Harwell Witch vacuum tubes

Looking at these old machines makes me glad I wasn't an IT Support Tech in them days, I think that turning them off and on again wasn't an option.

There's a lot of equipment in those shots that I worked on over the years.

I was surprised by some of the missing models though...

Like the HP 3000, TI-980

and for 'personal' computers I noticed that the venerable TRS-80 got snubbed... along with the Atari 800, XE and ST systems.

I won't donate them to the museum, but I still have 5 operational Atari machines (800, 65XE, 130XE, 520ST and a MEGA 2) an original IBM AT and a Commodore PC-10.

This was like a trip down memory lane, but most of it was way before my time. And I'm right there with adders794---I would not want to be the one tasked with keeping these antiques running!

I started out on PC's back in 1986 by buying a Tandy TL/2, which was nothing more than a 286 running at a whopping 6 Mhz. And for the privilege of upgrading the hard drive to 30 MEGABYTES, and opting for the CGA monitor (which was capable of displaying a whopping 16 colors!) I ended up paying around $1400.00 - and that was in 1986 dollars!

Imagine even 25 years from today, when people look at the iPads and the crude cell phones that we use today-they will be amazed that we were forced to use such underpowered, overpriced stuff! Progress....it is the name of the game!

Thanks for the history lesson.

adders, you should find the reset button first!!!