I had one of these when I went to college:

https://americanhistory.si.edu/collectio...mah_214316

Before that, I used one of these:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule...opped).jpg

Had a Casio fx-4000 which I used through high school and early college, then shifted a HP48 midway through college.

Used a PC-AT clone in high school, used school computer through college and didn’t get next computer until a Packard Bell Window 95 machine.

(March 13, 2015 at 1:51 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Yeah, the first time my son really made me feel old was when he asked me what computer I learnt on -- a Commodore PET, like this one:



"What's that thing on the side, Dad?"
"That's the tape drive."
"Tape deck? Why did it have a tape deck?"
"No, tape drive. Kind of like a disk drive, only it used magnetic tape, a cassette, instead of a disk."
"Wow, I bet that could store a lot."
"No, it held about 20 K per side."
"20 K? [laughs] How much memory did it have?"
"Uh, 4 K Ram, and BASIC stored in ROM."
"4 K?! [loud laughter] What year was that, Dad, 1931?!"

(August 27, 2023 at 10:08 am)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:

(March 13, 2015 at 1:51 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Yeah, the first time my son really made me feel old was when he asked me what computer I learnt on -- a Commodore PET, like this one:



"What's that thing on the side, Dad?"
"That's the tape drive."
"Tape deck? Why did it have a tape deck?"
"No, tape drive. Kind of like a disk drive, only it used magnetic tape, a cassette, instead of a disk."
"Wow, I bet that could store a lot."
"No, it held about 20 K per side."
"20 K? [laughs] How much memory did it have?"
"Uh, 4 K Ram, and BASIC stored in ROM."
"4 K?! [loud laughter] What year was that, Dad, 1931?!"

Ha! kids!

You haven’t seen tape drive until you’ve seen a paper tape drive.

Punched cards??

(August 27, 2023 at 11:11 am)Anomalocaris Wrote: You haven’t seen tape drive until you’ve seen a paper tape drive.

Our high school computer club had a paper tape drive on a teletype that communicated at around 45 baud.  Funny thing - I never once wanted one of those for home use.

Most egregiously silly use of paper tape was in college, when someone typed a phrase on tape (possibly "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog") several times, until the tape was long enough to feed back into the tape reader, and then let it run till the tape was long enough to throw out the second-floor window and tie to the bumper of a professor's car.

There's a pet on my PET!