN said
 
Roadrunner_668 said:
i would prefer not to faff likethat but i dont mind it ha ha
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Part of my job distractions is troubleshooting above level 2 issues, it would blow the mind when you see the regular folk that cant be bothered doing anything remotely beyond clicking a button. After many years exposed to this I am either numb or dead to sympathy. :)
 
Th0nt said:
Part of my job distractions is troubleshooting above level 2 issues, it would blow the mind when you see the regular folk that cant be bothered doing anything remotely beyond clicking a button. After many years exposed to this I am either numb or dead to sympathy. :)
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I do feel like things should just work out of the box without having to fiddle with settings most people wouldnt want to touch though !
 
Roadrunner_668 said:
I do feel like things should just work out of the box without having to fiddle with settings most people wouldnt want to touch though !
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Yes, its the new day era of mobile phones or devices that have apps that just work - I get it. When you grew up in the early eighties then nineties on tech where you would be on the road to nowhere - you adapted fast, it may have been the hard way but your set for life. Most youngsters I encounter these days come across the first obstacle and leave it as they have no capacity to think for themselves. :)
 
That is true but also in this day and age things can just work out of the box and most good products do so its frustrating for people who used to have to fettle things to get them working who thought they wouldnt have to ha ha
 
Th0nt said:
Yes, its the new day era of mobile phones or devices that have apps that just work - I get it. When you grew up in the early eighties then nineties on tech where you would be on the road to nowhere - you adapted fast, it may have been the hard way but your set for life. Most youngsters I encounter these days come across the first obstacle and leave it as they have no capacity to think for themselves. :)
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I'm sure it was like that for many of us. First IBM clone computer I encountered was a new PC at our school. Nobody knew how to work it, especially the teachers :p

Turned it on. After a few mins, saw a flashing C:>_ prompt. Didn't know what this meant and there were no instructions.

Put a disk in, turned it off and on again. Noticed we now had an A:>_ prompt.

Typed "help" as that seemed like a reasonable thing to do.

And thus began the voyage of discovery that eventually ended with RedTube in 4K.
 
FoxEye said:
I'm sure it was like that for many of us. First IBM clone computer I encountered was a new PC at our school. Nobody knew how to work it, especially the teachers :p

Turned it on. After a few mins, saw a flashing C:>_ prompt. Didn't know what this meant and there were no instructions.

Put a disk in, turned it off and on again. Noticed we now had an A:>_ prompt.

Typed "help" as that seemed like a reasonable thing to do.

And thus began the voyage of discovery that eventually ended with RedTube in 4K.
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Lol, <condescending voice>in my day, we didnt have any computers but an abacus with cracked beads and the cane if you got it wrong!</voice>
 
Our school computer was a BBC micro.
The one with the red F keys and an Owl logo on the top right. Remember playing Elite during breaktimes.
 
Computer science was useless at my school too in terms of teaching any programming, I can remember being taught more about computer history and Babbage's difference engine than anything practical on the networked BBC Micros we had.

One whizzkid programmed a car image with a moving headlight because he already knew how to. The rest of us mostly sent primitive but hilarious synthesised speech messages to each other that you could send to a classmate's PC and it would speak it out loud on their computer. Most of the best known swear words would come out fairly well, if you got the phonetics right, so you can imagine it was quite a distraction.

Looking back the CS teacher was useless, I doubt he knew anything about programming. A really wasted opportunity to teach kids how to program in the late 80s.
 
PC777 said:
C
One whizzkid programmed a car image with a moving headlight because he already knew how to. The rest of us mostly sent primitive but hilarious synthesised speech messages to each other that you could send to a classmate's PC and it would speak it out loud on their computer. Most of the best known swear words would come out fairly well, if you got the phonetics right, so you can imagine it was quite a distraction.
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Oh yes I recall this it was awesome, replaced the Neolithic calculator 80087322 gaffs!
 
Shaolin Chicken said:
I think you are right, as far as my recollection goes.
A mate of mine had the ZX81 and that wasn't a kit.
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The ZX81 came in kit form and also ready built. I had the kit because we couldnt afford the ready built one plus my Dad is an electronics wiz.

I believe the ZX80 was ready built only.

Strange how the topic of conversation has changed so wildly from #1 post.
 
PC777 said:
Computer science was useless at my school too in terms of teaching any programming, I can remember being taught more about computer history and Babbage's difference engine than anything practical on the networked BBC Micros we had.

One whizzkid programmed a car image with a moving headlight because he already knew how to. The rest of us mostly sent primitive but hilarious synthesised speech messages to each other that you could send to a classmate's PC and it would speak it out loud on their computer. Most of the best known swear words would come out fairly well, if you got the phonetics right, so you can imagine it was quite a distraction.

Looking back the CS teacher was useless, I doubt he knew anything about programming. A really wasted opportunity to teach kids how to program in the late 80s.
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Yeah - most of the teachers in those subjects back then hardly knew anything really many coming from a general science or electronics background - I grew up around computers and had been coding in BBC BASIC and QB45 since a fairly young age so by the time I got to college my programming lecturers were coming to me for advice :(

EDIT: Though there were some who had decent ability - the guy that generally lead IT efforts at my secondary school and was initially head of IT when it became a "technology college" was really good at some areas - for instance he could make up breakout boards using discrete components that were pin compatible with the ICs in the old BBCs, etc.
 
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