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[ChrisJC]

I still have my Acorn Atom (poor mans BBC computer) in the loft

Peter

I have 28 BBC Model B's / Masters in my loft 
(and a ton of peripherals / manuals / games)

Chris.

[Wittsend]

I do however have a Toshiba laptop with Windows 8 (not 8.1) and still reasonable spec (SSD / 8GB RAM) which I use on the rare occasion I need to update firmware in various devices (GPS etc). Can this laptop be economically updated to windows 10?

Windows 8 was horrible 

If you want it can be upgraded.
Best I think is to use a full installation Windows 10 CD, might work better than through the Microsoft site
Depends what you want and have some time to set it up.

 

[Robin]

I still have my Acorn Atom (poor mans BBC computer) in the loft

Peter

How about an A3000, a brand new in box A3020, a couple of A4000 and an A5000, a BBC B with dual external disk drive,  plus monitors and loads of disks (3 1/2 & 5 1/4), manuals etc.  Oh, and an Acorn Pocket Book II (Psion).
I've also still got the original Sinclair ZX81 I built, an ICL "One Per Desk" machine based on the Spectrum QL, and a 'portable' Amstrad PPC (personal PC) 

I find it really hard to get rid of things   

[Peter Holden]

Robin, I find it difficult to get rid of things and I do think somewhere we misseda trick not developing the A5000, we had a few at school and they were always my favourite.  How long ago is it now but the development of their RISc chip is found in all sorts of places from mobile phones to washing machines.  Our government should have supported it, we would have been the world leaders in computing.

Peter

[Davidss]

... I find it really hard to get rid of things.

Snap, but the most effective motivation is to think what my Executor will do.
If I want the benefits to be anything like fully realised then I have to start the disposal before then.
Otherwise the effort involved by them, trying to do the 'right' thing, will blight their memory of us.

Regards.

[Robin]

Agreed Peter   

I managed an IT centre for a local education authority in the 90s, hence the Acorn computers, and went on several Acorn/ARM courses.
The RISc chip really was a world leading technology at the time, and as you say, a shame it was sold off 

They were ideal for schools and teaching technolgy at the time as interfacing was so simple.

We had Lego technics as well as many third-party kits which would plug straight in as well as making up components for kits for schools including traffic lights and juggling clowns, all made with bits of hardboard, LEDs and ribbon cables, soldered together by primary school students and programmed in Basic by the students 

I know an ex-Head Teacher who still uses an A5000 as his only 'pc'!

One day I must get some of mine out and have a play, just to bring back more memories.

Robin.

[Robin]

Snap, but the most effective motivation is to think what my Executor will do.
If I want the benefits to be anything like fully realised then I have to start the disposal before then.
Otherwise the effort involved by them, trying to do the 'right' thing, will blight their memory of us.

Regards.

That's what my wife keeps on saying! We've still got things in sheds and the loft at our old house where our son now lives!! As well as the 70'x34' 'shed' at our new place full   

Luckily Patrick has similar interests to me so I hope he will find some of the stuff useful if/when the time comes   

[Peter Holden]

Robin in the early1990s I was head of It in a sceondary school running a local network og A3000s, A3020s,  A4000s and a couple of A5000 Risc PCs.  Mid 90s, a new head and the school became a language college under the Technology Colleges Trust scheme.  We were gifted a proper server driven PC network running windows.  No tech support.  Fast forward 10 years the curriculum network now had 350+ workstations and laptops.  I was still head of IT and IT coordinator and had become network manager (by accident) for the curriculum network and the admin network with 1 full time and 1part time technicians.  I became ill and had to finish work.  They replaced me with a head of IT (she lasted 6 months then resigned as the job was too much) and a full time network manager upgrading the tech support to 2 full time technicians.  I have never been back.  I have enjoyed the last 15 years of retirement, noting that a number of my colleagues who continued till they were 60 or older didnt last very long in retirement.

Finishing work was very stressful at the time but retirement has been a blessing.

Peter

[Robin]

Peter,
Yes, Research Machines came in hot & heavy with PCs at very discounted prices in our Primary schools (which were the main schools we supported as most Secondary schools, like yours, had their own expertise), and so Acorn faded out.
The first PCs into our Primary schools were networked, but without a server, so I spent my last 6 months there setting up protected shared drives on one PC in each school so all work was stored in one place and accessible from all the PCs. Worked well as long as that PC was left on, but we were only setting up 20 or so PCs in each school.

After I left in 1999 and went self employed I still supported several Primary schools, but gradually they were incorporated into Acadamies and so were supported by the Secondary school IT teams.
I did do some cover work with our local Secondary school (became a Language College, like yours) when the 'IT manager' was off work, but it was quite stressful - one manager and a technician to look after a network of 200-300 PCs and 1200+ new pupil accounts each year!
Again, that school became part of a larger acadamy, so I stopped doing that - I didn't enjoy it anyway 

Anyway, way off track, except to say, technology has moved on SO fast since the early 90s - let's hope Microsoft stick to their statement and W10 is their final/ultimate OS 

[2a_Lightweight]

I used to have a SAM Coupe computer in the early 90’s, now that is a rarity!

We first had a BBC B and then an Acorn Archimedes in primary school in 1989, yet when I went to secondary school it was back to networked BBC’s until 1992, with 10kb user space on the HD. We then came back from summer holidays and were presented with a room full of Archimedes (like rewinding three years!) and basically told to completely forget all we had learnt about BASIC programming etc on the BBCs in the years previously, we were now going to be learning Desktop publishing and spreadsheets!!

We went with the Amiga 4000 at home, and in its ultimate spec of 060 processor and graphics cards it would run rings around everything else and emulate Apple Macs faster than the Macs themselves ran at the time. I swapped the Amiga for a Linn LP12 Sondek turntable in early 2000’s.

[Peter Holden]

I remember RM machines, I never liked them.  The first one I ever came across was a 380z running CPM.  My previous school had a local network running RM 186s using a shared drive drive.  I didn't like that either.  Supporting primary schools with 480zs was a bit of a pain.

Peter

[Robin]

I remember RM machines, I never liked them.  The first one I ever came across was a 380z running CPM.  My previous school had a local network running RM 186s using a shared drive drive.  I didn't like that either.  Supporting primary schools with 480zs was a bit of a pain.

Peter

Ah, these were 'proper' PCs, just badged as RM - Pentium, running W98.
Not quite state of the art, but the same 'standard' PC as you would have been able to buy from the retailers at the time 

Robin.

[TimV]

When I was at secondary school, there was a block at the bottom of the playing field, in it was a single terminal which connected to the university computer on top of the hill (I was told). This was 1971! I never went in the room.

By the time I went to Poly, we were playing with Fortran. That 'error at line 38' haunts me today. And then I was in work a few years ago (a very large computer system) - and on my screen was that same message - a computer running W7.

[Robin]

I can remember doing 'Computer Studies' at school - half a day at the local technical college as most schools didn't have computers or terminals at that time.
The interface was teletype only, no screens, and if the PDP8 computer, which took up half the wall, crashed it would take up most of the 1/2 day to reload from paper tape!!

My first machine code program was to deal a pack of cards - I think that took about 3 sessions to perfect   

That was in 1975/6.

Before that we used to punch program cards and send them off to Leeds University to run, getting the printouts the following week!

Robin.

[Old Hywel]

I never saw it, but someone at school was reported to have brought in one of those electrical counting machines.


‘Pocket Calculator’, that’s what it was called!