Welcome • User Guide
ToS • Privacy • Canary
Donate • Bugs • License

©2025 Poal.co

Neat.

Neat.

(post is archived)

[–] • 6 pts

Most places didn't have computers with these specs in 1987. $40,000 back then was half the cost of a new house.

[–] • 2 pts

Large businesses had mainframes with dumb teminals. Even Windows 3.11 or DOS systems were usually on the secretaries desk or the manager’s office.

[–] • 0 pt

That was five years before windows 3.11 was released. This was serious iron back in 1987.

[–] • 1 pt

I worked several jobs with Mainframes and dumb terminals into the early 90s. Even then PCs were not common place on every desk. I do agree these systems were serious and you'd probably see them being used by AutoCAD people, accountants, or insurance actuaries.

[–] • 5 pts

I used an Apollo workstation in college for solid modeling. By then it was agonizingly slow. We hated those fuckers. They were probably 15 year old machines by then, though. Huge waste of a student's drinking time.

I used a vax as well. Vax had a copy on write filesystem that saved revisions which was pretty nice - far ahead of its time on that.

[–] • 0 pt

By then it was agonizingly slow. We hated those fuckers.

Just imagine one of those trying to render a modern web page. Assuming you could even give them a gig of RAM to do so, they'd probably take a day to render.

[–] • 1 pt

You know, you are absolutely right. More compute power is used on Indian tracking JavaScript than was used on designing a complicated mechanical system 30 years ago.

[–] • 0 pt (edited )

It is kind of amazing to look at all of the tech we use today and we aren't that much further ahead. Mostly we just have more stuff and faster stuff but not a whole lot of new stuff (aside from wifi). I watched videos of Apollo and Vax bootup sessions and it all looked awfully familiar.

I would love to see a Lisp Machine in person some day.

[–] • 0 pt

Check out gem desktop and the specs for the hardware it ran on.

[–] • 0 pt

Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only one under 60 on this site.

[–] • 3 pts

at least you are no faggot

[–] • 2 pts

I see you are new, we don't do telling people that they are not faggots here.

We treat each other like shit most of the time, this is kind of an unwritten rule that helps keep all thinskinned liberal faggots out of here.

Now let's try this again.

[–] • 1 pt

FUCK YOU

[–] • 1 pt

LOL. The more I learn about old tech, how it worked and the existing ecosystem that was forgotten about at each period of time I realize how little new tech we really have around us. It seems like we are mostly enjoying more and faster rather than new sometimes ... except for wireless, that is new.

[–] • 0 pt

29 here