[ale] OT: Woah, retro!

[James P. Kinney III]

Joe,

I stand crrected. The device I gave up was the calculator sized gizmo
with the card reader. I also had a TI 99-4a that connected to a tape
recorder and had a keyboard. And a TRS-80.

Mmmmm. Writing BASIC code with edline.

On Tue, 2003-02-18 at 20:30, Joe wrote:
> "James P. Kinney III" <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com> writes:
> 
> > During a spouse unit mandated cleaning, I was required to get rid of my
> > TI 99-4A card programmable calculator with the add on memory module and
> > thermal printer unit and several plug-in program packs including
> > statistics, statics and fluid flow engineering.
> 
> Are you sure it wasn't a TI-59? The 99-4A was a "real" computer (in
> that it was programmable in BASIC and had a QUERTY kbd - I realize
> that for some people here, "vacuum tubes" is the salient requirement
> for "real computer"-ness, but that was slightly before my time :-) The
> TI-58/59 was a programmable scientific calculator, similar in form
> factor to all the TI SR-xy boxen, and had a card reader/writer (59
> only), pluggable ROMs, and an optional thermal printer cradle. I
> taught myself to program on one of those, and the lady that bought my
> dad's survey business after he died *still* uses his TI-59 for co-go
> computations.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> -- Joe
> 
> > Her excuse to have me
> > get rid of the lot was that the battery pack was dead and the charger
> > wouldn't run it any more.
> > 
> > sigh
> > 
> > 
> > On Tue, 2003-02-18 at 13:43, Joe wrote:
> > > I got a package in the mail from my grandma today, containing assorted
> > > junk of mine that she found floating around the house. It contained
> > > the following items, among others, which I mention purely for the joy
> > > of having them back in my posession:
> > > 
> > > - My Dad's Texas Instruments SR-50 scientific calculator, c. 1975. No
> > > battery pack, no adapter, no manual. This machine was the central
> > > computing engine at Dad's land-surveying business for about five
> > > years in the 70's.
> > > 
> > > - My Timex/Sinclair 1000, c. 1982, Z80A, 1K RAM. With manual (!), but
> > > no power supply, alas. Anybody got a dead one with a working power
> > > supply they'd be willing to part with? I'd love to see if this thing
> > > still boots. Hmm, maybe I can pick up a workable P/S at Radio Snack...
> > > 
> > > Thanks,
> > > 
> > > -- Joe Knapka
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Ale mailing list
> > > Ale at ale.org
> > > http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> > -- 
> > James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
> > CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
> > Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
> > 770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
> > http://www.localnetsolutions.com
> > 
> > GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics) <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
> > Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7 
-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics) <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7 

 This is a digitally signed message part