Awesome video! It was great getting a chance to learn more about the context of these systems and some of their common uses. Super stoked to have been able to help out!
Same here - so happy to contribute, and to see this old tech being reviewed and the info shared with others. And... that Seiko watch is very interesting!
I once witnessed an exchange about how some dude's friends from the back row of the school bus were no longer around, and during the exchange he realized the 'cool kids' just didn't make it to college.
If as an adult you're still weighing yourself up against what children in the 80s said to you decades ago it isn't particularly healthy. Try and move on with your life.
I am from Pakistan. I received PC-4 (CASIO PB-110) as gift from my uncle (who was doing a nice job of programmer in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) in 1985 when I was in school and since then I came into the world of computer & IT. I still have this model and its working properly. I leaned BASIC as my first language on this model. I am IT instructor & at the start of almost every training session I use to show this model to trainlines as my first inspiration to computer world. It was the life changer gift of my life (CASIO PB-110).
Hi Yasir! Thank you for sharing your story; it's remarkably similar to my own. When I was 10, I was gifted a Casio PB-100 (practically the same as the 110) by a family member who couldn't afford to buy me a Commodore 64. I was so disappointed until I opened the BASIC book that came with the Casio, and it drew me into the world of programming and my subsequent engineering career. That tiny computer changed my outlook on life and I'm still coding 39 years later. Peace from a Swede in California.
The math textbook showing a basic program actually solves a mystery that I had as a kid! I grew up and was in school in the early 2000s and I remember a few years when we had particularly old math books--the basics of algebra and arithmetic don't exactly change much after all so a book that was 10 or 20 years old was still very much useable. Anyway, a lot of us kids were only familiar with computers from maybe Windows 95 and onward so every once in a while we'd find a page like that which says to type out that program "on a computer" and we never understood what that could mean. I think we even once typed it out into notepad on an (actually very new at the time) Windows XP machine and all watched the screen expecting something to happen--and of course, nothing did. We knew the books were old so surely these new school computers were plenty fast and capable of doing whatever the program was meant to do and it was just a matter of finding the magical keyboard shortcut or icon on the screen to make it magically work I still vividly remember thinking those darn basic program pages were just there to tease us--taunting us to think there was some secret way to make a computer do all of our homework for us and the only reason we couldn't use it was because the teachers were all in some evil alliance and didn't want us to get out of doing our homework.
In the 1980's, BASIC was *the* programming language for home computers. It was usually even built into ROM (or at least distributed on a cartridge or disk along with the operating system). This channel did a video about it: ruclips.net/video/seM9SqTsRG4/видео.html BASIC wasn't a particularly *good* programming language, but its ubiquity and convenience introduced a generation of nerds to programming. The loss of BASIC was lamented in the 2006 article "Why Johnny can't code" (www.salon.com/2006/09/14/basic_2/).
@@danielbishop1863 Actually BASIC was the operating system. If you wanted you commands to be stored as part of program you started with a number then printed the command, ergo the confusion. QBASIC wasn't that bad and resembled Pascal in some ways, but of course it didn't do dual duty as an OS.
@@anthonynorton666 It was an interpreted language so you were inside the BASIC program when you typed commands. I'm fairly sure there would have been an actual OS that the BASIC program ran on. What computer are you speaking of here?
The last time I was severely bullied (in middle school), I snapped at the guy, shoving him into a metal barrier (thus making a loud noise), and proceeded to tell the guy off. Everyone left me alone after that. When I was in high school, I learned that if you could make the jocks and tough guys laugh, they'd scare off the other idiots in a bullying mood. I soon became a master at "stealth sit-down comedy" and would have them in stitches. The teachers never understood what was so funny.
Very relatable, and I went to elementary school in 2000. Even back then being nerd was uncool, at least in my school. Had to listen allkinds of crap for next 9-10 years.
Well, my bullying mostly came to an end in the 8th grade when I finally punched one of them in the face and we ended up in a drawn out fight before teachers broke it up. I got a few bruises too, but I think once word got around, especially seeing my primary bully walking around school with a black eye, the other bullies immediately left me alone. If I could go back in time, I would have done that in the 6th grade and saved myself 2 extra years of torment.
But of limited usefulness... I took Calculus 3 in college and despite requiring a TI-89 and being multi variable we rarely used graphs except to learn patterns of exponents. What I really need a better understanding of is root locus... Bonus points if you’ve ever used anything besides a self tuning PID.
I mean I went to high school in the early 2000s and I wish I had something like this, no calculator I could reasonably afford could do anything near this impressive, and by then these things were probably being thrown out in the trash or given away.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane with this video. I was working in Indonesia in the early 80's mapping large areas of former tropical forest logging areas. For 2 years I spent nearly all of my working week sitting at a Sharp 1250 (Tandy PC 2) in a shack in the hutan (jungle). I had a dozen survey teams cutting lines through the forest. After they completed each traverse and I got their field books, I did thousands of survey calculations on the 1250 and plotted the traverses out on the 4 pen plotter in full colour. I wrote my own programs as there was none available and it was a fairly simple thing to do so. This little gadget was a true workhorse and saved me a lot of time and drudgery.
Interesting today how pretty that same stuff can be done at the snap of a finger on these modern machines. Doesn't mean that old is bad but they were a workhorse for their time.
That is awesome. Adjacent to the field I find myself in, LiDAR/Geospatial. My boss is a photogrammetrist and surveyor. When I first met him (before the LiDAR company) he used a software called BINGO to solve photogrametry projects that was ancient, but amazing at what it did. He made a killing haha.
and you boast that you were helping loggers destroy the rainforest with a dozen cutting teams?, lol, you monster, were part of the problem in cutting down the rainforests, future generations thank you for that loss i bet LUL
@@Ovalbugmann Your grasp of English is not that strong, is it? I said I worked in FORMER forest logging areas. They were already degraded and trashed areas which contained little timber, just mainly thin, green and thorny regrowth. We were mapping the land to aid the planning for its future use. This was to resettle internal transmigrants from overpopulated Java to the sparsely populated outer islands. It was a massive World Bank funded aid programme. These are now successful agricultural areas, with thriving villages. I didn't boast of anything other than the usefulness of these little pocket computers. Get your targets lined up correctly before you tee off.
I'm sorry to hear you had a rough time in school. I hope you're doing better now. If it helps, I'm sure there's loads of us out here on the internet who love your videos!
My dad seriously had every single one of these. He was a nerd. We had toy-Friday at school from time to time. Kids could bring their favorite toys. My friends had Turtle dolls, He-Man and Transformers toys. I took these pocket computers, because of a lack of transformers. If I asked my dad for a transformer, he would say; "Sure, to what voltage?" My dad gave me an olympic class racing boat when I was 8. I couldn't sail it... I was 8. Love the man.
I really appreciated the personal story at the end. I had a similar experience. I remember wearing the my Psygnosis shirts to junior high. I thought they were the sickest things ever, but to bullies I was either into computers or prog rock, either of which made it clear I was there to get bullied and chew bubble gum... And I was all out of bubble gum. 😕
Man, America's seriously weird. That's just not something that happened in Australia - not when I was growing up, anyway; the whole nerds-and-jocks thing is demented. Not to say bullies aren't a thing, of course they are, but sporty kids are as likely to be bullied if they're thick as bookish kids are for being feeble. Generally bullies are considered to be the lowest of the low and wind up as targets for a kicking themselves...
@@bmacpher I'm Canadian, but you're probably right that the nerds and jocks thing is more prevalent in the states. Tho now that the nerds go onto make most of the money, that may have changed. It sounds like the best way to get by down under is to be well rounded, which seems more sensible. And yes, bullies are typically the most insecure of the lot, and probably treated poorly at home, but that took time for me to understand
Been there, suffered that ... got over it. In my first year of University I discovered that I was a "late bloomer", when I suddenly added 12 kg of weight and reached 182cm height(*). I had outgrown almost all the high school bullies, but by then I couldn't have care less about them. But it would have been nice to be that tall and heavy in high school. ;-) (* For US people: That's an extra 26 pounds and a height of 6 feet)
Sure, having a pocket computer wasn't the "cool thing" in the 1980s, but having a youtube channel in 2021 with over a million subs where you can review them is pretty darned cool in my books
Absolutely cool! 8-Bit Guy seems to be doing pretty well on the knowledge he has accumulated and is his own boss. The guys who bullied him? They're probably cops with their knee pressed to some guy's neck... :-(
I’m 29 so my experience with tech go back to using old computers, like macs and then PlayStation 1. But I have always had a fascination with older tech. You and Lazy Game Reviews are honestly my favorite channels for learning about retro hardware.
and when Casio felt that one of their musical instruments (capable of a UK No.2 hit) had to incorporate a calculator ruclips.net/video/xqTBlft8gQA/видео.html The Casio VL1 is heard from the beginning and seen in action after 80 seconds.
Being a nerd and/or geek as a teen in the early 2000's was no cakewalk either. Some days I'd surprised I made it out of that hellhole without snapping under the pressure I had from school and broken homes (divorced parents was bad enough, add on top of that bad blood brewing in between parts of the family that I liked...).
I hear you! I always make a snack right before I turn them on! I wish there was one every single day! lol It's like the History class of technology, I wish I had in school!
I still have a Tandy pocket computer from the late 80's. It was washed and dried (it was left in a pocket), yet still worked. I think it would still work today if I put in some batteries.
I remember in the 80's, in physical science courses the instructors would allow calculators for exams, and then some them got frustrated when they found out some of their students were using pocket computers programmed to do the math for the problems. This caused calculators to be inspected prior to exams.
It'll be fine. I'm sure we'll get used to the new studio pretty quick. And besides, this isn'h the first time he moves to another studio. The first few years he had his "studio" inside a closet.
I have that same Seiko watch. It was sold as the Data 2000 because it could store 2000 characters in it's memory. Mine came with the keyboard attachment which was smaller and slimmer than the one showed here. It would click into the dock on the keyboard and let you input data that way. The simple reason why I didn't wear mine to school was because it wasn't water resistant and could get damaged just from washing the hands. Even simple sweat from your wrist was an issue. Likewise the display being so large/fragile it was prone to scratching over time even worn under the cuff and screen protectors/hardness just weren't a thing back then. Never mind if you took a harder knock or tumble and the display actually broke/cracked. Not the sort of thing to wear if you had any semblance of an active lifestyle. From what I can recall it also wasn't a particularly easy display to read when you were outside in direct sunlight as well. This was a watch you really had to baby so mine spent most of it's days unworn. The battery inside didn't last for very long either, never mind being hard to find when you needed a replacement. Those BR batteries were the precursor to CR ones you find today - same size ones are in fact interchangeable. The keyboard also used a similar button cell that too didn't have a very long life if you used the keyboard often. Of course if you wanted to be really nerdy you would strap the watch on with the keyboard - yeah, I did it once 🤓
I remember the good old days of pocket computing. I learned BASIC on a Tandy Pocket Computer PC-1 when I was around 11 years old. My dad got me the cassette adapter which was essential if you wanted to save any programs, because the built-in memory was only around 1k.
The aside about being a nerd, that shows how behind the times I was when I asked my brother once if he lets his kids take their smartphones to school because my first thought was some jackass is gonna steal them or break them. But all the kids carry their phones everywhere with next to no fear of something happening and it's still a weird thing to me. I was one of the artsy metalheads in high school but I still had an interest in this stuff so the nerds knew they were safe around the guy with long hair wearing ripped jeans and a leather jacket. :-)
Same story here mate! My 7 y/o son is considered as wierdo, 'cause I'm not letting him taking his smartphone to school (here, in Poland, 7 y/o equals 1st grade)... And I'm being called "a dinosaur" (I'm 34 at the moment of writing this post ;) )
That's just crazy if parents are giving their kids smartphones before they are even literate enough to write a coherent sentence. I guess they don't care these days about adult-content internet filtering or preventing their kids from dropping the phone in a toilet.
@SteveEarl I've had my first phone when I was fourteen (It was Motorola Timeport if I remember correctly) - it was year 2000, when I was 1st year in middle school. Back then - I've been treated as a kid with cellphone and it was something wierd. Nowadays, kids are being born with all of this electronic stuff. I must admitt - it has some advantages (my son learned to read when he was three thank to youtube & peepa pig), but there are some disadvantages (he rather prefers playing on a phone or computer than going out and play with other kids on playground). On the other hand - there's noone to play with cause all of the kids are in homes playing on a computer or phone :(
You are all making me feel old. It doesn't seem that long ago when it was a talking point that a relatives 15 year old wanted a mobile phone for Christmas. I didn't get one myself until 1999 and still don't have a Smartphone. There again when at secondary school there was a fellow "nerd" (a term that didn't exist back then) who I only remember as "The Kid with the Digital Watch". Say that to any other kid who went to the electronics club and they all knew who I meant.
From one nerdy kid in from the 80s to another, I know what it was like. Look where you've ended up now. I love your videos, dude! Very excited to see episodes out of the new studio. All the best
I used to have the PC1 and the PC2...and I had the printer and docking station for the PC2 as well! Unfortunately my car got broken into and it all got stolen! I still have the PC7 and found my data cassette recorder just the other day in a box in my basement! I use it in my garage as a calculator! But I put all that aside when I got my HP calculators...Speaking of calculators, I had an HP-67 in 1978 or there abouts. and portable computers? Epson had an HX20 back in the 80s. It was a competitor to the Tandy Model 100!
I had a PDA that I loved because I could store text on it. It was great for a week’s worth of class notes. I’d delete portions after I’d committed them to memory. I remember wishing I could have, like, 300 pages of notes!
My grandpa gave me a PC-3 pocket computer in 1st grade and I spent hours on my bedroom floor going through the owner's manual learning how to program in Basic. I loved that thing! So many fond memories! I remember I especially loved that I could sneak a computer to church in my pocket so I could sit in the back row and play with it instead of paying attention to the sermon lol Such a versatile little machine!
Theres a whole parallell world of USSR computers , many clones, but many quite unique that we never saw in the west. 'd love to see a vid or vid series about them
My wife and her brother had a Timex Sinclair 2068, But they often called it ZX Spectrum 68, But i'm not really sure about that, beacuse it maybe was the Timex Sinclair 1500, because my wife doesn't remember her experience of the computer and what it's called. And i don't know how they used a NTSC computer in a PAL country, because... that's seems stupid to me, who would use a NtSC computer in Russia, but i guess it's a mystery, unless i'll find a photo of my wife and that PC.
@@iscander_s really? As far as i knew the vast mayority of soviet computers were inferior to it's western counterparts so that may be an interesting discovery
My dad had a pilot, he find it on a garbage can malfunctioning, he is an electronic engineer so he repaired and used to read a lot of books in the early 00s.
At the reunion: Adult nerd 1: "Where's your bully nowadays?" Adult nerd 2: "He's incarcerated for first degree murder... And yours?" Adult nerd 1: "Mine is the CEO of Oracle now. He didn't change."
Loved my Palm Pilot. Had my contacts, calendar and kept track of my files/tasks in it. Also had a Zaurus but found the PP to be much more useful. They are both downstairs in their original boxes with all the peripherals, and still work.
Great episode! As a young professional, I loved my Palm Pilot! And in high school and college, I loved my Sharp EL-5500-III (PC-1403) pocket computer! It could do matrix math and I wrote a BASIC program to solve quadratic equations and to answer other tough math problems. I just kept adding routines and a main menu to choose between them. My teachers never knew that my calculator was doing all the hard work for me! I still have the pocket computer!
It has the same Alps mechanism as a lot of the other small eighties plotters, like the Commodore 1520 (of which I have multiple and also sets of plotter pens) and the Atari 1020. The major problem with these is that the pinion gear splits. Luckily now that there are 3D printers, you can finally replace them. I saved my first plotter for a long time hoping for a solution to come up. It is really cool to watch them in action, it bangs the carousel against the left edge to rotate another pen color into place.
As you said, it's true that everyone now carries a computer in their pocket. But I'm saddened by the fact that few users care about how their modern pocket computer works or how to program it. Modern pocket computers are designed to actively discourage users from taking them apart and knowing how they work. We gained something in 40 years, but we also lost something.
The reason you are discouraged from opening it up is that it's an incredibly dense piece of advanced technology and opening it would accomplish nothing and ruin it. You are, however, encouraged to write apps for it, and are given all the tools and tutorials to do so for free, which millions do.
@@andreiandrosoff1327 I agree that app development is booming. But about ruining things -- somehow I've been taking apart dense, advanced devices for years without ruining any of them. But I'm just a random college kid, so I don't speak for everyone. I've definitely learned a lot about electronics by seeing how the newest phones and laptops are constructed, so I think there is something to be accomplished. Some friends think I have some sort of magical knowledge about how this stuff works, but I just tell them: the screws are there, all you have to do is not be scared to take them out. Dropping a small, light PCB on the ground usually does less physical damage than dropping a heavier glass-clad device, so your phone is probably farther from ruin while it's taken apart.
It is also true that while some of those are still working 30+ years later, the computers in your pocket will probably not be. Besides the strongly encouraged network connections, the storage media just won't last that many read/write/erase cycles.
Yeah the fact that many own a smart phone is no sign that people are using it for more than sending notes (just switched from paper to electronic) and other stuff "normal" people already did back then, it's not like most people are programming them. Nerds still do nerdy stuff.
@SteveEarl I hate crappy apps too and the lower bar to entry makes those very common. It is a good thing, though, that our devices are orders of magnitude more capable and that more people can write apps that do useful work. And good apps rise to the top and are easy to find. The ideal is not so much intimate knowledge of the hardware, but well-designed layers of abstraction and skillful users of each layer. The fact that computers were the realm of true nerds in the 80s probably did increase average software quality, but the software and hardware were so rudimentary and in the hands of so few that it didn't really matter anyway.
As someone who was also bullied for their height (or rather, lack thereof), I'm glad to see you're doing alright these days. Absolutely loving the content, and I wish only the best for your channel!
My school, once they found out you were a "nerd", you got put into the advanced classes and helped with all the AV equipment in other classes. There was no hiding from the bullies.
I appreciate these videos. As someone born in 1982 I remember a lot of this tech- but wasn't old enough to understand it in the context I can now. It's somewhat nostalgic to see them- but at the same time it allows me to fill in my memories with understanding I couldn't have realized them. Like fleshing out my own childhood memories with additional lore.
I used a Sharp PC1500 (Tandy Pc2) for many years at a metal building company I worked for. Lots of trig. I use it with the TRS Pc2 plotter/cassette interface. I upgraded to the 4 line display Sharp PC1600. I still have it & it also works with the TRS printer. I’m trying to find another data cassette recorder so I can check out my old programs. The ones I used the most, I saved as one big program & it would take about 15 min. to load.
Hearing Dave talk about being bullied resonated with me. Amazing how he built an amazing life for him self and his family dispite the bullying . Good job man. Inspiration to us all.
If you can't get a job and build a family, it's not because someone pushed you in the hallway in school or called you a mean name or something. So him being a normal adult and a functioning member of society isn't a miracle because he got treated bad by some kids in school years ago, or ever tbh.
@@Colt45hatchback Go to a place where it is easy to find a good paying job with no education (ie the oil patch in Alberta) and you'll find those same bullies continue to do all of the same things they always did --being needlessly disrespectful, insulting, and unprofessional with everyone outside their little group. People don't change unless life finds a way to humble them.
Wow I can’t believe my favorite was not on the list, HP-41C !! That computer took me through college engineering and into my early Aerospace Engineering career! I still have it but no longer works. I wish there was a modern replacement 😀
HP 41C…. 😊 That’s the stuff dreams are made of. I remember hanging with my dudes looking at photos of the 41C thinking, one day… Instead, I got a Ti-55 and a Ti-59 which I still have and which still work. I’ve got a Ti-58C as well from EBay that I’ve repaired and built a new battery pack for. I’d still like a 41C though. It was the one.
As someone who was relentlessly bullied in school too, I'm sorry you had to go through all that, and can absolutely relate. Best of luck moving to the new studio :)
Great video! As someone from the UK I was introduced to the Casio computers with my uncle's FX-720P in 1987 where you could play a game that beeped that much you could really annoy everyone around you :) In Christmas 88, aged 13, I got the FX-730P and spent many happy years with it- I wouldn't be the developer I am now without it!
Interesting video. I was at high school in England in the ‘60s. My “computers” were a slide rule and log tables. The bullies didn’t want those, they just wanted to bully me for bullying’s sake.
I had the Sharp PC-1500 which was the TRS PC-2. I got the Tandy magazine which explained the machine code and API for a lot of the functions. I was able to write machine code for it to do a lot of cool things like double the screen width. I've still got mine and amazingly it still works.
I didn't have these as a kid, but I remember really wanting them. I thought they would be magical, but in reality, I think I would have gotten bored with them inside of a week.
I think so too, glad i waited till high school with TI graphing calculators like the Ti-83, and learned you could download, and put games, and cheat programs onto them with the serial link cable kit, and I quickly became somewhat popular for also having the Calculator to Calculator link cable to share those programs with kids who did not have access to the internet at home yet, or the link cable software. Tetris, Mario, and Drug Wars where the most popular games around my high school for the TI-83.
That part about bulling in school brings up so many bad memories. I still wonder why adults does nothing with that. The whole school was about double standards: teachers told you something and everything was exactly opposite the moment you leave the classroom. Just like a real world, though :)
Oh yes, the number of times I went to the teacher to report something and was told "stay away from them". This after being told to "report a bully" etc. How am I to stay away from them? They actually go looking FOR you.
I’m in my 50s now. It turns out that most of the bullies that I knew in childhood are living miserable lives now, and the rest are dead. Karma is real.
@@3dlabs99 All my bullies now have a better life that what I can ever hope for actually. I have been stuck on minimum wage for over 20 years with emotional trauma and loneliness, none of them even started on that.
@@eggcluck Same here lol. Got bullied in the 90s for being the only one having a computer (not even talking pocket computer, full desktop!) and I was the only one of my class who made it through all the 13 years and could have gone to the university (the pro side of being a nerd), but actually then I couldn't because neither my parents nor I myself could afford that. And AFAIK all the others have found jobs, got a better degree afterwards, have married and so on while le me only managed to have an apprenticeship and almost completely lose his eyesight afterwards, resulting in being stuck unemployed and alone... if there's something in life that does _not_ work - it's karma! :D
@@eggcluck Damn.. I was hoping for some kind of justice.. Guess that doesnt really exist. I am probably totally wrong about the nerds getting paid more. I saw other comments about the bullies also get paid more because they are more aggressive when talking about the money... damn...
I had a Brother BP-30 "computer" typewriter that used those same exact pens. You could actually make "full color" pie and bar charts. Used that thing till it died. RIP
At age 13 I remember seeing Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters using Radio Shack PC-4 (I didn't know exactly what model it was at the time) - I wanted one so much.
That was a fun trip down memory lane. I was more a kid in the 80s - 90s. But visiting my grandparents in the DFW area. He would get stuff like this at yard sales. Didn't see this stuff brand new but still even 5 - 10 years later it was impressive to see the shrinking of technology. So he had the sharp version of one. What I appreciate about older technology is that despite it being simple they were cleverly designed to do what they did
Wow!!!! I still have my CASIO PB-700 right here in my hands, in a pristine looking and still working since Engineering University, back in the 80s - and can still code in BASIC just as before!
This brought to me heartfelt memories of when my grandfather used to teach me the basics of basic using one of these with its docking station programming a lotto (an Italian lottery) simulation. Thank you for the smile it brought to me :) Ps thanks God my grandfather is still doing great (and still a geek inside)
I'm sorry you had such a rough time in school, Guy. I hope you're happy now. I love your channel man, and it looks like over a million other people do too.... I want to start working on commodores now. :)
My experience with being a “nerd” in school was being put into gifted classes and then students and teachers alike being dumbfounded when I didn’t know the answer to something. “You’re in the smart kid class, why don’t you know this?!” and such. Lots of other bullying went on at my school but it usually didn’t have to do with someone being a “nerd” or not, at least that was how I perceived it.
This happened when I moved from an urban school to a rural one. Being an average kid in the city school, the rural kids thought I was some kind of super-genius because I knew what the word "feces" meant, lol
In the 70's, having a programmable calculator meant that you were so geek that the bullies did not notice you at all. It was like being on a different plane of existence... But you were bullied by the other geeks.
that looks like a usa experience. In the UK we have a mix of textbooks / testbooks that are pitched at different levels of learning acquistion (a term of mine that is better than nerd or gifted), mostly in maths, science and english / languages. Classes that grasped the basics quicky would be grouped (or tables in classes set) appropritate stuff, some was just tough to do and it was rare for anyone to correctly complete everything. ( I could do the number work but not when problems were phrased differently or expected a known solution method to be applied to a particular problem ). PS I still cannot use fx calculators I found them a pain to use. I suppose If I was working in an environment like electronics that used a set of equations to solve for a particular need consistently It could be useful for me.
Great video! I had a Sharp PC-1211 in the eighties and kept it with me for about 20 years. Unfortunately, the LCD screen leaked and the pocket computer became useless. If I could have found a replacement LCD I would certainly get it. I loved that machine. Programming in BASIC was fun. I know these machines don't appeal to kids today, but they were part of our school or university days.
Partway into the video, you may have mentioned this, you may not have, but in the original Ghostbusters, Egon is crunching numbers and statistics on one of these pocket computers (y'know, it may have been a Casio...) after running out of the library, after the library ghost scared them. Harold Ramis, who played Egon, was reportedly fascinated with the thing, and loved playing with it between takes. Edit: Looked it up, it's a PC-4 apparently. ghostbusters.fandom.com/wiki/PC-4_Calculator#:~:text=A%20PC%2D4%20Calculator%20(also,the%20University's%20Paranormal%20Studies%20Laboratory.
Such model is CASIO PB-110 (ps-4) which i was usingin mid 80 during my school days gifted by my uncle from Saudi Arabia (i am from PAKISTAN). It is still working nice.
2:06 My wife had an 'AST' back in the day and I just loved that thing. Some people said my wife's AST was too big, or was mis-shapen. Some people even said my wife's AST was all banged-up from too much use, but that didn't stop them lining up when my wife lent out her AST to anyone on the block who needed to use it. Even though it wasn't perfect, I would wake up each day, thank the heavens and kiss my wife's AST, and say 'baby, I sure love that AST'.
I just found your channel its wonderful, bullies suck I'm sorry you went through that. I so much love your content. It's hard to find stuff like this.. I live tech history 💗
I was in the Tandy store with my dad back in 1987 and ready to buy a pocket TRS80 or whatever due to scoring all As on my report card, enthralled by computers and programming, but being so poor as to not have electricity connected, nor being able to afford a "proper" computer. As fate would have it my 5th grade teacher was in the store that afternoon and convinced my father to buy a Tandy 1400LT instead. A wise decision. I taught myself BASIC, Pascal (Turbo) and Assembly (TASM/MASM) on that thing, all during high school, until I was able to buy my own 486 in 1995 and enrol in uni. I am now a software engineer, and very grateful that my teacher was in the store that day. I still have the 1400LT, and it still works.
Coincidentally I just featured my HP 100LX on my channel for DOScember, and now David talks about pocket computers. What are the chances? I found mine only a few years ago but I could imagine how great it would have been back in the day!
I say it's 10-ish years from desktops to pockets. Can only guess CPU computing power since we're comparing apples and oranges, but I remember most Nehalem systems had either 6 or 12 GB of RAM.
Great flashback. I miss Palm. I had several models of Palm as they improved over the years. My last one was the Palm Treo 700P phone. The best phone I have ever had. Wish I could go back to it again.
This video has unlocked a deep memory within me of playing with all these devices as a kid. My father must've owned a great deal of this stuff and passed the obsolete ones on to his kids. I remember he had his own personal workstation filled with devices like these next to a home library that had over 1,000 books. My kid brain always figured they were super calculators.
Yeah i think i have read about the MK85 before. It was provided as a gift at a communit party gathering i think. Pretty much a Soviet clone of the Casio shown as PC-7.
Ahh, a video about Pocket Computers, my hobby. Almost all but forgotten. Thank you! A small correction, the Tandy PC-2 was a rebranded Sharp PC-1500, it was the PC-3 that was a rebranded Sharp PC-1250
The processor in the PC-2/PC-1500 was not a z80 like, it was a proprietary Sharp processor. Sharp brought out a successor to it, the PC1600. It was the same physical size as the PC1500, was software and peripheral compatible, and had two processors, the proprietary processor from the PC1500, and a Z80.
@@Laaf65 And the 1600 is pretty much the best of the "classical" Pocket Computers. They did bring out newer, more powerful, offerings, but the 1600 is still my favourite.
@@RickSwartz I never have had a 1600 in my hands, a friend did figure out how the basic tokenizer worked of the 1500 and added a lot of basic commands to it like repeat/until and I think I did while/whend..
@@thinking-laaf The 1600s are quite expensive (around €250 on German eBay) these days, and very sought after. The 1500(A) series can be had for relatively less money (I got my cheapest one for around €50). The system is very well documented and hacking it as your friend did was pretty popular back in the day. The only reason it doesn't get much more love is because of the single line LCD.
The z80, I know a lot of poker machine, and other casino arcade cabinets run off that as well. Pretty amazing to have that power in your pocket in the 80s
It is worth mentioning pocket computers from behind the Iron Curtain. For example, the Elektronica MK85, which looked similar to the Sharp, had a 16-bit processor - a PDP11 clone.
20:00 - Similar story: In grade 10, I took a typing class and got harassed by bullies for "taking a girl's class", homophobic, insults, etc. But come grade 11 when the school got Apple II+ computers, I was typing in programs quickly. The bullies whined, "can you help us?" to which I said, "you should take a typing class."
Same here. I’m not a sporty guy in school. While choosing my subjects, I had choose either sewing or football. Naturally, I choose sewing, and later became an expert. Even the teacher and the girls were impressed. I’ve told them that the sewing machine is just another tool.
@@thorable530 You're so proud of your ignorance that you're willing to display it. www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/03/meet-historys-most-brilliant-female-coders/
I'm watching this video in 2024, just bring a lot of memories. In my area you can find that casio in stores like sears and other dedicated small local stores. Also I remember a catalog called ELEk-Tek or something similar, at college we used it a lot to get this type of scientific programmable calculators.
I enjoyed the history you share with the catalogs and the school photo. It must take a while to gather all the resources for these vlogs but it makes for some interesting content.
I have always been a total tech nerd. I used to be lead guitarist, lead vocalist and songwriter for a heavy metal band called The Uninvited. I remember one gig where a friend of mine said he would take notes on what worked well and what could do with tweaking. I remember being blown away when, post-gig, he brought out not a notepad but a gorgeous new Psion II PDA on which he'd written his review. I can't remember a word of what he said or anything else but the gleaming tech.
Yup. Most "inventions" are iterative at this point. Basically everything that exists now has existed in more primitive forms for decades now. Like when everyone flipped out about the iPhone -- there had been PDAs with cellular modems in them for many many years before that. I suppose it was the less technologically inclined that thought it was new. Makes a lot of sense in hindsight. Now there are many kids that can use that, but can't accomplish anything on a PC. We've actually gone downhill in the last decade or two.
@@mikem.9197 Mind you Apple is particularly notorious for "Inventing" things that were obviously already a thing : the oblivious consumer still doesn't notice.
Oh man... I remember having a couple of those that my grandpa would give to me. I definitely had an old 80s Sharp one, and also the kind with the flip-open lid. I thought they were so cool. I wish I had one today!
Awesome video! It was great getting a chance to learn more about the context of these systems and some of their common uses. Super stoked to have been able to help out!
Same here - so happy to contribute, and to see this old tech being reviewed and the info shared with others. And... that Seiko watch is very interesting!
Yea same
😊
this is for you: ⭐
@@onedeadsaint 😈
Bullies then: Haha you have a pocket computer
Bullies now: Haha you don't have a pocket computer
Well... its a laptop now
Ha-ha !
@@DigitalHandle shell phones
@@AsbestosMuffins Cell phones, but yeah
@@GuyHayardeny r/whoosh
The good thing about being a nerd in the 80's is that you actually knew all those bullies were dumb and history has proven you right.
I once witnessed an exchange about how some dude's friends from the back row of the school bus were no longer around, and during the exchange he realized the 'cool kids' just didn't make it to college.
Yep !
@@shiftedphase keep telling yourself that. They’re enjoying having a great social life a million times more than you’re enjoying your job
Yes, says Bill Gates.
If as an adult you're still weighing yourself up against what children in the 80s said to you decades ago it isn't particularly healthy. Try and move on with your life.
I am from Pakistan. I received PC-4 (CASIO PB-110) as gift from my uncle (who was doing a nice job of programmer in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) in 1985 when I was in school and since then I came into the world of computer & IT. I still have this model and its working properly. I leaned BASIC as my first language on this model. I am IT instructor & at the start of almost every training session I use to show this model to trainlines as my first inspiration to computer world. It was the life changer gift of my life (CASIO PB-110).
Beautiful story brother.
Hi Yasir! Thank you for sharing your story; it's remarkably similar to my own. When I was 10, I was gifted a Casio PB-100 (practically the same as the 110) by a family member who couldn't afford to buy me a Commodore 64. I was so disappointed until I opened the BASIC book that came with the Casio, and it drew me into the world of programming and my subsequent engineering career. That tiny computer changed my outlook on life and I'm still coding 39 years later. Peace from a Swede in California.
The math textbook showing a basic program actually solves a mystery that I had as a kid! I grew up and was in school in the early 2000s and I remember a few years when we had particularly old math books--the basics of algebra and arithmetic don't exactly change much after all so a book that was 10 or 20 years old was still very much useable. Anyway, a lot of us kids were only familiar with computers from maybe Windows 95 and onward so every once in a while we'd find a page like that which says to type out that program "on a computer" and we never understood what that could mean.
I think we even once typed it out into notepad on an (actually very new at the time) Windows XP machine and all watched the screen expecting something to happen--and of course, nothing did. We knew the books were old so surely these new school computers were plenty fast and capable of doing whatever the program was meant to do and it was just a matter of finding the magical keyboard shortcut or icon on the screen to make it magically work
I still vividly remember thinking those darn basic program pages were just there to tease us--taunting us to think there was some secret way to make a computer do all of our homework for us and the only reason we couldn't use it was because the teachers were all in some evil alliance and didn't want us to get out of doing our homework.
In the 1980's, BASIC was *the* programming language for home computers. It was usually even built into ROM (or at least distributed on a cartridge or disk along with the operating system). This channel did a video about it: ruclips.net/video/seM9SqTsRG4/видео.html
BASIC wasn't a particularly *good* programming language, but its ubiquity and convenience introduced a generation of nerds to programming. The loss of BASIC was lamented in the 2006 article "Why Johnny can't code" (www.salon.com/2006/09/14/basic_2/).
@@danielbishop1863 Actually BASIC was the operating system. If you wanted you commands to be stored as part of program you started with a number then printed the command, ergo the confusion. QBASIC wasn't that bad and resembled Pascal in some ways, but of course it didn't do dual duty as an OS.
haha i remember finding out that one could use qbasic in windows 98. suddenly lots of old computer books were usable.
@@anthonynorton666 It was an interpreted language so you were inside the BASIC program when you typed commands. I'm fairly sure there would have been an actual OS that the BASIC program ran on.
What computer are you speaking of here?
@@andrina118 Tandy line of TRS-80s including the Color Computers, and aren't all OS commands interpreted, since they aren't compiled?
21:34 damn, dude! sorry you went through that!
The last time I was severely bullied (in middle school), I snapped at the guy, shoving him into a metal barrier (thus making a loud noise), and proceeded to tell the guy off. Everyone left me alone after that. When I was in high school, I learned that if you could make the jocks and tough guys laugh, they'd scare off the other idiots in a bullying mood. I soon became a master at "stealth sit-down comedy" and would have them in stitches. The teachers never understood what was so funny.
Very relatable, and I went to elementary school in 2000. Even back then being nerd was uncool, at least in my school. Had to listen allkinds of crap for next 9-10 years.
David is now 100x more famous than all those losers that bullied him.
Well, my bullying mostly came to an end in the 8th grade when I finally punched one of them in the face and we ended up in a drawn out fight before teachers broke it up. I got a few bruises too, but I think once word got around, especially seeing my primary bully walking around school with a black eye, the other bullies immediately left me alone. If I could go back in time, I would have done that in the 6th grade and saved myself 2 extra years of torment.
@@The8BitGuy kick his ass, seabass
Being able to correctly plot 3D graphs with a pocket computer back in the early '80s is very impressive, especially in multiple colours.
But of limited usefulness... I took Calculus 3 in college and despite requiring a TI-89 and being multi variable we rarely used graphs except to learn patterns of exponents.
What I really need a better understanding of is root locus... Bonus points if you’ve ever used anything besides a self tuning PID.
@@peterg.8245 You mean you don't just put in a guess and then adjust from the response in the simulation?
I mean I went to high school in the early 2000s and I wish I had something like this, no calculator I could reasonably afford could do anything near this impressive, and by then these things were probably being thrown out in the trash or given away.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane with this video. I was working in Indonesia in the early 80's mapping large areas of former tropical forest logging areas. For 2 years I spent nearly all of my working week sitting at a Sharp 1250 (Tandy PC 2) in a shack in the hutan (jungle). I had a dozen survey teams cutting lines through the forest. After they completed each traverse and I got their field books, I did thousands of survey calculations on the 1250 and plotted the traverses out on the 4 pen plotter in full colour. I wrote my own programs as there was none available and it was a fairly simple thing to do so. This little gadget was a true workhorse and saved me a lot of time and drudgery.
Interesting today how pretty that same stuff can be done at the snap of a finger on these modern machines. Doesn't mean that old is bad but they were a workhorse for their time.
That is awesome. Adjacent to the field I find myself in, LiDAR/Geospatial. My boss is a photogrammetrist and surveyor. When I first met him (before the LiDAR company) he used a software called BINGO to solve photogrametry projects that was ancient, but amazing at what it did. He made a killing haha.
and i was born in that's era (end of 80's), in that's country too (indonesia)..
and you boast that you were helping loggers destroy the rainforest with a dozen cutting teams?, lol, you monster, were part of the problem in cutting down the rainforests, future generations thank you for that loss i bet LUL
@@Ovalbugmann Your grasp of English is not that strong, is it? I said I worked in FORMER forest logging areas. They were already degraded and trashed areas which contained little timber, just mainly thin, green and thorny regrowth. We were mapping the land to aid the planning for its future use. This was to resettle internal transmigrants from overpopulated Java to the sparsely populated outer islands. It was a massive World Bank funded aid programme. These are now successful agricultural areas, with thriving villages.
I didn't boast of anything other than the usefulness of these little pocket computers. Get your targets lined up correctly before you tee off.
I'm sorry to hear you had a rough time in school. I hope you're doing better now. If it helps, I'm sure there's loads of us out here on the internet who love your videos!
imagine if Casio had made a pocket computer with modern parts what would it be like would it use basic or visual basic what else would it have.🤔
My dad seriously had every single one of these. He was a nerd.
We had toy-Friday at school from time to time.
Kids could bring their favorite toys.
My friends had Turtle dolls, He-Man and Transformers toys.
I took these pocket computers, because of a lack of transformers.
If I asked my dad for a transformer, he would say; "Sure, to what voltage?"
My dad gave me an olympic class racing boat when I was 8.
I couldn't sail it... I was 8.
Love the man.
"Now, Matteo asked me not to open these since they were still factory sealed, but....." *i panic* "....at least you can get a look at them"
yeah that was a very intense moment (:
"Now, Matteo asked me not to open these since they were still factory sealed, but..... I went ahead and shorted the pens with a paper clip"
Thought we were about to have a paper clip situation
Perifractic would have made us think he had opened it and thrown away the packaging.
@@raggededge82 Oof. Yeah, that was... something.
That Seiko UC-2200 watch was way ahead of its time! It's basically the 80s equivalent of a smartwatch!
I really appreciated the personal story at the end. I had a similar experience. I remember wearing the my Psygnosis shirts to junior high. I thought they were the sickest things ever, but to bullies I was either into computers or prog rock, either of which made it clear I was there to get bullied and chew bubble gum... And I was all out of bubble gum. 😕
Man, America's seriously weird. That's just not something that happened in Australia - not when I was growing up, anyway; the whole nerds-and-jocks thing is demented. Not to say bullies aren't a thing, of course they are, but sporty kids are as likely to be bullied if they're thick as bookish kids are for being feeble. Generally bullies are considered to be the lowest of the low and wind up as targets for a kicking themselves...
@@bmacpher I'm Canadian, but you're probably right that the nerds and jocks thing is more prevalent in the states. Tho now that the nerds go onto make most of the money, that may have changed. It sounds like the best way to get by down under is to be well rounded, which seems more sensible.
And yes, bullies are typically the most insecure of the lot, and probably treated poorly at home, but that took time for me to understand
@@bmacpher Bullies can be tamed by numbers...
Did anyone else’s heart really go out to him when he was describing about his times getting bullied?
Oh yeah.
More than "heart" ... My nerve system collapsed for a moment.
Yeah, I could feel my latent PTSD twitching.
I know his pain, far too well to be comfortable talking about it.
Been there, suffered that ... got over it.
In my first year of University I discovered that I was a "late bloomer", when I suddenly added 12 kg of weight and reached 182cm height(*). I had outgrown almost all the high school bullies, but by then I couldn't have care less about them. But it would have been nice to be that tall and heavy in high school. ;-)
(* For US people: That's an extra 26 pounds and a height of 6 feet)
I still have a PC-7 on my desk to this day! (still works 32 years later) (oh and DID take mine to school every day cuz I don't give no f's)
I still have my PC-2 with the cassette/plotter docking station. :-)
The biggest flex at school
Oh hello good sir. Give my greetings to Bud! :D
The PC-2 was my constant companion in high school.
I like you Ben.
Before eBay was big I remember seeing all these calculators in thrift stores and at swap meets selling for $1-$3!
So true on the batteries being expensive in the 80's! I remember a 4 pack of AA's being almost $10!
and they didn't last as long as the modern alkaline ones
Great non-pocket sized video! And may we all wish your old studio a happy retirement 🍾
Any future plans for a Retro Recipes kitchen addition?
@@JohnSmith-xq1pz Right now just hunkerng down and cooking up recipodes! 👍🕹
@@RetroRecipes Sounds good. I look forward to sampling them when there served up
Sure, having a pocket computer wasn't the "cool thing" in the 1980s, but having a youtube channel in 2021 with over a million subs where you can review them is pretty darned cool in my books
He also writes games and software that people pay for, which is also incredibly cool.
in the mid to late 70's, me and my friends had our slim pocket calculators and 110 format slim cameras!
Pocket computers in the 80s were much cooler than they are now. Now, they're just a fact of life.
Absolutely cool! 8-Bit Guy seems to be doing pretty well on the knowledge he has accumulated and is his own boss.
The guys who bullied him? They're probably cops with their knee pressed to some guy's neck... :-(
@@if66was99 that went from 0 to 100 real fast
I’m 29 so my experience with tech go back to using old computers, like macs and then PlayStation 1. But I have always had a fascination with older tech. You and Lazy Game Reviews are honestly my favorite channels for learning about retro hardware.
14:46 "Tucker Johnson is a cool dude".
"I'm the operator with my pocket calculator"
- Kraftwerk
When I press a special key it plays a little melody
Je suis l'opérateur du mini calculateur
ruclips.net/video/N1k-Z-cg5ro/видео.html
"Ich bin der Musikant mit Taschenrechner in der Hand."
Know the original guys ;)
and when Casio felt that one of their musical instruments (capable of a UK No.2 hit) had to incorporate a calculator ruclips.net/video/xqTBlft8gQA/видео.html The Casio VL1 is heard from the beginning and seen in action after 80 seconds.
Bokuwa ongakuka Dentaku katateni.
21:00 - I know that feeling, all too well... Being 45 years old, it was not easy being a nerd in the 1980s, the bullies were brutal.
Being a nerd and/or geek as a teen in the early 2000's was no cakewalk either. Some days I'd surprised I made it out of that hellhole without snapping under the pressure I had from school and broken homes (divorced parents was bad enough, add on top of that bad blood brewing in between parts of the family that I liked...).
Every day on the bus I got my ass kicked in the 80s. Every day.
I'm 54. You just had to be the nerd in school that was getting more "dates" than the bullies. :)
Being born after 2001, being nerdy was easier, especially when half your school is also nerdy. Printing memes on every printer in the school is fun.
I had a calculator watch. I don't know how I am still alive!
Got my popcorn and am ready to watch! Love these videos :)
I think I ate popcorn faster watching this
@@Epimetheus-- p
I hear you! I always make a snack right before I turn them on! I wish there was one every single day! lol It's like the History class of technology, I wish I had in school!
My two favourite channels! Nice!!
U know what I'll join you
I still have a Tandy pocket computer from the late 80's. It was washed and dried (it was left in a pocket), yet still worked. I think it would still work today if I put in some batteries.
I remember in the 80's, in physical science courses the instructors would allow calculators for exams, and then some them got frustrated when they found out some of their students were using pocket computers programmed to do the math for the problems. This caused calculators to be inspected prior to exams.
What a great problem to have
I was one of those students who used my pc-1 in physics class back in 1982. The teacher was clueless.
My profs started requiring you to show all work, including explanation of derivatives etc. As a result, an hour long exam had like 4 problems on it.
Video: Almost finished
Me: Ah, now I can eat some popco-
David: This is the last video ever filmed in this room
Me: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-
that just mean's he's moving studios.
I am really happy for him. Finally the new studio.
*brain BSoD*
The end of an era
It'll be fine. I'm sure we'll get used to the new studio pretty quick. And besides, this isn'h the first time he moves to another studio. The first few years he had his "studio" inside a closet.
I have that same Seiko watch. It was sold as the Data 2000 because it could store 2000 characters in it's memory. Mine came with the keyboard attachment which was smaller and slimmer than the one showed here. It would click into the dock on the keyboard and let you input data that way.
The simple reason why I didn't wear mine to school was because it wasn't water resistant and could get damaged just from washing the hands. Even simple sweat from your wrist was an issue. Likewise the display being so large/fragile it was prone to scratching over time even worn under the cuff and screen protectors/hardness just weren't a thing back then. Never mind if you took a harder knock or tumble and the display actually broke/cracked. Not the sort of thing to wear if you had any semblance of an active lifestyle. From what I can recall it also wasn't a particularly easy display to read when you were outside in direct sunlight as well. This was a watch you really had to baby so mine spent most of it's days unworn.
The battery inside didn't last for very long either, never mind being hard to find when you needed a replacement. Those BR batteries were the precursor to CR ones you find today - same size ones are in fact interchangeable. The keyboard also used a similar button cell that too didn't have a very long life if you used the keyboard often.
Of course if you wanted to be really nerdy you would strap the watch on with the keyboard - yeah, I did it once 🤓
I remember the good old days of pocket computing. I learned BASIC on a Tandy Pocket Computer PC-1 when I was around 11 years old. My dad got me the cassette adapter which was essential if you wanted to save any programs, because the built-in memory was only around 1k.
The aside about being a nerd, that shows how behind the times I was when I asked my brother once if he lets his kids take their smartphones to school because my first thought was some jackass is gonna steal them or break them. But all the kids carry their phones everywhere with next to no fear of something happening and it's still a weird thing to me. I was one of the artsy metalheads in high school but I still had an interest in this stuff so the nerds knew they were safe around the guy with long hair wearing ripped jeans and a leather jacket. :-)
Same story here mate! My 7 y/o son is considered as wierdo, 'cause I'm not letting him taking his smartphone to school (here, in Poland, 7 y/o equals 1st grade)... And I'm being called "a dinosaur" (I'm 34 at the moment of writing this post ;) )
That's just crazy if parents are giving their kids smartphones before they are even literate enough to write a coherent sentence. I guess they don't care these days about adult-content internet filtering or preventing their kids from dropping the phone in a toilet.
i remember a world star video where the kid threw his cell phone to the ground before getting into it, no ****s given.
@SteveEarl I've had my first phone when I was fourteen (It was Motorola Timeport if I remember correctly) - it was year 2000, when I was 1st year in middle school. Back then - I've been treated as a kid with cellphone and it was something wierd. Nowadays, kids are being born with all of this electronic stuff. I must admitt - it has some advantages (my son learned to read when he was three thank to youtube & peepa pig), but there are some disadvantages (he rather prefers playing on a phone or computer than going out and play with other kids on playground).
On the other hand - there's noone to play with cause all of the kids are in homes playing on a computer or phone :(
You are all making me feel old. It doesn't seem that long ago when it was a talking point that a relatives 15 year old wanted a mobile phone for Christmas. I didn't get one myself until 1999 and still don't have a Smartphone. There again when at secondary school there was a fellow "nerd" (a term that didn't exist back then) who I only remember as "The Kid with the Digital Watch". Say that to any other kid who went to the electronics club and they all knew who I meant.
From one nerdy kid in from the 80s to another, I know what it was like. Look where you've ended up now. I love your videos, dude! Very excited to see episodes out of the new studio. All the best
Same here...was really nice to have the bullies pump my gas later in life.
Yeah look at him where he ended up, walking on the street with the rifle...
I used to have the PC1 and the PC2...and I had the printer and docking station for the PC2 as well! Unfortunately my car got broken into and it all got stolen! I still have the PC7 and found my data cassette recorder just the other day in a box in my basement! I use it in my garage as a calculator! But I put all that aside when I got my HP calculators...Speaking of calculators, I had an HP-67 in 1978 or there abouts. and portable computers? Epson had an HX20 back in the 80s. It was a competitor to the Tandy Model 100!
I had a PDA that I loved because I could store text on it. It was great for a week’s worth of class notes. I’d delete portions after I’d committed them to memory. I remember wishing I could have, like, 300 pages of notes!
My grandpa gave me a PC-3 pocket computer in 1st grade and I spent hours on my bedroom floor going through the owner's manual learning how to program in Basic. I loved that thing! So many fond memories! I remember I especially loved that I could sneak a computer to church in my pocket so I could sit in the back row and play with it instead of paying attention to the sermon lol Such a versatile little machine!
When you confided in us about the bullying you experienced, it was sincerely moving. Thank you for being so generous with us. You got the last laugh!
In the USSR, there was a similar one, called - Электроника мк-85 калькулятор
It was actually a lot more powerful than Western counterparts, it had an 16 bit PDP-11 compatible CPU inside.
Theres a whole parallell world of USSR computers , many clones, but many quite unique that we never saw in the west. 'd love to see a vid or vid series about them
My wife and her brother had a Timex Sinclair 2068, But they often called it ZX Spectrum 68, But i'm not really sure about that, beacuse it maybe was the Timex Sinclair 1500, because my wife doesn't remember her experience of the computer and what it's called. And i don't know how they used a NTSC computer in a PAL country, because... that's seems stupid to me, who would use a NtSC computer in Russia, but i guess it's a mystery, unless i'll find a photo of my wife and that PC.
@@iscander_s really? As far as i knew the vast mayority of soviet computers were inferior to it's western counterparts so that may be an interesting discovery
My dad had a pilot, he find it on a garbage can malfunctioning, he is an electronic engineer so he repaired and used to read a lot of books in the early 00s.
At the reunion:
Adult nerd 1: "Where's your bully nowadays?"
Adult nerd 2: "He's incarcerated for first degree murder... And yours?"
Adult nerd 1: "Mine is the CEO of Oracle now. He didn't change."
@Allan Reford I think you may have missed the joke...
Who is the CEO of Oracle??!?!?!
@Allan Reford good on you for owning up to it, even if everyone else already knew that it was true.
:)
I love you and I hope you are well.
I feel like Planet X3 is the Doom of DOS computers. It runs on everything,
Isn't Doom the Doom of DOS computers though?
@SuperWaffle64: Ummm...
@@Slay1337pl okay, the modern DooM of DOS computers.
@@Slay1337pl Doom of the pre-486 era
Lol yeah
Loved my Palm Pilot. Had my contacts, calendar and kept track of my files/tasks in it. Also had a Zaurus but found the PP to be much more useful. They are both downstairs in their original boxes with all the peripherals, and still work.
Great episode! As a young professional, I loved my Palm Pilot! And in high school and college, I loved my Sharp EL-5500-III (PC-1403) pocket computer! It could do matrix math and I wrote a BASIC program to solve quadratic equations and to answer other tough math problems. I just kept adding routines and a main menu to choose between them. My teachers never knew that my calculator was doing all the hard work for me! I still have the pocket computer!
That tiny plotter is so freakin' cool!
Right! Now imagine them with color!!!!
Yeah, very cool!
It has the same Alps mechanism as a lot of the other small eighties plotters, like the Commodore 1520 (of which I have multiple and also sets of plotter pens) and the Atari 1020. The major problem with these is that the pinion gear splits. Luckily now that there are 3D printers, you can finally replace them. I saved my first plotter for a long time hoping for a solution to come up.
It is really cool to watch them in action, it bangs the carousel against the left edge to rotate another pen color into place.
ik!!! so satisfying to watch and listen to, i would kill for an attachment like that for a TI 84 or something
@@VectrexForever Thanks for the info, I'm going to scour ebay for one now ;)
As you said, it's true that everyone now carries a computer in their pocket. But I'm saddened by the fact that few users care about how their modern pocket computer works or how to program it. Modern pocket computers are designed to actively discourage users from taking them apart and knowing how they work. We gained something in 40 years, but we also lost something.
The reason you are discouraged from opening it up is that it's an incredibly dense piece of advanced technology and opening it would accomplish nothing and ruin it. You are, however, encouraged to write apps for it, and are given all the tools and tutorials to do so for free, which millions do.
@@andreiandrosoff1327 I agree that app development is booming. But about ruining things -- somehow I've been taking apart dense, advanced devices for years without ruining any of them. But I'm just a random college kid, so I don't speak for everyone. I've definitely learned a lot about electronics by seeing how the newest phones and laptops are constructed, so I think there is something to be accomplished. Some friends think I have some sort of magical knowledge about how this stuff works, but I just tell them: the screws are there, all you have to do is not be scared to take them out. Dropping a small, light PCB on the ground usually does less physical damage than dropping a heavier glass-clad device, so your phone is probably farther from ruin while it's taken apart.
It is also true that while some of those are still working 30+ years later, the computers in your pocket will probably not be. Besides the strongly encouraged network connections, the storage media just won't last that many read/write/erase cycles.
Yeah the fact that many own a smart phone is no sign that people are using it for more than sending notes (just switched from paper to electronic) and other stuff "normal" people already did back then, it's not like most people are programming them. Nerds still do nerdy stuff.
@SteveEarl I hate crappy apps too and the lower bar to entry makes those very common. It is a good thing, though, that our devices are orders of magnitude more capable and that more people can write apps that do useful work. And good apps rise to the top and are easy to find. The ideal is not so much intimate knowledge of the hardware, but well-designed layers of abstraction and skillful users of each layer. The fact that computers were the realm of true nerds in the 80s probably did increase average software quality, but the software and hardware were so rudimentary and in the hands of so few that it didn't really matter anyway.
As someone who was also bullied for their height (or rather, lack thereof), I'm glad to see you're doing alright these days. Absolutely loving the content, and I wish only the best for your channel!
@15:20 "Matteo asked me not to open these, since they were still factory sealed, but..."
Evil /me: "... I ignored him." 😂
The Seiko watch that does BASIC. O M G I am having a histogasm. That is the coolest thing I have seen in 2021.
The wireless tech is very interesting considering how old it is lol
My school, once they found out you were a "nerd", you got put into the advanced classes and helped with all the AV equipment in other classes. There was no hiding from the bullies.
should have gotten a mohawk!
I appreciate these videos. As someone born in 1982 I remember a lot of this tech- but wasn't old enough to understand it in the context I can now. It's somewhat nostalgic to see them- but at the same time it allows me to fill in my memories with understanding I couldn't have realized them. Like fleshing out my own childhood memories with additional lore.
I used a Sharp PC1500 (Tandy Pc2) for many years at a metal building company I worked for. Lots of trig. I use it with the TRS Pc2 plotter/cassette interface. I upgraded to the 4 line display Sharp PC1600. I still have it & it also works with the TRS printer. I’m trying to find another data cassette recorder so I can check out my old programs. The ones I used the most, I saved as one big program & it would take about 15 min. to load.
The pc1600 was unique in the sense it had two processors, the proprietary sharp lh5801 for pc1500 compatibility and a Z80.
Hearing Dave talk about being bullied resonated with me. Amazing how he built an amazing life for him self and his family dispite the bullying . Good job man. Inspiration to us all.
In my experience, all the bullies from school ended up junkies... Most likely just like their parents, hence why they were bullies in the first place.
If you can't get a job and build a family, it's not because someone pushed you in the hallway in school or called you a mean name or something. So him being a normal adult and a functioning member of society isn't a miracle because he got treated bad by some kids in school years ago, or ever tbh.
@@Colt45hatchback puum
@@Colt45hatchback Go to a place where it is easy to find a good paying job with no education (ie the oil patch in Alberta) and you'll find those same bullies continue to do all of the same things they always did --being needlessly disrespectful, insulting, and unprofessional with everyone outside their little group. People don't change unless life finds a way to humble them.
Wow I can’t believe my favorite was not on the list, HP-41C !! That computer took me through college engineering and into my early Aerospace Engineering career! I still have it but no longer works. I wish there was a modern replacement 😀
Yes. And the HP-41C is from 1979,so predateds the sharp and casio machines
Also the HP-71B is missing.
HP 41C…. 😊
That’s the stuff dreams are made of. I remember hanging with my dudes looking at photos of the 41C thinking, one day… Instead, I got a Ti-55 and a Ti-59 which I still have and which still work. I’ve got a Ti-58C as well from EBay that I’ve repaired and built a new battery pack for. I’d still like a 41C though. It was the one.
Update! I was able to disassemble and repair my 41C and it works great now!
@@foomoo1088 Congratulations. I’ll bet it’ll be good for another 40 years! Built to last.
I still have my Casio pocket computer. Complete with a 2” square removable memory card of 1K capacity that needs its own battery.
As someone who was relentlessly bullied in school too, I'm sorry you had to go through all that, and can absolutely relate.
Best of luck moving to the new studio :)
I am mega interested in that watch, its almost like the smart watches of today
must of been a bitch to use tho
Looks way cooler than the Casio calculator watch I had
Imagine actually trying to check the time on that.
@@AgentM124 imagine having access to a battery that works XD
Great video! As someone from the UK I was introduced to the Casio computers with my uncle's FX-720P in 1987 where you could play a game that beeped that much you could really annoy everyone around you :) In Christmas 88, aged 13, I got the FX-730P and spent many happy years with it- I wouldn't be the developer I am now without it!
The Casio FX 601P & 602P were excellent as well. They even had indirect addressing! And you could get a docking station for them.
That room, and specifically the desk, inspired me to build my own furniture. Thank you for your service, room.
Interesting video. I was at high school in England in the ‘60s. My “computers” were a slide rule and log tables. The bullies didn’t want those, they just wanted to bully me for bullying’s sake.
Collect all eight Tandy Mini-Computers!
I had the Sharp PC-1500 which was the TRS PC-2. I got the Tandy magazine which explained the machine code and API for a lot of the functions. I was able to write machine code for it to do a lot of cool things like double the screen width. I've still got mine and amazingly it still works.
Man thank you soooo much! You can not imagine how much I enjoy your show! Oh nostalgia at it's best.
You rock man!
I didn't have these as a kid, but I remember really wanting them. I thought they would be magical, but in reality, I think I would have gotten bored with them inside of a week.
I think so too, glad i waited till high school with TI graphing calculators like the Ti-83, and learned you could download, and put games, and cheat programs onto them with the serial link cable kit, and I quickly became somewhat popular for also having the Calculator to Calculator link cable to share those programs with kids who did not have access to the internet at home yet, or the link cable software. Tetris, Mario, and Drug Wars where the most popular games around my high school for the TI-83.
That part about bulling in school brings up so many bad memories. I still wonder why adults does nothing with that. The whole school was about double standards: teachers told you something and everything was exactly opposite the moment you leave the classroom. Just like a real world, though :)
Oh yes, the number of times I went to the teacher to report something and was told "stay away from them". This after being told to "report a bully" etc. How am I to stay away from them? They actually go looking FOR you.
My school it happened in the classrooms and teachers ignored it.
A fascinating watch, and such a natural segue into the Psion Palmtop range from the 90s.
3:15 wow thats a neat collection
I’m in my 50s now. It turns out that most of the bullies that I knew in childhood are living miserable lives now, and the rest are dead. Karma is real.
Yeah ... who is making more money now? Hah take that bullies!
@@3dlabs99 All my bullies now have a better life that what I can ever hope for actually. I have been stuck on minimum wage for over 20 years with emotional trauma and loneliness, none of them even started on that.
@@eggcluck Same here lol. Got bullied in the 90s for being the only one having a computer (not even talking pocket computer, full desktop!) and I was the only one of my class who made it through all the 13 years and could have gone to the university (the pro side of being a nerd), but actually then I couldn't because neither my parents nor I myself could afford that. And AFAIK all the others have found jobs, got a better degree afterwards, have married and so on while le me only managed to have an apprenticeship and almost completely lose his eyesight afterwards, resulting in being stuck unemployed and alone... if there's something in life that does _not_ work - it's karma! :D
@@CakePrincessCelestia yeah i feel you bro. Destiny is a bitch.
@@eggcluck Damn.. I was hoping for some kind of justice.. Guess that doesnt really exist. I am probably totally wrong about the nerds getting paid more. I saw other comments about the bullies also get paid more because they are more aggressive when talking about the money... damn...
I had a Brother BP-30 "computer" typewriter that used those same exact pens. You could actually make "full color" pie and bar charts. Used that thing till it died. RIP
At age 13 I remember seeing
Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters using Radio Shack PC-4 (I didn't know exactly what model it was at the time) - I wanted one so much.
That was a fun trip down memory lane. I was more a kid in the 80s - 90s.
But visiting my grandparents in the DFW area.
He would get stuff like this at yard sales.
Didn't see this stuff brand new but still even 5 - 10 years later it was impressive to see the shrinking of technology.
So he had the sharp version of one.
What I appreciate about older technology is that despite it being simple they were cleverly designed to do what they did
Wow!!!! I still have my CASIO PB-700 right here in my hands, in a pristine looking and still working since Engineering University, back in the 80s - and can still code in BASIC just as before!
This brought to me heartfelt memories of when my grandfather used to teach me the basics of basic using one of these with its docking station programming a lotto (an Italian lottery) simulation. Thank you for the smile it brought to me :)
Ps thanks God my grandfather is still doing great (and still a geek inside)
Thank you. I really enjoyed your show from Seoul.
I'm sorry you had such a rough time in school, Guy. I hope you're happy now. I love your channel man, and it looks like over a million other people do too.... I want to start working on commodores now. :)
My experience with being a “nerd” in school was being put into gifted classes and then students and teachers alike being dumbfounded when I didn’t know the answer to something. “You’re in the smart kid class, why don’t you know this?!” and such. Lots of other bullying went on at my school but it usually didn’t have to do with someone being a “nerd” or not, at least that was how I perceived it.
Nice name.
This happened when I moved from an urban school to a rural one. Being an average kid in the city school, the rural kids thought I was some kind of super-genius because I knew what the word "feces" meant, lol
I had the same experience too.
In the 70's, having a programmable calculator meant that you were so geek that the bullies did not notice you at all. It was like being on a different plane of existence...
But you were bullied by the other geeks.
that looks like a usa experience. In the UK we have a mix of textbooks / testbooks that are pitched at different levels of learning acquistion (a term of mine that is better than nerd or gifted), mostly in maths, science and english / languages. Classes that grasped the basics quicky would be grouped (or tables in classes set) appropritate stuff, some was just tough to do and it was rare for anyone to correctly complete everything. ( I could do the number work but not when problems were phrased differently or expected a known solution method to be applied to a particular problem ). PS I still cannot use fx calculators I found them a pain to use. I suppose If I was working in an environment like electronics that used a set of equations to solve for a particular need consistently It could be useful for me.
Can we all acknowledge the courage it took for that dude to loan this guy his beloved computers?
To the contrary... David is an awesome friend and he's welcome to any of my gear in order to share it with his audience. 🤓
he beeg and good boii
Great video! I had a Sharp PC-1211 in the eighties and kept it with me for about 20 years. Unfortunately, the LCD screen leaked and the pocket computer became useless. If I could have found a replacement LCD I would certainly get it. I loved that machine. Programming in BASIC was fun. I know these machines don't appeal to kids today, but they were part of our school or university days.
Love your channel, love your honesty.
Partway into the video, you may have mentioned this, you may not have, but in the original Ghostbusters, Egon is crunching numbers and statistics on one of these pocket computers (y'know, it may have been a Casio...) after running out of the library, after the library ghost scared them. Harold Ramis, who played Egon, was reportedly fascinated with the thing, and loved playing with it between takes.
Edit: Looked it up, it's a PC-4 apparently.
ghostbusters.fandom.com/wiki/PC-4_Calculator#:~:text=A%20PC%2D4%20Calculator%20(also,the%20University's%20Paranormal%20Studies%20Laboratory.
Nice find!
Such model is CASIO PB-110 (ps-4) which i was usingin mid 80 during my school days gifted by my uncle from Saudi Arabia (i am from PAKISTAN). It is still working nice.
2:06 My wife had an 'AST' back in the day and I just loved that thing. Some people said my wife's AST was too big, or was mis-shapen. Some people even said my wife's AST was all banged-up from too much use, but that didn't stop them lining up when my wife lent out her AST to anyone on the block who needed to use it. Even though it wasn't perfect, I would wake up each day, thank the heavens and kiss my wife's AST, and say 'baby, I sure love that AST'.
I just found your channel its wonderful, bullies suck I'm sorry you went through that. I so much love your content. It's hard to find stuff like this.. I live tech history 💗
I was in the Tandy store with my dad back in 1987 and ready to buy a pocket TRS80 or whatever due to scoring all As on my report card, enthralled by computers and programming, but being so poor as to not have electricity connected, nor being able to afford a "proper" computer. As fate would have it my 5th grade teacher was in the store that afternoon and convinced my father to buy a Tandy 1400LT instead. A wise decision. I taught myself BASIC, Pascal (Turbo) and Assembly (TASM/MASM) on that thing, all during high school, until I was able to buy my own 486 in 1995 and enrol in uni. I am now a software engineer, and very grateful that my teacher was in the store that day. I still have the 1400LT, and it still works.
Love it! An MS-DOS computer that I can carry in my pocket? Sign me up!!
It’s an oddly sized screen tho
Coincidentally I just featured my HP 100LX on my channel for DOScember, and now David talks about pocket computers. What are the chances? I found mine only a few years ago but I could imagine how great it would have been back in the day!
It's hard to imagine that old supercomputer was really as fast as a modern smartphone.
At 80MHz probably similar to a Pentium 1 which would struggle to even play an MP3.
I say it's 10-ish years from desktops to pockets. Can only guess CPU computing power since we're comparing apples and oranges, but I remember most Nehalem systems had either 6 or 12 GB of RAM.
@@MrDuncl 486 was limited in bit rate but Pentiums were OK.
ruclips.net/video/b0zZpzxHSeM/видео.html
It wasn't... modern smartphones are faster than ASCI Red was in 1997.... and that one didn't last long either...
@@danijelujcic8644 some 486 were actually faster than certain pentiums
Great flashback. I miss Palm. I had several models of Palm as they improved over the years. My last one was the Palm Treo 700P phone. The best phone I have ever had. Wish I could go back to it again.
This video has unlocked a deep memory within me of playing with all these devices as a kid. My father must've owned a great deal of this stuff and passed the obsolete ones on to his kids. I remember he had his own personal workstation filled with devices like these next to a home library that had over 1,000 books. My kid brain always figured they were super calculators.
Wow, and I remember such things, produced by "Electronica", my dad had a similar computer of the Soviet model "Электроника МК85" seemed to be called
Yeah i think i have read about the MK85 before. It was provided as a gift at a communit party gathering i think. Pretty much a Soviet clone of the Casio shown as PC-7.
Ahh, a video about Pocket Computers, my hobby. Almost all but forgotten. Thank you!
A small correction, the Tandy PC-2 was a rebranded Sharp PC-1500, it was the PC-3 that was a rebranded Sharp PC-1250
The processor in the PC-2/PC-1500 was not a z80 like, it was a proprietary Sharp processor. Sharp brought out a successor to it, the PC1600. It was the same physical size as the PC1500, was software and peripheral compatible, and had two processors, the proprietary processor from the PC1500, and a Z80.
@@Laaf65 And the 1600 is pretty much the best of the "classical" Pocket Computers. They did bring out newer, more powerful, offerings, but the 1600 is still my favourite.
@@RickSwartz I never have had a 1600 in my hands, a friend did figure out how the basic tokenizer worked of the 1500 and added a lot of basic commands to it like repeat/until and I think I did while/whend..
@@thinking-laaf The 1600s are quite expensive (around €250 on German eBay) these days, and very sought after. The 1500(A) series can be had for relatively less money (I got my cheapest one for around €50). The system is very well documented and hacking it as your friend did was pretty popular back in the day. The only reason it doesn't get much more love is because of the single line LCD.
The z80, I know a lot of poker machine, and other casino arcade cabinets run off that as well. Pretty amazing to have that power in your pocket in the 80s
It is worth mentioning pocket computers from behind the Iron Curtain. For example, the Elektronica MK85, which looked similar to the Sharp, had a 16-bit processor - a PDP11 clone.
"Don't throw your X-Box or Play Station just yet" Quote from famous thinker/philosopher.
20:00 - Similar story: In grade 10, I took a typing class and got harassed by bullies for "taking a girl's class", homophobic, insults, etc. But come grade 11 when the school got Apple II+ computers, I was typing in programs quickly. The bullies whined, "can you help us?" to which I said, "you should take a typing class."
Same here. I’m not a sporty guy in school. While choosing my subjects, I had choose either sewing or football. Naturally, I choose sewing, and later became an expert. Even the teacher and the girls were impressed.
I’ve told them that the sewing machine is just another tool.
The hole in your story is that the girls never learned to code.
@@thorable530 You're so proud of your ignorance that you're willing to display it.
www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/03/meet-historys-most-brilliant-female-coders/
I'm watching this video in 2024, just bring a lot of memories. In my area you can find that casio in stores like sears and other dedicated small local stores. Also I remember a catalog called ELEk-Tek or something similar, at college we used it a lot to get this type of scientific programmable calculators.
congrats about the new studio!!
I’m glad the Atari Portfolio at least got an honorable mention. Hopefully there’s more Atari computer videos in the future.
Nothing like a whopping 10 scanlines!
I enjoyed the history you share with the catalogs and the school photo. It must take a while to gather all the resources for these vlogs but it makes for some interesting content.
I have always been a total tech nerd. I used to be lead guitarist, lead vocalist and songwriter for a heavy metal band called The Uninvited. I remember one gig where a friend of mine said he would take notes on what worked well and what could do with tweaking. I remember being blown away when, post-gig, he brought out not a notepad but a gorgeous new Psion II PDA on which he'd written his review. I can't remember a word of what he said or anything else but the gleaming tech.
My classmate uses the PC-3 as his main calculator. I had no idea it was this old and neither did he. We use it to pass messages during math.
In what year exactly?
Also it's curious that modern scientific computers are probably more powerful than this things (they are fucking expensive thou)
will look back to this video and the old room with nostalgia.
It's so weird knowing that something that seems a marvel of recent years had already technically existed
Yup. Most "inventions" are iterative at this point. Basically everything that exists now has existed in more primitive forms for decades now. Like when everyone flipped out about the iPhone -- there had been PDAs with cellular modems in them for many many years before that. I suppose it was the less technologically inclined that thought it was new. Makes a lot of sense in hindsight. Now there are many kids that can use that, but can't accomplish anything on a PC. We've actually gone downhill in the last decade or two.
@@mikem.9197 Mind you Apple is particularly notorious for "Inventing" things that were obviously already a thing : the oblivious consumer still doesn't notice.
Oh man... I remember having a couple of those that my grandpa would give to me. I definitely had an old 80s Sharp one, and also the kind with the flip-open lid. I thought they were so cool. I wish I had one today!