Hotsolder - Electronics & Other Geeky Pursuits: Musings on Old Computers and Flexowriters

I was reading this post the other day and it made me think of the various computers I've owned. A homebrew COSMAC Elf (1802), a TRS-80 model 3, a Data General Nova 1200 Jumbo (yes, I had it my garage for years), and a slew of PCs and other lesser computers.

Makes me a little sad, however. My kids will simply recall which PCs they owned. I don't think any of my kids have any recollection of anything less than a Pentium! While PCs today are very exciting, I can't help but wonder if most of the upcoming generation will never know the thrill of interfacing a Friden Flexowriter to a computer (yes, I had one of those too).

I once spent some time wandering in a mall and saw a booth offering "computerized handwriting analysis." The box was full of blinking lights and there was a slot with some buttons underneath but no keyboard or screen (this was back in the late 70s, so the general public wouldn't find that odd). Upon receipt of a dollar, the man would take a slip of paper that you'd written on, fit it to the slot, push a button and you'd hear mechanical clacking as the machine sucked up the paper. When the paper emerged again, it had some "fortune cookie" saying on it.

I kept studying the machine from a distance, certain it looked familiar. Suddenly it hit me. The machine was a hood covering a Flexowriter! Beneath the hood was an endless loop of paper tape with a few "cookies" surrounded by line feeds and ending with a stop code. So when you put the paper in and pressed "read tape" the platen would turn, a message would print and the paper would eject out the other side until the stop code was read at which point the tape was positioned for the next victim--um, customer.

Those days, I suppose, are long gone.

Labels: old computer