Date   : Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:19:36 +0100
From   : zeem.uk@... (Alex Taylor)
Subject: OT Only Connect

2009/9/1 Phill Harvey-Smith <afra@...>:
>
> But then again the other techs that I work with would prolly be lost if
> I told them to install a SCSI system, as all they've ever dealt with is
> ATA/IDE/SATA. I could of course be really crel and plonk an MFM card,
> drive & cable set on one of their desks and ask them to install it....

A lot of that stuff is basically before my time (I was born in '78 so
I never actually worked with the stuff back in its day), but I've got
an advantage in that I'm obsessed with old stuff and spend a lot of my
time hoarding and playing with it, so I have experience of setting up
MFM disks, XTA disks on Western Digital 8-bit ISA controllers, SCSI
chains on Mac Pluses and upwards, and so on.

However I was very surprised recently when I mentioned to one of the
other techs I work with, who is in his early twenties, about computers
that load from tapes, and how he probably wouldn't be familiar with
such a thing. He corrected me by stating that he'd had a C64 as his
first computer at home. I promptly brought out both a breadbin C64 and
a later C64C from my illicit work stash and asked him which one - it
turned out he'd had a later C64C. I fired it up and loaded some games.
The network manager was there too - they ended up getting very much
involved with playing some platform game. Not a BBC, but I was quite
pleased with getting a couple of people to play some retro games :-)

-- 
Alex Taylor