another oldest question..

[worldwise001]

Hmm... first system I ever used was Windows 3.1/MS-DOS 6.22. I think I was about... 8 or 9 then, played a bunch of old DOS games and some educational games back then. Another computer we had though had Windows 95; thought that was the most amazing thing as we could play Hover! on it... Ah.. the good old days...

Since then, I moved on to Windows 2000 Professional, then Slackware Linux and Windows XP.

 

[rahim]

Hi All,

I get the vintage prize.

The answer is TOS ( Tape Operating System ) 1.3 on an IBM 360/20 (T) in 1969. ( Later to be known as HAL).


Ferrous ring memory. 12k. The memory cabinet stood 3'6'' tall by 2 1/2 feet wide by 2 ' deep.

Rotary dials, buttons, and display lights on front of Operators Console ( before VDU's or Visual Display Units).

We had to interpret the lights from BINARY into HEXADECIMAL, perform any calculations we needed to in HEXADECIMAL and re-enter any fix, in Binary again.

We needed to understand, BINARY, OCTAL, DECIMAL, and HEXADECIMAL number bases to operate them.

We would set the input code into the front 'INPUT REGISTER' on the console, which meant that it would have incoming data from Mag Tape, make sure the O/S tape was on Tape Drive 0, and hit INTERRUPT and LOAD. And away it would go.


The oldest computer I wworked on was an ICL 1902, in 1979 ( it must have been 10 years old then) which was 'steam driven'[we called it].

Single components on pc boards ( prior to the micro -chip
).

48k, I think it was or maybe 96k. That's k ( 1,000 bytes) not MB, or GB.

But it got the job done. And It only crashed about once every 3 months or so. ( Remember it was going 24 hours per day, 7 days per week). Only switched off on Xmas Day.


Any way, enough ol' fellas' talk.


Rahim.

 

[whitebus]

Never gave too much thought to operating systems back then... not even sure what the OS wall called on the Vic-20, C-64 or TRS-80. I remember seeing PC-DOS and Win 2 and my 286 came with GeoWorks which I believe used DOS 4. I never really took to Windows until 3.14 (for work groups) came out, but even then still used the DOS boot until finally installing Win95. Oh the number of times I had to re-install network cards and format hard drives. Things stabilized for me when I got ME, although not the same experience for lots of users. I still use W2K primarily at home, XP at the office and although I own a copy of Vista, I don't have any plans of using it as the main OS on anything. My next upgrade will most likely see a Linux/Vista dual boot or Linux/Vista/W2K.

 

[fempower]

Apple II I think. It was a elementary school computer class. I played Oregon Trail, Piccadilly Pear, Bouncing Kamungas, etc.

 

[jenya]

first os system i used would be MS-DOS, reason being: i was born in Russia, and lived there most of my life, and as we know Americans don't like Russians.

 

[frankfriend]

Yes, those were command line os's - CPM was one of the earliest on PC's, and was perhaps the model on which MS DOS was based.

OS was for the IBM 360, a major mainframe system. You may remember the ill fated OS/2 from IBM which tried to bury Windows and Microsoft.