Your earliest computer and programs

[Mitos]

Well here's an image of the full computer...took some muscle to deliver always..

[Mitos]

Look at the size of the hard drive...

[Martinco]

My first office "computer" 1980 was a Radio Shack which cost me +- R 8000.00 to do Debtors Creditors and Stock an then obviously invoicing. Ran on Basic and used three individual Floppy disk drives, Two for the program and one for the data. (360 Kb ) the output was via a 12 inch dot matrix printer. I can still remember it was quite easy to go into the program and fine tune certain parts to work the way one wants it to.
If memory serves me right I then upgraded to a XT IBM and the rest is history !

[irneb]

Look at the size of the hard drive...

So where in the timeline does that one fall?

http://www.pcworld.com/article/127105/article.html

This is another thing which is swimming around in my mind: Previously, the hardware was available though extremely expensive. E.g. that IBM disc in '73 which worked like today's HDDs with the platters and a sealed encasing. You got "cheap" programs which was "easy" to customize to your exact needs. Early on the "software" was either built-into the hardware or packaged together with it, but always there was some form of - you got the source code and could modify to suit your needs perfectly.

These days, it's again reversed. Hardware costs peanuts in comparison to the 60's and 70's. But software has become expensive, yet more prone to crashes and a lot less customizable (at least not "easily").

[Mitos]

Can't really place it in your link timeline as IBM are being used as the frame of reference....Burroughs technology was properiety & while the company was formed in the mid to late 1800's (with cash registers, accounting m/c etc - strictly mechanical); they acquired another company in 60's and began the swing towards electro mechanical computers thereafter, perhaps '62 - '65. The partnering company was the developer of the magnetic stripe technology which enabled Burroughs to grown their products mainly in the banking industry.

[chris_kzn]

shew irneb, I do not think many people remember MS DOS, does not matter which version, or even lotus 1-2-3, or Windows 3.1, or even XT computers. I remember working on most of those when I first started out. My first actual pc was a 386, it had MS-DOS 3.3 on it as well, it was a great deal when I finally managed to upgrade to MS-DOS 6.0 - lol. I still have a person here who prefers working on Quattro Pro version 2.0, cannot seem to get them off it.