Total mouth struggle (5 March 2025)

Marcus has issues with a chocolate bar he used to love, and wants to know what computer was the first to get to your place and what you used it for.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Marcus lush Night's podcast from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
A'd be.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
Greetings and welcome on him as Marcus some Hitle twelve
o'clock tonight. I've got a lot to say in a
long time to say it. Get in touch, looking forward
to what you've got to say. Oh eight hundred and
eighty twenty nine nine to detect one hims. Marcus, welcome.
I'm kind of slightly I'm slightly stressed out because I've

(00:35):
got the TV on and I've got that damn it's pixelating.
I've got rain fade or some damn thing, but it's
not rainy. It's a gorgeous sunny day down the South.
Bad sun strike driving to work. I don't know what
to do about that, but hopefully by the time the
next match comes on, it's gonna be better because I'm
looking forward to having that in the background tonight. For

(00:57):
those that don't know, the cricket will bet Gaddafi Stadium
in Lahore and puck done. I'm just looking at the
stadium on Google Maps. Don't you love it how you
can look at the cricket and actually work out how
you'd get there. It's one of my favorite things. She
It's a long way from the coast, isn't it. I'm

(01:21):
kind of incredulous with how far inland it is. I
don't know what the climate's like in Lahore. I guess
throughout the course of the night tonight someone might call
that's been there, and I wouldn't mind talking to someone
that's been to Lahore. That's where the cricket will be
that starts at ten. I don't know there to be
a huge crowd there South Africa versus New Zealand, I hope.

(01:42):
So it's remarkably impressive looking venue. That one almost a
perfect circle with a road around a bit like actually
not onlike the Basin Reserve. I don't know if i'd
call it a roundabout, but it's quite similar. Yes, I
said it roundabout anyway, So there is that. I'll keep
an eye on that tonight. That's a ten o'clock. I'll
be giving you. I'll call you when people go out,

(02:06):
and when I look at the screen I see a score,
i'll give you that. I won't give you a ball
by ball because that would bore the non cricket people,
but certainly you will for the first two hours know
how we are going, whether that be in the field
or batting. So there's that tonight also too. We've got
that fire tonight. If you're a cross that. If you've
got any updates on that, let me know. This is
in Papacutta. So if you've got a visual or what's

(02:31):
the nose version of a visual? There's a question for
you a visual or what is the version I'm looking for?
Visual is to the eyes as something is to the nose.
What's the word I'm looking for? Because the smoke could
smell quite toxic if you're onto that, let us know.

(02:56):
This is yet another one of these fires that just
happen all the time. I think they start crushing the
batteries and they explode. That's my angle on that one.
We've got the information on that. Do let us know
here till midnight. I don't know the actual location, but
you've got a location for that. Let us know where
that is and I'll tell people about that. Black smoke

(03:16):
spews across Auckland from scrap metal Yard.

Speaker 4 (03:23):
Lah.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
It's always plumes of smokers and who Knew a Road?
I think that's gone up before Global scrape metal solutions
on a who knew Erode if you are there, if
you've got a visual of that, let us know what's
going on with that one. There we go. So there's that.
There's there. Have you been to Lahore and Global Scrap Metals.
It's a very ambitious sounding name. Is that Global scrap Metals?

(03:52):
I don't think it's global. I've got a vibe reading
for where that is on who knew a road too?
So if you've got some information about that, I'm pretty
sure I've googled us before because there's been fires there before,
kind of between Red Hills and Papakura. Yep, there we go.
So that's your classic old that's your classic old scrap

(04:17):
metal heat. By the looks of things, that one's contained,
but it's still burning. You got some sort of intel
on that, Tony, it's Marcus welcome.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (04:27):
It's just a cloud of smoke from the Southern Motorway
to five others. Obviously very big, but black smoke all
over Auckland, a load of rubbish.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
Did it say? S it said? Large plume of smoke
spews across all Can you think that's a little bit
too dramatic?

Speaker 5 (04:49):
That's a bit dramatic, Marcus.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
How would you what would you say it is a small.

Speaker 5 (04:57):
That's not certainly not a small plume of smoke, and
the plum spoke over to hun A road among the
southern past Papa Drewery. Okay, yeah, definitely the spoker is hitting.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
Each Okay, it could have been a larger plume earlier, though, Tony,
when you and I went seeing it. But I take
your point.

Speaker 5 (05:16):
Typical scrap metal yard.

Speaker 3 (05:18):
Not good, are they? I wouldn't want to live next
to a scrap metal yard.

Speaker 6 (05:23):
Made of mine.

Speaker 5 (05:24):
Own to one and he said.

Speaker 3 (05:25):
A few Where's the money? Where's the money? If you
get scrap medle, you put on container ships and send
it to China? Is that what happens?

Speaker 5 (05:33):
Where's the money? It's breaking it down into all the
different types of metal.

Speaker 3 (05:38):
Yeah, and then sorting it and exporting it. Right, yep, yep, brilliant.
Nice to hear from your to there we go a
scrap metal call already, So scrap medle and have you
been to La Hall? There are other things to talk
about tonight. By the way, just before I do crack
into this, this is neither here nor there. However, I

(05:59):
was at the four Square with my boy, the younger boy,
and I was trying to extolled from the choose of
various chocolate bars, because he's not that wise in the
ways of chocolate bars. I think probably the one thing
he's been exposed to is like a favoritees and so

(06:20):
he was talking about the Turkish Delight. I said, yeah, well,
it's not a bad thing, the Turkish Delight. But I
said to him, have you ever tried a Pixie caramel?
He said, no, I've never tried to pick. I'll tell
you what. I'll get your Pixie caramel because I think
that might be something you quite enjoy. Anyway, in terms
of researchers at the Peck and Save tonight, and I

(06:42):
got a Pixie caramel for him, and I thought I
would just try one to see if that says good.
As it once was, it was smaller, it was waxier,
it was not free chewy. It was one of the
great disappointments of my adult life. Now, what's happened with
a Pixie caramel? Is that me as an adult misremembering,

(07:03):
or has it kind of got waxi orangutang chocolate and
it's got shrink flation. I'm not happy. Seem to be
much much smaller. I try not to moan about stuff.
But I thought the Pixi carame will was a huge disappointment,
so it just seemed seem more like a biscuit size wise.

(07:28):
I don't know if that shrink flation, but I think
the Pixi caramel has certainly got much much smaller. But
the chew's gone. There's no chew. It's smaller. The chocolate's waxy,
and it's non chew. I won't give them one. I'd
rather Actually, i'd feel funny going to him and saying

(07:51):
this was a great chocolate bar from our childhood. He'd think, well, actually,
it's not for good at all anyways. So if I'm
right about the Pixie caramel, let me know about that one.
Don't buy it terrible. You see, the thing is there's
no new good chocolate things coming through, and all the
other old ones are terrible. Yeah, they've skipped on all
the ingredients. They always say new and proved formula, but

(08:14):
you know full well it's something cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, smaller,
less chewy, waxy because the ad was great and your
last requests a Pixie caramel. But yeah, with that one,
i'd be he'd be before the firing squad in ten seconds.
So yeah, old factories the words to smelling. I would

(08:39):
have thought, anyway, get in touch by name's Marcus. Yeah,
anyone else, got anyone else want to join me with
my opprobrium towards the pixie caramel? Very disappointed. It's just
disappeared tiny. I'd like to see an old thing if
i'd like to compare the weights, whether if you've got
some information to say about that, I didn't save the

(09:01):
rapper somewhere very disappointing. Away, get in touch. My name
is Marcus. Welcome other great bars that have become a
shadow of themselves. I suspect the Turkish Delight has also
become a share of itself. Who makes a Pixie carol?
I think probably that Cadbury needs to revoke their chocolate license.

(09:22):
I don't think this probably even as something as Cadbre
anymore was there. It's just Mondaleza. I don't even know
if it is Cadrew didn't study the rap of that hard.
But anyway, eight hundred and eighty Teddy nine text Is
it Cadbury? It might be Nesle Marcus, your remembrance of

(09:49):
Pixie caramels are perfect. That was five and a half
years ago. They changed them, they shrunk them, they took
some stuff out and they made them into the same
sort of pathetic toffee bar. The best ones that are
still slim of how they used to be are the
old toffee. Oh that's not good at all. Anyway, there
we go, so don't bother with those marcus. I'm standing

(10:11):
in Mount Wellington. No sign of any smug anywhere. It's
a beautiful, clear night. Admittedly, Mount Wellington is about thirty
kilometers from Papa GOODA Pixie Carroll well my favorite. Take
one to bed with me every night. Don't think it's
a bed snack anyway. I don't want to get too

(10:32):
much of a chocolate nostalgia. But that was rubbish. My
new addiction is a scorched peanut bar from Woolworth's. I
don't like addiction anyway. Talking about that getting touched back
is till twelve. I'm sure there's message boards and Reddit themes,
but yeah, it's a disaster. The old one to take
you half an hour to eat. This one's probably five bites.

(10:56):
So now going to say to the case, actually I
was wrong about the Pixie camel. It's a flipp and
dud dud dud. Let's go at the back and have
some catches. Shelley, Marcus, Welcome.

Speaker 7 (11:08):
Good evening, Marcus. I've got to call you about Pexi
caramels because I actually ate one last night.

Speaker 3 (11:15):
Wow, and only.

Speaker 7 (11:19):
Because the only place that well I can find them
is Woolworth, and I went there because I wanted to
buy my son some Turkish delights because he likes Turkish
delights and it was his birthday to day, so I
bought him some Turkish delights, and so I thought i'd
shout myself with Texi caramels, despite the fact that I'd
actually shouted myself Texi Caramels a few nights before that

(11:42):
as well.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
Loving you.

Speaker 7 (11:47):
But they're made by miss Ley, because I did actually
look at that the other night because I thought I
need to see who's making these. They are made by
miss Ley, and look, I agree with you. They're probably smaller,
and yeah, they're probably a bit waxier. But actually I
thought the jew was still pretty good. Yeah I did.

Speaker 3 (12:09):
I wonder if I had bad weather or something it
was too hot in a mouth, but I just wasn't
getting because I remember them as been a total mouth struggle,
but this one seemed to provide no resistance at all.

Speaker 7 (12:22):
Well, I'm not sure about the total mouth struggle, but
I did feel that there was still a reasonably good
chew there. Maybe you need to put it in the fridge,
because if I had last night, oh, I just didn't
eat it out of the fridge, But the one that
I had the previous couple of nights before, I had
put in the fridge, and obviously you're definitely going to

(12:42):
get a chew out of the fridge.

Speaker 3 (12:45):
Yeah, Okay, boy's birthday, um or anything special happening with that.

Speaker 7 (12:49):
No, it's the boy's birthday today.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
Oh, that's right, And I've already.

Speaker 7 (12:54):
Had the phone call to say, hey Mom, I've just
had an accident. Somebody's driven into the side of me.

Speaker 3 (12:59):
So welcome to my world and an eighteen year old
boy driving cheapest creepers. I think you need a pixie
aim or Shelley. Wow, Hello, Paul, it's Marcus. Welcome Marcus.
Here you going, good pool, Good pool, and join the
way you come and low strong. I like that opening
gambit from your there you going. It's great anyway, I'm

(13:20):
all he is.

Speaker 8 (13:20):
Now they're all rubbish, Marcus, though they aren't.

Speaker 9 (13:25):
They from our age.

Speaker 8 (13:27):
They're all just they're nothing like a flake's nothing like
a flake. Nothing is the same. And you know, my
favorite bar used.

Speaker 3 (13:37):
To be let me guess, Let me guess, let me guess. Okay,
go yep, Paul's favorite bar.

Speaker 8 (13:44):
It's out there. It's out there.

Speaker 3 (13:50):
A picnic bar.

Speaker 8 (13:52):
Oh yeah, I liked them.

Speaker 3 (13:54):
But no, okay, not a perkin nana No, not a
crunch No, not a Morrow bar.

Speaker 8 (14:07):
Yeah they're okay, but no, you're getting close though, like, okay,
you no, as soon as I say, you're going to go,
Oh my goodness, yes, a chaketo.

Speaker 3 (14:20):
Why do you want? Is everyone deny me my kissing game?

Speaker 10 (14:24):
Here?

Speaker 3 (14:24):
I am loving a kissing game and I'm just trying
to full. You can't do it to me. I never
would have gone. I forgot. I've forgotten about the chichito.

Speaker 8 (14:36):
The chaktos were gorgeous. I mean, you had basically all
the barsmone you had the caramel, you had the peanut,
you had the nouga, you had the chocolate.

Speaker 6 (14:45):
Oh my goodness.

Speaker 8 (14:45):
So it's a die force so great. But I didn't
have one a few years ago and it tasted nothing
like it.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
Okay, So the Gakito is still there, but it's not
nearly as good, right.

Speaker 8 (14:56):
Yeah, and it's not sold in many places, I don't think.
But it's a shame because I'm wondering what the natural
cost of those back the day would be now and
you're probably looking at nine dollars a day, you know,
to bring them back to where they would be really,
I don't know. You'd have to think about the sugar,

(15:17):
the you know that the way that they would make
them as well, it would be very much.

Speaker 3 (15:23):
Do we know? Was it gaketo gets you going? Do
remember the ad for it?

Speaker 6 (15:29):
I don't.

Speaker 8 (15:30):
I think there was a girl on a though in
my younger day. Yeah, tiktos?

Speaker 3 (15:35):
Yeah, So you reckon it cost nine dollars to make
a bar the way they used to make them? Is
that what you reckon?

Speaker 8 (15:41):
I don't know, Marcus, but I reckon it'd be around here.
I mean, if you're at three ninety nine, now, do
you have to be looking close at nine? Maybe? Maybe
around there. It's sad to think about it, but and
then I have to question myself, would I actually pay
nine bucks a one? I probably would just see if
it tasted the same.

Speaker 3 (16:02):
The chikida already get you going. It was a good campaign,
wasn't it. It does really get you, really gets you going. Yeah,
that was a great I think there was rice bubbles
in there.

Speaker 8 (16:15):
Yeah, you could be right too.

Speaker 9 (16:18):
Everything.

Speaker 3 (16:18):
I don't know where the name chiketo came from. It
might be a portmanteau of chocolate and chocolate keto, Cheeto keto.

Speaker 8 (16:39):
Yeah, it was a weird name.

Speaker 3 (16:42):
It almost looks American Indian, doesn't it.

Speaker 8 (16:45):
Yeah, one of those and a chocolate sick shake that
had set me off on the Star Run brilliant.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
Alright, a Star Run.

Speaker 6 (16:56):
York and Star Yeah.

Speaker 8 (16:58):
Yeah, six days a week, fifty a week.

Speaker 3 (17:02):
I think it was about that too. I think it
was about three fifty.

Speaker 8 (17:06):
Yeah, but was supposed to spend most of that on Chaketo's.

Speaker 3 (17:10):
And the good thing about my paper on it was
all downhill. Literally you start at the top of road
by the time you could do it without actually peddling Chaketo.
I don't quite know why it's called chaketo anyway. Get

(17:32):
in touch by name's Marcus and George. Your input, Paul,
Thank you. A power cut in Duneda and Brockville, six
fifty homes also to Steve Smith's announced his retirement from
the One Day match lost and then retired. That was him.
He's still going to play twenty twenty and Test match,
but that's one last match we got to watch him.

(17:53):
And surely it's Marcus. We're talking about the great bars
of disappointment.

Speaker 11 (17:56):
What do you got, Shirley, Shirley, Hello, Marcus.

Speaker 10 (18:00):
I just wanted to say that I don't think licorice
straps have changed. I don't think cherry rights have changed,
and I don't think the little marshmallows have changed.

Speaker 3 (18:12):
I agree with all of those. What a little marshmallows?

Speaker 10 (18:14):
By the way, They're in a big bag and you
can eat as many as you like, and I don't
think it put on a kilogram just by eating a
whole bag.

Speaker 3 (18:22):
For Is there health food?

Speaker 10 (18:24):
Yeah, well it's not really a health food, but it
certainly doesn't add to your sugar content a heat like
all other sweets do. But the licor strapped and the
cherry ripe are very similar to what they used to be.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
I agree. Is there a marshmallow plant they make marshmallow from?

Speaker 10 (18:40):
I have no idea. I do know that I'm enjoying
my coffee with a marshmallow dumped in it.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
That would be a hard thing to buy a bag
off and not eat them all, I'd think with a
marshmallow because it it feels like you're in little pockets
of ear.

Speaker 10 (18:56):
Yeah, you have to share them with about five other people,
otherwise you wouldn't ever get through them.

Speaker 3 (19:00):
How do you dip them?

Speaker 2 (19:01):
Do you put them?

Speaker 3 (19:02):
Do you put a fork in them and just hold
them and dip them in?

Speaker 2 (19:05):
No?

Speaker 10 (19:05):
You drink them in coffee?

Speaker 3 (19:08):
Oh yeah, not those tiny ones, but an ordinary one, right.

Speaker 10 (19:11):
A great big blobby marshmallow wacked and your coffee.

Speaker 11 (19:14):
It's beautiful, brilliant.

Speaker 3 (19:16):
Surely, thank you. Marcus, absolutely agree. Pixie carmels a rubbish.
You know what it's like when you donat something normally
And I was like, yum, Yum'm not youm gutted? Not
going to be my last request. No one can tell

(19:38):
me what was called a jikito? Someone sad to go
to check the expiry date on a pixie cary. Well mind,
you think it was made properly, it wouldn't expire. Get
in touched my ms Marcus eight hundred and eighty TOD
eighty nine to nine to the text, looking forward to
what you've got to say, Beth Marcus.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
Welcome, I Marcus.

Speaker 12 (19:59):
I was just listening to lady saying how marshmallows are
very healthy. Actually, I've made the and their egg whites,
and they're absolutely loaded with sugar, really absolutely loaded with sugar,
just so you don't eat them anymore.

Speaker 3 (20:16):
How many teaspoons would be in each one of sugar?
Do you think?

Speaker 12 (20:20):
I don't remember?

Speaker 13 (20:21):
I made them a while ago.

Speaker 12 (20:23):
I've never had them since because I was so horrified.

Speaker 3 (20:27):
Were they made successfully?

Speaker 14 (20:29):
Yes?

Speaker 12 (20:30):
So were good, but but they had an awful lot
of sugar.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
I mean it was huge.

Speaker 3 (20:38):
You didn't make them traditionally with the marshmallow root. Did
you have the plant?

Speaker 12 (20:42):
No?

Speaker 11 (20:43):
No, it was a marshmallow recipe with.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
Sugar angelatine.

Speaker 12 (20:49):
I don't remember, but I remember the amount of sugar
because nobody in my family ever eat them again.

Speaker 3 (20:56):
See why because you because you sugar shamed them.

Speaker 12 (20:59):
Well, it was so much sugar, yeah, it was.

Speaker 3 (21:02):
You couldn't fit that much sugar into one though, could you.

Speaker 12 (21:06):
Well, when you would be white, you you could probably
did have geysine. Now are thinking about it.

Speaker 3 (21:13):
You have to have something, wouldn't it? And it had
and he said equa farber, Yeah.

Speaker 12 (21:18):
You needed it, so otherwise you dened.

Speaker 3 (21:20):
That with marines brilliant. Okay, thanks Beth, and there'd be
crunchy equa farber. By the way, is that's the vegetarian gelatine.
Marcus summoned Cleveden and saw the fire early, and there
was lots of smoke Ulier eight and Cleveden air is
smoky and smells like plastic. It smells like a school lunch.

(21:44):
Getting touched by name? Is Marcus welcome? Heddle twelve eight
hundred and eighty ten eight nine to text anyone made
marshmallows traditional way from a mellow marshmallow root? Because I
see the plant everywhere and I wondered what you did
with it? Still waiting for someone that's lived in lahu Wa.

(22:05):
It's a long way inland, isn't it. This is where
the cricketer is tonight in Pakistan. So if you're looking
at Pakistan from Google Maps, she's a fairly up and
down country, isn't it. And when they said they're all
hid in the hills, you can kind of see what
they're talking about, kan't you, because it's very mountainous. Never

(22:28):
he studied at depth. From the internet, you can almost
see in Pakistan. It's almost just where two tectotic plates
seem to have kind of banged up each other, and
the kind of the crust of the earth has kind
of become kind of corrugated and wrinkly. It's pretty amazing looking.
There's not a lot of flat land by the looks
of things, just the delta. How are you're going anyway? People?

(22:55):
Name is Marcus, welcome hddled twelve breaking news when that
happens and nine to nine to if you do want
to text here to the end. I didn't see much
of trouble speech, but he spoke for an hour and
forty minutes. I think he went off. I don't think

(23:18):
he had his script. Marcus, my mate Jesse as an
estate of panic. Bags have packed, accommodations disordered, flights are
booked and paid for, and Jesse's ready to board the
play next week to start a new life for board.
Then a letter arrived today as summ is a summons
for jury service. Can customs prevent Jesse from leaving the country?

(23:39):
I doubt it. Major Beach far and Hooker Tika are
we worried about that? Is it just driftwood. Now I'm
officially launching the official topic for tonight, which is not
set in stone, but this day in nineteen eighty one,
which is not that long ago. That's forty four years ago,

(24:03):
so if you're in your fifties, you would have been
a child this day in nineteen eighty one, the world's
first home computer, the z X eighty one, is launched. Now,

(24:23):
I wonder what your first computer was like. This was
called the Sinclear, I think because I remember in nineteen
eighty one, nineteen eighty we had computers at school and
we did some basic programming in basic but they were terrible.
And there were computer games, but the computer games we

(24:45):
just did type in words, go left, go right. There
were hunt games, treasure hunt games. But I just wonder
what the first home computer you would have had. They
might have been ones you built yourself from Dick Smith,
and what you did with those computers, because some of
you will have been early adopters. I mean, of course,
before that, there was the punch card ones, and that's

(25:07):
freely days. I mean, these are the first ones with keyboard.
But the z x ad one where and I'm almost
certain they were widely available in it's a name.

Speaker 15 (25:18):
I know.

Speaker 3 (25:20):
They're made in Dundee in Scotland, designed to be small,
simple and inexpensive, with as few components as possible. You'd
buy it and kit form. So if you had one
of those, or if you do want to talk about
those your first home computer, Helen, it's Marcus. Good evening

(25:43):
and welcome.

Speaker 16 (25:44):
Yeah, Hi, yes, more my first computer window stick.

Speaker 3 (25:48):
You stick to your topic, Helen, because sorry I had
I was just launching a new topic, but I know
you're for the old topic. So when I switch topic,
you don't have to switch your conversation because people are
people are best to talk about what they rang up
about if they pivot. There are jeeps.

Speaker 16 (26:04):
I just threw it in because I got what was what.

Speaker 3 (26:07):
Was your first time computer?

Speaker 16 (26:09):
Windows ninety six? But anyway, what what I really miss
and I think they don't make anymore? And that's those
wagon wheels? Did do you know them? They will beautiful?

Speaker 3 (26:21):
Would a French are in the pantry?

Speaker 17 (26:24):
Oh?

Speaker 16 (26:25):
They are chocolate. They were around chocolate bars and they
had sort of kind of chocolate and jam. I think
it was very tasty. But anyway, have you have you
tried toasted marshmallows. That is wonderful.

Speaker 3 (26:40):
I'm looking at the I'm looking at the wagon wheel.
Now who made them?

Speaker 16 (26:48):
I don't know, so long ago, but anyway.

Speaker 3 (26:51):
Because it was there was I'm not really a big
fan of there was marshmallow and the wagon wheel.

Speaker 16 (26:57):
Yes, Now have you tried toasted marshmallows?

Speaker 3 (27:00):
Yeah, I'm not a fan. Oh, like I thought that,
but yes, it's a lot of performance. I think there's
better things to cock on a fire. But you know
I have tried them, yes, but you've got me stuck
on the wagon wheel. Looks delicious. How why would then
fall out of favor?

Speaker 17 (27:17):
Oh?

Speaker 16 (27:17):
I don't know, but I can't remember exactly what it
was like. But still I got this memory of what,
you know, this beautiful taste. You know, it was a
fasic sort of jam, chocolate and jam. I think it
was a very delicious.

Speaker 11 (27:31):
Anyway.

Speaker 3 (27:32):
It was produced by Arnts Biscuits. Yeah, I think they
might still make them.

Speaker 16 (27:39):
Oh, I haven't seen one for years anyway, great, great show.

Speaker 3 (27:43):
As usual, It's a good show. Thank you. Consists of
two biscuits that form a sandwich with a marshmallow filling
that are covered with a chocolate flavored coating sounds me
like the perfect biscuit or two biscuits. Is the wagon wheel? Greetings,
welcome your first home computer. I want to go back
and revisit this to the topics. I think she's a goody.

(28:05):
You might have got together and gone to the shop.
How much ram did you have? Josh, it's Marcus. Welcome.

Speaker 18 (28:13):
Yeah, Hey Mae, A interesting Marcus, you're talking about computers.
I was actually on the phone to a family member
and we're discussing that day, what kind of computers or
actually specifically it's about the advancement and home computers. But
my first computer was the Commodore sixty four.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
Oh that's a very famous one, isn't it very famous?

Speaker 18 (28:37):
Ah, humble memories. Man, it's amazing.

Speaker 3 (28:42):
Hang on, hang on? Why did you get it?

Speaker 18 (28:45):
I didn't get it. It was provided what Yeah it
was Yeah? It was provided yeah, by by family, by parents.
It was more of a toy though back then a
because obviously had no internet, so he had a fancy
keyboard like a traditional So.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
Did one of your parents buy a Commodore sixty four?

Speaker 9 (29:06):
Yeah?

Speaker 19 (29:07):
Yeah, to do what.

Speaker 20 (29:09):
It's like.

Speaker 18 (29:10):
I was just explaining that it looked like a standard PC. However,
the only practical applications it was playing games on it.
So they had a keyboard to type in different codes
to run games, but there was no word processing or
anything like that. It was basically a game machine. You

(29:33):
just you had all these floppy discs, had the old
duram of the old they were burg as it was
before the solid floppy disk. It was more like a Yeah,
it was almost like postcard sized floppy disk if you
remember those ones.

Speaker 3 (29:51):
So why do you think your folks had bought it?

Speaker 18 (29:56):
Well, I don't know. I think it was the technology thing.
It was kind of like you know when those DCRs
came out of the G code and all that. It
was just a marketing. It was like they had disposable
income and somebody was marketing a product and get this
for your kids today. So they went and got it.

Speaker 3 (30:15):
But I think the GODL was sixty four head a
cartridge that you slotted into the for games, didn't it
as well? Like a rigid thing like a cassette case
thing with with probes at the bottom. Is that right?

Speaker 18 (30:27):
Yeah, that's right. I think it was different models where
you you'd have a keyboard, we could put a cartridge
in there as an option.

Speaker 3 (30:36):
You're still using it?

Speaker 18 (30:38):
No, no, no, no, not at all, not at all.
But I can tell you this. I can tell you this.
The games are so small. I could find the entire
library online right now and it wouldn't be much more
than I don't know, turn fifty megabytes.

Speaker 3 (30:55):
Brilliant guy, Marcus, welcome, Hi guy, Yeah.

Speaker 21 (31:01):
Good guy, taking me back the old Conrado of sixty four.

Speaker 6 (31:07):
Mate.

Speaker 22 (31:07):
I was pretty excited. I thought a bit of owner.

Speaker 3 (31:12):
I can't work out what people I can't work out
why people bought them.

Speaker 6 (31:17):
Well, now can I like to me?

Speaker 22 (31:19):
Well, I had a mate man.

Speaker 21 (31:20):
He was a he was a surgeon, and he was
he was trying to write us whatever. They bought some
of those people for word processing reasons, but never really
achieved much on that. And we we just play games
all the time.

Speaker 5 (31:37):
And yeah, that was that was a big part.

Speaker 23 (31:39):
Of my childhood.

Speaker 22 (31:40):
But I didn't have the coin to just go around
and borrows. But then when I saw God and I
thought I saved up mad and I got one which
the original which was came out was like a pool
brown sort of peboard, which was pretty exciting. And then
but I had a tape price, and we used to

(32:01):
dub our tapes basically pirating different games on on the
old and why you so.

Speaker 3 (32:14):
It would accept programs from a cassette? Is that right?

Speaker 24 (32:18):
It was so I would have a low ends was
your say, to sit right, and then a few big
flash guy, you'd have a five and a quarter flop,
which was the one where the guy was talking about
like a past, and then a few went really went
to town.

Speaker 22 (32:32):
And speak a bit large the data three and a
half inch hard, sloppy.

Speaker 3 (32:39):
Seat if you had to take if you had a
tape to tape machine, you could part everything.

Speaker 24 (32:46):
I used to have them on one seat, sixty city minutes, I.

Speaker 3 (32:53):
Vue remember that. I've got to go to news guy.
But nice to hear from you. I like the fact
that surgeon brought one. You can imagine what they were
hoping to do without all sorts of stuff. So anyway,
getting touched. My name is Marcus Mental. Hello, well come.

Speaker 23 (33:08):
Hey, how are you doing?

Speaker 11 (33:09):
Good?

Speaker 3 (33:09):
Thank you?

Speaker 23 (33:11):
So I just want to talk about my first computer,
like it's not that ancient, yeah, like you are talking
about but I bought that in early two thousand, like
two thousand and one, and uh yeah, it was my
Team three computer. So basically, uh so it was like
a dream come true for me at that time. Yeah,

(33:33):
I was really I was always dreaming about having my
own computer. So at least I did some good good
in the class. So my parents got happy. They were like, okay, well,
well we'll invest some money in you and I won't
see how it goes. And uh so, yeah, it was
like a not a super fancy computer, but it was
like for that time, it was really good for me,

(33:54):
and I always just drag about that with my friend,
Like it had like a twenty gigs of a hard
disk and h one twenty eight megabytes of memory. I
still remember that processor was seven three three beggars. It
had a floppy drive as well, but the two point five,
which one not the other one which another collar was

(34:15):
talking about like the three.

Speaker 3 (34:18):
And those days it was all Internet Internet capable and
it had it was a browser and all those sorts
of stuff as well. Was it into the Pintium two
thousand and one.

Speaker 23 (34:27):
I yes, but it wasn't like a fiber one. It
used to be a dial up connection. Wow, I'm not
sure who if you remember those weird dialing south.

Speaker 3 (34:38):
Tell me what noise tell me what noises they made? Men, cell, I.

Speaker 23 (34:43):
Want to licked that loud. But yeah, it was really annoying,
especially when you're trying to connect. Yeah, correct, especially when
you wanted to connect with the internet during the nighttime.
The whole family is sleeping and you cannot mute that
bloody thing off. So it had to make a lot
of noise in the house while he's trying to connect.
And sometimes it didn't even connect that fast attempt, so
you re try and during the times. The most annoying

(35:07):
thing was that while you were connected, if your family
had to make a call, then you had to disconnect
from the Internet.

Speaker 3 (35:12):
So I gotta talk, I gotta move ont I got
to talk. I couldn't work out why I had to
make the noise. What was the actual noise of the
dial up of Some geek could explain that to me,
because why couldn't it be silenced. We talked about your
first computer, dB Marcus, welcome.

Speaker 6 (35:30):
Hey. The noise was the two modems handshaking, hand shaking together.

Speaker 3 (35:39):
Ah, so it was all like a diaphragm that would
move to do with the sound, Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 6 (35:45):
Yeah, Well, they community communicated on sound anyway. But for
the first little bit, they didn't turn the the speaker
off on how does that work on your actual machine?
So you could see that it was doing work, and
it would it would talk to the old machine in
machine language. One said, pretty handshook. It would turn your

(36:08):
computers speaker off and it would just keep burbling to
itself down the line with the other computer.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
Wow, okay, good explanation.

Speaker 6 (36:17):
And yeah it took you what four or five seconds
for them to both agree on what they were saying
to each other and at what speed and a few
other technical things that I don't know about. So yeah,
because mine was I had a Commodo sixty four.

Speaker 3 (36:34):
Okay, so let's start at the beginning. dB, we're talking
eighty three.

Speaker 6 (36:40):
Easily. What would that make me? Thirty know, maybe even
earlier than that. I'm still living in Auckland, So yeah, no,
eighty one, eighty three, yeah somewhere.

Speaker 3 (36:49):
And you bought it from a computer shop or an
electronic shop.

Speaker 6 (36:54):
I think I brought it from Dick Smith, but I
may I may well be wrong on that.

Speaker 3 (36:59):
And was the kit said or was the kit said
good to go?

Speaker 6 (37:04):
Came the box and you had to spend hours trying
to work out what's why. I went where? And I
bought a printer and it came with both the cassette
drive and it had the five and a quarter and floppies.

Speaker 3 (37:19):
I better have a look at those vituals. Okay. So
there was a keyboard and a screen and a place
for the flopping and a cassette deck.

Speaker 6 (37:26):
Yeah, and your programs. You could buy a program like
I think there's a suit Larry was for the next
step up. I can't remember what I played on the
Commodore six before. Certainly it played chess.

Speaker 3 (37:41):
Did you did you program? What was it in basic?

Speaker 10 (37:44):
It?

Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah?

Speaker 11 (37:45):
It was?

Speaker 6 (37:45):
It ran basic. And I did have a few programs
I wrote myself, or at least attempted to. I tried
to do one on the flags, the signaling flags for
shippings like sephymore Yeah. Yeah, wow. Well you know each
letter of the alphabet's got a specific colored flag. Yes,

(38:08):
semaphorees has got a specific position. I'm sorry, I've just
been tick Ticky's good.

Speaker 3 (38:15):
I as soon as I said spore, probably be something different.

Speaker 6 (38:18):
Yeah, okay, And I got as far as the letter
M and ran out of memory.

Speaker 12 (38:23):
Wow.

Speaker 6 (38:25):
But a friend of mine months later he turned up.
He had a Seega, which was the left you like
the Ferrari of computers at that stage, And in one
hour I had all the flags done and the program
I was trying to write, Where's why one? I got
the letter M and had taken me something like four
or five hours just to get that far. It's how

(38:49):
bigger step. Not only was the Basic better, but that
had better ways of asking you questions. He would say,
draw a box and it would color it. Read now
you've got the letter B.

Speaker 3 (39:03):
So with your commodore that you had to program Basic,
and you wouldn't that good at it because it was
a bit of a peg. It was slow. So most
of the games, most of the things you would do
with a computer, like chests and stuff like that, you
would need to buy floppy discs or download floppy disks
off other people.

Speaker 6 (39:22):
Normally you'd buy it, but yes you could go and
if you had someone who had two tape decks, you
could go and copy the tapes. But more often than
not it'd dropped a few bits and pieces and it
would failed to run well least ways the ones I
remember did. The other thing was you'd borrow you make
floppy disk and that they had a read write protection

(39:45):
to tab on them, and you'd cover that over and
that way you could copy those into your computer then
copy them onto another floppy disc. But the pod that
you soon got heads of that.

Speaker 3 (39:58):
So did you manage to get many games or programs
on your commodore? Was it useful or was it not
good at all?

Speaker 6 (40:06):
It was a great paperweight. It was a wonderful time
waste I had, Like I had to crack a learning
basic and this next year is a wonderful thing, and
I couldn't remember where to put full stops and stuff.
You could there were computer magazines in those days. You
could write. They'd write a program out for you. Here's

(40:28):
a new game that you can type in yourself, and
you could program your computer. Lest it by letter.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
So you buy buy a computer magazine and there'd be
the script for a program on Basically you would type
into your commodore and that would be like chess, or
it would be like drafts or a coin toss game
or something like that.

Speaker 6 (40:50):
Something like that. Yeah, something really simple. But by the
third time it had kicked you out because you'd forgotten
there's a space in the here. But you haven't put
it and there's two spaces here, but you have it.
I gave up you.

Speaker 3 (41:04):
Debugging I did. When I first had computing at university
stage one. It was all in Basic and yeah it
was unforgiving a gap was something like that, and it.

Speaker 6 (41:12):
Was terrible beginner's all purpose symbolic instruction code. That's what
basicstod for.

Speaker 3 (41:20):
So how long did it have you captivated for?

Speaker 6 (41:25):
Well, I've still got computers now, but I don't do
any programs.

Speaker 3 (41:28):
Don't because why would you. This was before the Internet,
so it was remarkable. I think we did a program
like our school programs in Basic were like to convert
Roman numerals to you know, which was which was a yeah,
you know that was all very basic because you go
through a basic kind of a algorithm to work out

(41:48):
how that works.

Speaker 6 (41:49):
So yeah, okay, well I think that got me. Not
so long ago, I needed a computer to run my
flight simulator, and an IBM PC based one was going
to be three five thousand dollars. And when I looked
up the specs for an Xbox Ex, it had better
specs for a grand and one of those specs is

(42:12):
it could do six terror flops. Now that used to
be the realm of supercomputers that that particular turn. It's
six million million operations per second, and I'm looking at
this thing the size of a bread box thinking you
used to be a supercomputer and now it's just you know,

(42:40):
I mean and dB.

Speaker 3 (42:42):
The point of my discussion tonight was all those people
in the eighties, all those kind of self starters like yourself,
went out and bought these home computers. But I would
imagine for very few of them would have found them satisfactory.
Would that be would that be your gut feeling about it?

Speaker 6 (42:58):
Promotional? They played patients on them, and that was probably
the limit.

Speaker 3 (43:02):
And they'd get patients because the game would come with
it on a floppy disk.

Speaker 6 (43:05):
Is that right? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (43:06):
Yeah, Okay, it'd be nice to talk. Thanks for giving
to hold your horses, Genny. I'll be with you soon.
We are talking first computers, brilliant. We are talking about
your first computer day. In ninetety one, the Sinclair was released,
which a lot of people purchased. Jenny, It's Marcus.

Speaker 25 (43:24):
Good evening, Good evening. In nineteen eighty two, we purchased
our first computer, which was a tres Tandy eighty. It
was six thousand dollars and the printer which we got
with it was a dot Matrix and that was twelve
hundred dollars. We bought it to start our business with

(43:46):
and it had two floppy disk areas, one for the
program and the other for the data. They were the
five and a quarter inch floppies. It was really basically
only capable of doing word processing, which it was very

(44:07):
good at, and the word processor that's used commonly now
is based on the same commands and codes as that was,
and it had a spreadsheet. As our business developed, we
then went to the EPSOM q X ten, which was

(44:28):
a much better, faster and had much more capacity. And
then we found that as well as being consultants, there
was a need for business programs, accounting programs which were
not available for New Zealand conditions, and so my husband

(44:51):
became involved in writing a complete suite of different programs
for different businesses, and that we carried on upgrading as
we went. And of course we're now retired, but our
home has a plenty of computers and modern equipment. We

(45:11):
still are very attracted to them.

Speaker 3 (45:13):
You still got the original one, Jenny.

Speaker 25 (45:15):
No no, and unfortunately the only photo I took of.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
It was.

Speaker 25 (45:22):
Taken olive box, Brownie, would you believe it that? It's
not very clear, but it was one unit that was
the keyboard and the unit that was all in one,
a very heavy, solid gray looking piece of equipment. But
it was a jolly good computer to start with. It
was the covered all the gentleman before was talking about.

(45:47):
Was more used for games. So it was actually used
at one of the prestigious schools in Auckland. Will actually
help them get a suite of those for their pupils
at that school, and they were for that sort of thing,

(46:08):
but they were more I think a home toy for
playing games. And people are not noting that because that
was how people really became confident learning on something like that.

Speaker 3 (46:22):
Jenny, with your original computer, the one you brought for
six thousand dollars or twelve hundred dollars for the printer
and that program you had for the software program was
that one you had to purchase that were they selling
software compatible software with that computer?

Speaker 25 (46:37):
Then that the test of the program we got from
the shop. We actually bought it in TEMs. There was
a shop TMS that were selling them and the actual
full price was eight thousand dollars, but it had been
used and so he knocked it down to six for us.
So it actually came with the program, but it would

(46:58):
have been had to have been bought at. You know
when the original person.

Speaker 3 (47:02):
Brought it is you must have been pretty confident your
ability with your presuming you're in the county business is
at what you were in?

Speaker 25 (47:09):
Well, no, we weren't really when we started our business.
It was a computer consultancy business. But both of us
had had veried background or not very a wide background
in computers in a large organization prior to that, so
we were competent in computers. I trained people and my

(47:34):
husband was a systems analyst. That's why we went in
the other way.

Speaker 3 (47:39):
Does it seem a long time ago?

Speaker 7 (47:40):
On?

Speaker 3 (47:41):
Not that long ago nineteen thirty one, because totally what
I mean, they seem quite They seemed very modern at
the time, didn't they. I mean, I remember it. We'll
look at nineteen seven. It must have been nineteen eighty
in Form four and I think it must have been
Sinclear computers program with them, and they did seem as
though a lot of potentials at our fingertips.

Speaker 25 (48:01):
Yes, I think that, well, I don't you know they
of us. They were just carrying on from what we've
been using in the modern technology before that, which was
teleprinters of course for communicating, and then you know that
went to things similar to computers, and then to big

(48:24):
mainframe computers, and then finally into well by this time
I left the organization and we were went into our
own business. We were installing the desktop computers on nearly
everybody's deck so they could communicate between each other in
the organization. You know, it has developed incredibly, absolutely incredibly.

(48:48):
And the thing that really amazes us that is on
a USB, which is no bigger or smaller than your
little finger, you can store as much data, far much
more data than you could on a big mainframe that
would take up you know, a massive house size place.

Speaker 3 (49:10):
Nice to hear from your ginny, Thank you very much.
There's some great texts. I will get to those, including one.
Our first computer was in English made Apricod, operated by
ms DOT. It was a beautiful machine with a freezy
used keyboard. Another text door. In nineteen eighty two I
had a BBC Acorn BC. It had a basic word

(49:31):
processor and calculator and games that came on floppy discs.
The thing had icons like in Windows. It was good
for what it was. I think also the basic color screen.
I worked with computers for the late seventies using ms
DOS and word Perfect for word processing. They were very
basic back then and used a monoscreen that was blue
and white and an extremely good text about getting computer

(49:54):
games for your commodore. I will tell you that after headlines,
keep your text in your calls coming through your I've
never really owned a computer. It's not something that they
never grabbed hold of me. There was too much faffing around,
I've always thought, and still there's too much faffing around.
But that's just the reality of the world we live in.

(50:14):
I guess Marcus the was a guy that lived in
Kingsland and a little old villa. He would sell pirate games.
He got arrested by the police many times, but always
seemed to get away with it and continue doing it
for many years. You would go a knock on the door,
and if he knew you, he would give you a
folder full of all the games that he had, and

(50:34):
then he would choose one. He would go out the
back and copy it while you played on his common
LT sixty for on his lounge with all the other
people waiting for games. He was very well known. I'm
sure many of your listeners would know what I mean.
It was a long time ago though, and he was
into commoneal games. Wow, that's how it had to happen,
because she probably couldn't buy them yet to go and

(50:57):
get them bootlegged. Marcus. My first computer was as sincle
as EDICS eighty bought and pup when You're getting in
eighty three when I was thirteen. After that I had
Sinclair's edX eighty one, followed by a Commodore v IC
twenty Glenn Marcus and only only won. Our first time
computer was a Commodore v ICEE twenty cassette and put

(51:19):
twenty colabtes of rom. Only real use was basic programming
and very early games. Gotten upgrade soon after for Christmas,
which were paddles for the game Pong, which was great fun.
Went on to a Commodol sixty four and a Commodore
one to eight D, then into Windows OS. The rest

(51:40):
is history. How far things have come in forty years incredible.

Speaker 2 (51:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:49):
What I'm liking about that is when you look at
the game Pong and then you look at the latest
grand theft auto. It's changed a great deal. Get in
touch with talk about your first computers and what you
did with them. My first ever video game was made

(52:12):
by a New Zealand company. It plugged into the TV.
It was called Sports Tronic. Had lots of games, but
one of my favorites was a light gun shaped like
a full rifle, used to shoot squares on the TV screen.
It had pong and everything else. I booked. I looked
for one for a long time on trade me, and
finally found one for twenty dollars. It said it came

(52:33):
with fifteen games. When it arrived, ten of the games
were the same, so I felt a little ripped off,
but it was only twenty dollars. It works, Hi Marcus.
I started working for company that sold Apple mac computers
in the eighties. I bought a Macintosh S thirty nineteen
ninety secondhand for six thousand dollars. I never used it

(53:00):
at home. The Apple machs with readvanced for the time
could be the standard PCs that used DOS because they
had a graphical use interface. What you saw on screen
was what printed out like today. I didn't have a printer,
and of course no Internet, so I have no idea
why I bought it. I sold it for six thousand
dollars to a printing company. Max had programs back then

(53:23):
you could use for graphic design and had two megabytes
RAM and a twenty megabyte hard disk. By the way,
and you didn't have won the toss and elected to bat.
So wow, we are talking about your first computer and
what you did on it. I wonder if you'd bought

(53:43):
one and set up your own business or worked out
how to do particular program or something like that. That's
what I'm about tonight, Marcus. The ZX eighty didn't have buttons,
just a flat pad like cell phones we have today. Really, Marcus,
I still have a z X eighty one and original

(54:05):
box in my garage. It's not sure if it still works,
as haven't tried to turn it on in thirty years
and connections won't for the modern TV screen chairs. Brian
might be worth something to the geeks. So we talked
about your very first computers. Because the first home computer
went on the mark I presume that was in England, England.

(54:29):
I'll tell you a little bit about that, not about England.
When it went on sale, sale, sale, sale. World's first
home computer, the ZX eighty one is launched this day

(54:50):
in nineteen eighty one, and it wouldn't have done much.
It would have done what it told you told it to,
but it wouldn't have capacity for big programs or anything else.
Made and done in Scotland. You could buy them built,

(55:11):
or you could you could assemble them yourself. I always
been with a lot of print ads for those who's
always ads and magazines for computers. I think it was
very reasonable, that was the whole point of the But yes,

(55:32):
that guy was quite right. There was magazines you'd buy
with the print form of programs you could actually type
into your computer to program it. It's interesting that it
started in Britain, the home computers, didn't it. Ellen, it's Marcus.
Good evening, Good evening, Marcus.

Speaker 20 (55:50):
We're talking about the first home computer. Yeah, Commodore five
hundred morten and needing for eighteen hundred dollars, and I
wasn't very impressed with it. You had the first thing
you were tasked with doing was loading the code into

(56:10):
the computer. It came with a floppy disk, but all
that did was invite you to write code so that
you could create a running Man, a figure that was
supposed to move across the screen. I tired of it
very quickly.

Speaker 3 (56:31):
Probably what were you what were your expectations?

Speaker 20 (56:34):
Well, the expectations came with the box. It promoted it
as the first family friendly home computer, and it was anything.

Speaker 3 (56:45):
But yeah, I could understand that. But what were you
hoping that? Were you using it as the.

Speaker 20 (56:51):
Education I'd had a four and broke in my hand,
and I thought I would be able to type on it,
create letters and do other things such as said on
the box. I suppose my initial understanding was quite limited.
If I'd thought about it, I would have put the
eighteen hundred dollars for a better purpose.

Speaker 4 (57:10):
But I thought, did you.

Speaker 3 (57:11):
Think would did you think would be like a big
type writer you could write letters and print them out?

Speaker 20 (57:17):
Yes? I did.

Speaker 3 (57:18):
Yeah, there was no there was no printer.

Speaker 20 (57:21):
Well there was there was no printer, but also you
had to enter you had to load the code before
it would do anything. There was the first software package
that came on a floppy disk. Just encouraged you to
learn how to use the keyboard. When I took it
back to the crowd, they were in Lower Stuart Streets

(57:43):
and to need them. When I took it back to them,
I said, no, that's what's that's what you got. That's
that's the best we can do at this time.

Speaker 3 (57:50):
Did you did it get your did it get your
son to the right place? Say again, did you say
you're going to say something about your son?

Speaker 12 (57:58):
Oh?

Speaker 9 (57:59):
You will have.

Speaker 20 (57:59):
Eventually I tired of it and my son took over.
I don't know. I think it probably ended up out
in the skip at some point. I bought it with
an acc payout, you see, and I thought this would
be right, this would be my salvation. But it wasn't.

Speaker 3 (58:14):
Yeah, did you see yourself transitioning into computer programmer?

Speaker 13 (58:19):
No?

Speaker 20 (58:19):
I did, no, And I'm still not a computer programmer,
but I'm a bit quicker on the keyboard now.

Speaker 3 (58:26):
I mean, I appreciate all these people's boxing and they think, oh, well,
I'm going to get into computers. This cap with that,
how they buy one? They get over there? What the heck?
And was always incredibly disappointing, bloody fool thing? Yeah, okay,
in the skip? Thank you Allen, don Marcus.

Speaker 11 (58:41):
Welcome today, Marcus. I need your advice. Yep, where do
I start now? Because the question that I heard on
the radio you posed before was your first computer? And
I've got to think what I count as the first computer?

Speaker 9 (58:55):
Now?

Speaker 11 (58:55):
Is it the Is it the home built sixty eight
hundred based chip one that had a hexit esimal keyboard
that's a keyboard with one to zero on it and
ABC and D so you can program it that my
mate had in the sheep? Is it the trsad Dick
Smith tr sad that dad bought off a mate from work,
And all my mates had Commodore sixty four's in twenties

(59:19):
and I had this damn trsad? Or is it the
one the plus Comodol plus four based on a sixty
five O two chip. I think that I spent probably
ten weeks worth of after school retail work income on
that my mum found that still didn't wasn't compatible with

(59:40):
the Commodore sixty four. Which one do I get to
count as the first?

Speaker 3 (59:46):
What was it put of the exodentimal keyboard?

Speaker 11 (59:49):
Well, because the first computer didn't even have basic in it,
you had to program it in machine code, so you
programmed it in Base sixteen. So you got a printed
sheet where you had like AO and AD and one
D and four D and they were all just two
digit hexadecimal values before you could make it do anything.

(01:00:18):
So there's no abc D keyboard on this thing.

Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
It's all just it was just four by it just
a keyboard that was four by four.

Speaker 11 (01:00:27):
No, because it might be four by four you might
be right, yeah, yeah, four by four sorry, Marcus, Yeah,
you're quite right. Well spotted, Yeah, yeah, that's literally.

Speaker 15 (01:00:37):
What it was.

Speaker 11 (01:00:38):
And then when they got the game and they had
like two thousand lines of these little numbers, then you've
got a little iteration of Space Invaders or something like that.
And if you turn the power off, guess what, not
at all? You go put it all back in a
second time. That would have been the first when I
was about ten. The second was Christmas is my eleventh birthday,

(01:01:02):
and my father, mother and father still told the story
for decades later about how that was the biggest Christmas
Present mistake of their lives because all it did was
create a family argument as children fought to play with
this new computer so we could have Space Invaders for
Christmas Day, resulting in everyone going to their bedrooms and

(01:01:23):
wrecked Christmas Day. And then when I was probably about
fifteen sixteen, then I got the comooal plus four and
that was the first one. They had a word processor
in it. In fact, actually that probably got me through
sixth form, being able to type up essays and things
like that.

Speaker 6 (01:01:39):
I thought it was brilliant.

Speaker 3 (01:01:40):
Got the dis drive because it was a memory you
could store it on right on the disk drive.

Speaker 11 (01:01:45):
Yeah, yeah, the disk drive. My mum and dad, I've
got the computer. They fought out for the disk drive
and the printer because they could see I was going
somewhere with this thing. And that was the That was
the beginning of the end, I guess really, because yeah,
like you're asking the gentleman before me, Yes, I did
actually become a computer programmer and got into PA season

(01:02:07):
Max and writing software.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
And just hang on there. I was gonna take commercial
break and come back to you because I'm really interested
in this. Don't go anywhere, so don It'd be fair
to say that Commodore was the first one that was
any use because you could use as a word processor.
Did you get games for that or were you too
old for games now in the sixth form?

Speaker 11 (01:02:27):
No, I don't think anyone's too old for you.

Speaker 3 (01:02:31):
You know what I'm saying. But did you go and
get all the games for it.

Speaker 11 (01:02:35):
No, no, because all my friends they had the Commodore
sixty four. But I'll tell you the saddest story. Well,
I'm confessing my sins. This might make you laugh. I
remember the day that my mate invited me to come
with them over to another mate's with his parents' mates place,
and they had this thing called a modem I don't
know what that was, but an acoustic modem, and they

(01:02:56):
dialed into a thing they called a BBS bulletin board service,
and everyone in the room thought this was the most
amazing thing that we could dial into some service on
the end of the computer into another computer. And I
remember just looking at it and thinking, I don't get it.
I don't care. Why why do we care? And here
we are today where we were completely and utterly lost

(01:03:18):
if we don't have a device in our hands that
gives us global access to global networks. You know, sometimes
I look back and realize, you know, when you're fourteen fifteen,
you just some kids get it. Like Bill Gates. He
looked at the technology, didn't he mean? He in high
school he built traffic management software and became the billionaire

(01:03:39):
he is today. Others of us just lived at the technology.

Speaker 3 (01:03:42):
Do you remember do you remember what the bullets? Do
you remember what the bulletin board was?

Speaker 10 (01:03:47):
I have no idea it was.

Speaker 11 (01:03:51):
Yeah, Okay, forgot they sprang up all around the country.

Speaker 3 (01:03:54):
I've got about bulletin boards. We'll talk about those two
and good on Bill dates. He didn't shout to Bill Gates,
didn't join the nud Reich like the rest of them.
So sensible for that night away from ten. Name's Marcus,
and you didn't have won the toss. We're betting first
at Goaddarfy Stadiums. That's just a beautiful clear skuy is.
No worries about the weather, No one much there, but

(01:04:16):
we're there and that's the main thing. Marcus. I still
have the ZX eighty one I had as a kid,
and all these year later, I'm still employed as a
software developer. I owe that little box for my career.
That's from Simon Susan. Good evening.

Speaker 15 (01:04:31):
Oh hi, Marcus. It was about nineteen eighty or eighty
one that I bought a computer for my for my sons.
I thought that they would become geniuses. But what happened
was they played Donkey kongse they.

Speaker 13 (01:04:45):
Ever did on it.

Speaker 3 (01:04:46):
That's something that wasn't at least something It wouldn't be
that straightforward to get Donkey Kong to work on a
computer from nineteen eighty.

Speaker 15 (01:04:54):
They could have just gone up to them. What were
those shots up the road where they had all those machines.

Speaker 3 (01:04:59):
Video arcade?

Speaker 17 (01:05:00):
Do you know what it was you brought to years?

Speaker 15 (01:05:03):
No, I can't remember. I've got no idea. It cost
too much anyway.

Speaker 3 (01:05:06):
Do you remember where you're born from?

Speaker 15 (01:05:10):
There was a local young youth who was so called
computer was and he took me to a shop and
I bought it on his say so, because I quite.

Speaker 3 (01:05:21):
Like the parenting angle from this that parents have this
because at least you knew it was a technology that
was going to change the world. To give yourself a
big tick there, it's just your kids went into it.
I mean, Donkey Kong's pretty pervasive.

Speaker 15 (01:05:34):
And I completely let music met Donkey Kong music in
my head.

Speaker 3 (01:05:39):
Did they end up into computers? Your children?

Speaker 15 (01:05:42):
One of them though, yeah, an accountant and the other
one does camera work television.

Speaker 3 (01:05:49):
So it's got a similar isn't it kind of similar?

Speaker 13 (01:05:51):
Yeah?

Speaker 15 (01:05:52):
Yes, funny though the things that.

Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
You do like completely understand. Although we never had a
computerity we're near our fit. It was just something that
wasn't that was of zero interest. I guess probably Yeah,
older brothers had moved. Yeah, it just probably wasn't in
the realm of I guess we're in that sort of
family to run and buy a computer. You'd go rounder
people's houses to be the new computer. They'll be looking

(01:06:15):
at it. May it's Marcus welcome.

Speaker 14 (01:06:18):
Yeah, hi Marcus. I'm a bit like that too. My
kids had winked up them to buy nineteen six full
Commodore to arrive. I don't know how much it costs
the earth and the big boxes and boxes of they
were actually shoot boxes full of games, so all the
valley kids and they said they were all all the

(01:06:39):
kids had won, and we found out nobody had one
but us.

Speaker 13 (01:06:44):
Did.

Speaker 3 (01:06:45):
All the game was it was it secondhand to come
with all the games.

Speaker 13 (01:06:48):
It must have been.

Speaker 14 (01:06:49):
I'm not really sure about the whole thing, but that
the oldest boys still got everything, and they went on
to be owning an internet shop in Nelson. And the
younger one he did ROV with because he was quite
clever on you know, he did that remote operator vehicle
stuff well, and he worked in China.

Speaker 3 (01:07:12):
So they convinced you that everyone had a computer and
you bought it, but actually it worked out really well.
Is that the summation of that story made?

Speaker 14 (01:07:21):
Yeah, but nobody in the valley had one?

Speaker 3 (01:07:24):
What value? What's the valley in? Fascinated by the valleys?

Speaker 14 (01:07:28):
Awake valley?

Speaker 3 (01:07:29):
I can understand. Okay? And then did they once they
got the computer? They mainly play games? Or did they program?
Or what did they do with it?

Speaker 5 (01:07:36):
Do you know?

Speaker 9 (01:07:37):
Yeah?

Speaker 14 (01:07:37):
They did everything? And all the valley kids used to
drop and up they we had it and it went
through it like have a modem type thing, but it
also went through an old television.

Speaker 3 (01:07:49):
So they clearly had aptitude with it, didn't they They
managed to get it all working. The clearly quite cluede
on clued up?

Speaker 14 (01:07:55):
God, Yes, they were quite quite smart. Yeah, smarter than
me because we had to buy it for them.

Speaker 3 (01:08:03):
Sounds to be like it sounds to be extremely good
investment made. Thank you if that keep it going people,
they are just done. The anthems are going on in
the cricket and credit to the key. We mean they
sung very well. I mean they didn't. I didn't have
the volume up because talking to May, but certainly they're
looking thus more and Stews and the other team with
that anthem Beck Catcher after the news were about the computers,
your first computer. Very interesting, very interesting, Dudley, it's Marcus.

(01:08:31):
Good evening.

Speaker 5 (01:08:32):
Hey, good evening, Marcus.

Speaker 11 (01:08:34):
You've taken me back to nineteen eighty three. Thank you.
And I was just thinking how as college students we
would socialize them and it really would be by the
type of computer that you supported, rather than the band
that you supported. Yes, so we would get groups together,
and interestingly enough, all the games that we would go

(01:08:55):
down and buy on cassette tape were just a disappointing
version of the arcade version.

Speaker 3 (01:09:00):
Really yeah, good point. So where would you Dudley? Were
you in New Zealand for that?

Speaker 1 (01:09:05):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (01:09:05):
You saund English? But were you and you in England
when that was happening.

Speaker 11 (01:09:08):
No, I've been here twenty years, but I was in
England during that time at college.

Speaker 3 (01:09:13):
So where would you go to buy the games on that?
You'd go to a computer shop, would you?

Speaker 6 (01:09:18):
Well?

Speaker 11 (01:09:18):
In England, believe it or not. Boots the Chemist was
the place to buy them, to buy the They had
a franchise to doing all the games, and you go
in there with your ten dollars, your ten pound notes
and get a game and come home and be busily
disappointed gently and.

Speaker 3 (01:09:34):
The game would literally be on a cassette like you're
paying a tape dick, Is that right?

Speaker 11 (01:09:39):
Yeah, totally yeah, and get it homeloaded in. I mean
sometimes it took three minutes to load in, and you've
got a pretty picture while it was loading, and some
great buzzy noises, some merdy noises. Some of the Commodore
games has take ten minutes, and if you were lucky,
it loaded up the end, and if you weren't, it
just crashed and you started again really and.

Speaker 3 (01:09:59):
Then you could and then down the computer and you
could lean that cassette to your mates. Ordered you have
to just upload it every time you wanted to play it.

Speaker 11 (01:10:07):
Well, no, it didn't. And that was the thing is
there was no way of recording where you were in
the game. You just started again all over again. The
games are quite frustrating, but of course, you know, back
then everybody was into tape to tape. Everybody had dual
tape ghetto blasters, so we would try and pirate the
tape onto a blank one and give that to all

(01:10:30):
your mates, and that's what went on quite a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:10:33):
And we're talking Scrambler and Donkey Kong and Spice Invaderson
Galaxy and things like that. We talk about the accade
games of the time, but just very poor black and
white versions. I presume I.

Speaker 11 (01:10:45):
May always color versions, but they're Sinclair Spectrum, which is
the one I started on, which was cheaper one that
was ninety nine pounds back then. But that as they
course SAM but a huge array of support groups and games,
whereas if you go to sort of two nine nine
you get the Commodore sixty four and that was at
the time the dream Machine, you know, the sound and

(01:11:07):
game and graphics. But it was an interesting little quirk
that started my thirty five year career in computing. Is
Sinclair being so cheap, it had no radio frequency coverings
within the case, so it transmitted terribly all over the
AM frequency when you're listening to a radio near it.

(01:11:31):
The offset of that is I was training to be
a computer engineer and trying to fix them and desperately
trying to understand them, and when they were dead, they
didn't tell you what was wrong. And I found that
the noise that they transmitted on the sort of aim
and leading way frequencies would there was a set noise

(01:11:55):
that they made as they booted up and loaded the
operating system eventually produced the screen. But what I found
out is depending on where that noise stopped locked up
for the type of noise, you could actually pretty much
pinpoint where the problem was on the computer by listening
to the radio.

Speaker 3 (01:12:14):
Wow, so the n did you start fixing them?

Speaker 11 (01:12:19):
Started fixing it really helped me fix them, and it
was one of I mean, I'm a bit dyslexic anyway,
I'm a bit of an inventor and such so, but
it was one of many ways that were alternative ways
to what you were taught at college on how to
fix computers. And there were a whole handful of little
tools we had in our bag which were not the
standard you know, pull out in acilloscope and start looking

(01:12:42):
at stuff. We had heat cameras and we were compare
two computers next to one another with injecting signals and
comparing the output called polar tracing. And it was really
interesting just learning a whole different ways of fixing the

(01:13:03):
stuff when it's completely dead, because it's so hard fix
if the computer didn't tell you what was wrong?

Speaker 3 (01:13:10):
Did you Once you had your commodore, were you starting
to do programming then? Were you more into how the
whole thing worked in the nuts and bolts of the computer.

Speaker 11 (01:13:19):
Well, it's interesting because it was. It was a bit polar.
And what I found is either you were good at
You're good at the electronic side, but terrible at programming.
You see, programmers or developers are called now, they're a
bit like artists or musicians. You've kind of got it
or you haven't. Actually, it's a bit natural. So I

(01:13:42):
would code away, but my mate could code in half
the time and get twice the result.

Speaker 3 (01:13:50):
So you became So what did you become?

Speaker 11 (01:13:53):
I become a electronic service engineer component level and you know,
the PC motherboards when it was worth it and things
like that. That became my career eventually.

Speaker 3 (01:14:07):
So and just because we talked about the news, do
you remember the bulletin boards and when they came about
and what was going on on those?

Speaker 26 (01:14:16):
Yeah?

Speaker 11 (01:14:16):
Absolutely, that was something that was really confined to the
colleges and there'd be one machine and memory. I think
the bulletin board, which was a bit it looked like
do you remember this teletext on the team.

Speaker 3 (01:14:29):
Yes, yes, I do, well, it looked like that.

Speaker 11 (01:14:31):
It was the same font and I think Presstel was
one of the ones that you were dial in. But
of course all the numbers were long distance numbers then,
so you'd have to dial a long distance number to
the computer and then you would log in. And it
was simply just two computers talking to each other via

(01:14:54):
text vio modem, and it was. It was very basic
and there were some blocky graphics that you could make
a bit like Minecraft to make up figures and screens,
but you would only be talking to one computer at
a time. You wouldn't have the ability to sort to
multiple But it was a crude, of very crude. I

(01:15:16):
wouldn't call it an Internet, but a bit like viewing
one site at a time.

Speaker 3 (01:15:19):
Really, hey, Dundy, it nice to talk to you. Thank
you very much. Thanks for hanging on too. We are
talking about your first computer. Very good. Marcus nineteen seventy
six seventy seven. Dad bought a commodore to his business budgets.
What would take a day for one business now took
an hour. He had a matrix printer and a photocopy
to give other partner's accountants copies. The upgraded the eighties

(01:15:41):
to a PC. In the nineties brought one of the
first Internet connectible PC six thousand. It had Windows three
point one inherit in the nineties when he retired. That's
what we are talking about tonight, Kate Marcus, welcome.

Speaker 27 (01:15:54):
Hi, Hell are you good?

Speaker 3 (01:15:55):
Thank you, Kate, that's good.

Speaker 27 (01:15:58):
I'm just thinking about my sister. And we were from
pretty big arm and the Cable family, and she's sixty
four Nowadaysan Libson resides in Perth and I'm in christ Church.
But however, she went to Southern Girls High School and
she got it all five girls. She got the looks,
she had the brains, and she also had the sports.

Speaker 13 (01:16:20):
Oh she did.

Speaker 27 (01:16:21):
She had the sports fizzied.

Speaker 11 (01:16:22):
You know.

Speaker 27 (01:16:23):
She was top New Zealand or second top New Zealand gymnast.
So she when she got to sixth form, went to
the Korea's advisor at Southern Girls and they said to
her she wanted to be a pe teacher. Nineteen eighty one,
it was this is the era of David Kirk, the
baby Blackstone Kerwin. That Eric is David Kirk. The doctor

(01:16:46):
went to Union with her at Otago and anyway, the
careers advisor at soaevene girls said to her, I don't say,
I think you can do better than being a busy teacher,
and I would suggest you do a commerce degree with
computer computer programming.

Speaker 26 (01:17:09):
So she did.

Speaker 27 (01:17:10):
So she went she went to UNI in Chicago and
had fun and stayed at Unicole and she had to book.
There were only three computers at Otago UNI at the
library then, and she would have to book for like
three days in advance to be able to use the computers.

Speaker 13 (01:17:28):
That's all he was.

Speaker 15 (01:17:29):
He was only three.

Speaker 27 (01:17:32):
And anyway, she went on and she graduated and got
her IT degree and she would have been one of
the first. And then she got a She graduated and
then she come back and worked at TY. She got
a scholarship that's right, per year, and then she did
her OWE for three years. And of course back then

(01:17:55):
it was all the moonees and all that. They were
the seat for all all around and mom and dad
had code, so she was in trouble now just to
call and say happy birthday and her middle name and anyway,
she did all that, and then she went back to
Brisbane at twenty four and she built the Queensland Police

(01:18:15):
it she rebuilt all that and she's now in Perth
at sixty four and she's worth millions. Wow, it's a
lovely story.

Speaker 3 (01:18:24):
Now tell me the bit that I missed a kkate.

Speaker 17 (01:18:28):
Yep, we were the moonies.

Speaker 27 (01:18:33):
Can you remember back in probably in the early eighties.
Can you remember there was the I mean it was
all new, these people going on the Ois.

Speaker 3 (01:18:45):
Where did she go on the Oi?

Speaker 27 (01:18:47):
She went everywhere?

Speaker 3 (01:18:48):
She waked Europe, she went back again? And what was
and should ring? Should wring your family? And from a payphone?

Speaker 27 (01:18:57):
Yes, her secret code was with mum and dad. If
she was in trouble, she was to call mum and
dad and her second name was Anne and all she
had to say was happy birthday Anne. And they knew
she was in trouble and then Mum and Dad would know.

Speaker 3 (01:19:15):
Would then what would they do half a world away?

Speaker 27 (01:19:18):
Well, they had they had passports.

Speaker 12 (01:19:21):
I don't know what they would have done.

Speaker 27 (01:19:22):
But they head But I remember as soon as she
went overseas because they couldn't afford to travel back then,
but I remember them by passports.

Speaker 3 (01:19:29):
Still do you get on with their kid? Do you
still talk to your sister in Perth.

Speaker 27 (01:19:34):
Oh, yes I do, but I'm very envious millions and
I'm not.

Speaker 3 (01:19:38):
And she had all the looks and the gymnastics and
second in New Zealand.

Speaker 27 (01:19:43):
And second ducks, and she had the whole lifte She
got everything and look. To be honest, she's really really nice.
She looked so lovely and money hasn't changed her. She's
really no, she's still look She shouts my mum from
the cargo over to Paris once a year, worth ten millions.
But she will use her husband that's an engineer in trebles,

(01:20:06):
makes water features around the world. But she's practical and
will use all the points to do it to get
mom over there.

Speaker 10 (01:20:15):
But she.

Speaker 27 (01:20:17):
She's very very nice to my mother with her peason.

Speaker 3 (01:20:21):
Lovely Kate. I've enjoyed talking you muchly with the Moonies.
Thank you evening. Dave Marcus welcome, Hey Marcus.

Speaker 28 (01:20:31):
Yeah, it's been interesting listening to the previous people talking about.

Speaker 29 (01:20:36):
This first computer.

Speaker 28 (01:20:37):
So it just reminds me when I was about ten,
Dad brought home one in about nineteen eighty. It was
a VIC twenty, so we'd plug it into the TV
and plug her. They had a tape deck that plugged
into it. And you know, I taught myself to the
program sitting in front of the TV when I was
about ten or eleven on the VIC twenty.

Speaker 2 (01:20:59):
Wow.

Speaker 28 (01:21:01):
Yeah, and we'd get we get magazines or Dad would
bring home magazines computing magazines for the VIC twenty, and
I'd have programs in it. So you'd you'd actually type
in the full program out of the magazine into the computer.
You'd save it to tape, and then each time you
wanted to use that program again, you'd have to load

(01:21:24):
the tape into the tape deck and it could take
several minutes to load back it and load it back
into the computer. You had to do that each time.
It didn't keep it in memory if you turned it off.
So I'd make you design my own games when I
was a kid. Yeah, just pretty basic ones.

Speaker 3 (01:21:43):
Yeah, So your father why did he buy it? Did
he think this was going to be? Was it something
related to his occupation? He just thought he'd no at all.

Speaker 28 (01:21:55):
No, but he's always been interested in technology, and I
think he saw that, you know, computers were the way
to go back then. So yeah, no, he decided to
get one. And then yeah, later on, probably three or
four years later we upgraded to an an A Mega
five hundred, which back then had they had pretty good

(01:22:16):
graphics and sound, and pretty good games on them as
well all the time. But you know, they were very
quite expensive compared to what you pay these days. Back
then you were paying a lot of money for them.

Speaker 3 (01:22:28):
So you on your VIC twenty you were doing programming
and basic is that what you were doing? And doing
the games and you got quite good at it. You
did quite complicated games.

Speaker 28 (01:22:39):
Ah, they were, they were okay, not nothing, nothing to context,
but it sort of gave you taught you the the
the basics of basics I suppose of programming.

Speaker 17 (01:22:51):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:22:52):
Did you know others that were into it that you
could exchange stuff? Whether was it pretty solidary?

Speaker 9 (01:22:56):
Uh?

Speaker 6 (01:22:58):
Not that many?

Speaker 28 (01:22:59):
Not that many to go along to a computer users
group now and then this was in the Cagle We're up. Yeah,
but my age and I don't know if I knew
too many others who were doing at then.

Speaker 3 (01:23:15):
The magazine sounds classic, buying the magazine just typing it
all in and you do you do, you do? You
do one area that it's never gonna work, is it?
Because they have a bag in it?

Speaker 28 (01:23:23):
So then you have to try it well, ye, yes,
to try and find out why it's not working, and yeah,
figure it out. Yeah, and then and then the magazines
you go, some of the magazines would come with tapes
as well with.

Speaker 6 (01:23:38):
Them.

Speaker 3 (01:23:40):
And the next computer you got, was it still in
basic as well?

Speaker 17 (01:23:45):
Uh?

Speaker 28 (01:23:46):
No, they sorry? The a Mega five hundred from memory
of was waters using it for games and dead it's
some some like basic spreadsheet software he'd use on it.
But that one is a little bit more advanced for
the time because it had a hard hard drive that

(01:24:06):
came with it in a printer. Yeah, I mean computer
to these das.

Speaker 3 (01:24:13):
Yeah, I did computers become your life?

Speaker 10 (01:24:15):
Dave?

Speaker 3 (01:24:16):
Did that early ten year old programming lead to you
becoming and making your career?

Speaker 6 (01:24:22):
Yes?

Speaker 28 (01:24:22):
Yes it did.

Speaker 16 (01:24:23):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:24:25):
Seems like there's no way it's not going to way
if you're at ten and get hooked like that. So
you became a programmer, did you?

Speaker 6 (01:24:31):
I did?

Speaker 28 (01:24:32):
Yeah? Yeah, I went into engineering first and then moved
across too programming. Yeah, you still got the original No, unfortunately,
I love I love them. Yeah, the program worth of it?

Speaker 6 (01:24:45):
Now, Well, you.

Speaker 3 (01:24:46):
Could do your programming til you get back into basic
and do something. But I imagine it was pretty laborious
the way it all went.

Speaker 9 (01:24:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 28 (01:24:55):
Yeah, you'd spend a bit of time, you know, putting
them in. You know, you could be spend an hour
or two putting in a piping a program in and
then and then saving it and then hoping that saved
correctly on the on the tape.

Speaker 3 (01:25:08):
Do you remember what the do you remember what the
games you invented were?

Speaker 2 (01:25:13):
Ah?

Speaker 28 (01:25:15):
I think one of them was the stuff like a
bird flying across and or dropped something and you had
to try and catch it or something.

Speaker 3 (01:25:25):
I had graphics and stuff.

Speaker 28 (01:25:28):
Yeah, graphics, yeah, oh yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:25:30):
Those sounds quite good. And enjoy talk. Do you think
you ten twenty seven? Let me keep your dated with
a cricket Young on seventeen of seventeen, Bulls Revendo twelve
off eighteen bulls last over dot dot dot dot one
dot and Giedi is the bowler. That's a situation. So
free windy at lajuare travel with the sight screens. I'll
be stopping from time to time because they are covered
by black material and that keeps blowing aside. Not many

(01:25:53):
people there. I don't know why I'm pakised down. There's
millions there where they just say he had some free tickets.
That upsets me, Steve. It's Marcus. Welcome there you going, Marcus. Good,
thanks Steve.

Speaker 26 (01:26:06):
I've still got my first laptop never I'm not a hoarder,
but i'm a collector and ninety ninety four Dashiba twenty
one hundred gray monochrome screen, no number pad ways. I
don't know what. It weighs about eight kilograms. It's just
so heavy, wow, and it's kicks in. It's got three
point one one on it, Windows three point one one.

(01:26:29):
I upgraded the Windows ninety five and actually was in
my where I store my possessions the other couple weeks
ago and turned it on. Still fires up. The battery
doesn't work, but the laptop itself, and I'm surprised because
most hard drives do have a limited life, but it
still kicks in to life and still comes up with
the old Windows logo and it's quite amazing. I've got

(01:26:51):
the other ones as well, which are later that, but
that's my earliest one. It's bought it in ninety ninety
four and I always remember buying it. Brought it from
I think it was Noel Leman's and they actually operated
out of the back of where the old Farmers Building
used to be in town. And that was nine nine
four cost me two thousand, nine hundred. Think he knocked

(01:27:11):
off knocked off about fifty bucks. It was two nine
nine to five. And actually when they first hit the
market at ninety four, old Emas, they were undercutting everyone else.
If we went to a computer store at the time,
he had to buy a cell phone, they were seven
eight thousand dollars and the computers and laptops especially were
five five and a half.

Speaker 6 (01:27:29):
And they just come in.

Speaker 26 (01:27:30):
They were one of the first retailers just to do
them as a walk in and yeah, they they did.
It was tw nine ninety five. So yeah, it's got
quite a nice thing to still have because and when
I show people, they always say the same thing. They
always wish they kept their old old gadgets because they said, oh,
I threw mine away or gave it away for twenty dollars, and.

Speaker 3 (01:27:50):
It's always keep them stiff. I'm gonna run for headlines.
But thank you so much, Marcus. I worked at State
Assurance Insurance when computers were first used by them back
in nineteen eighty thousand. Christ Judge and they built a
special room for the computers with a raised floor and
ear conditioning under the floor. I can't remember how many
when there, but it was really exciting and a bit
space age. As they built it. There were a lot

(01:28:10):
of really large computers in their chairs. Pete, Peat, Pete,
here's a basic program for Cinclea's edics eighty ten print
the spaceship has launched twenty go to ten. It's computer humor,
Marcus till twelve looking forward to what you've got to say.

(01:28:30):
There are for the first time there are lines now free.
You might be off watching the cricket's not free to wear.
I don't think this over one one four dot four.
This is gents and bowlings are ten off the over
ball to come. Yeah, buying a kids to computer, that's
the answer, isn't it if they're into it. We had

(01:28:55):
them at school. There was a computer room. This was
a nineteen eighty nineteen eighty I think there was the
computer room. You have to book to go in it.
Think they're probably sinkly computers where they were. They just
there was no graphics. You just we have a computer class.
You'd go and you'd all do programming in basic. Even

(01:29:16):
three is the at University was still in basic, hadn't
moved on by then. I think I'm pretty sure memories
a little bit sketchy. I think the trouble university computing
is as Kate said it was. The situation was a Kate.
The situation was it was so hard to get access
to computers, so plenty of people went in border computer

(01:29:37):
for themselves for the paper, which seemed to be a
bit extravagant, but that's the way it went in those days.
YadA YadA, yady YadA. Yeah Markets, Marcus, Hello, yes hi hi.

Speaker 4 (01:29:54):
Mark, Yes, I My first computer was a common of
at twenty.

Speaker 3 (01:30:05):
Nineteen eighty nineteen eighties. Do you remember where you got
it from?

Speaker 4 (01:30:14):
My parents bought it came. I note that the others
mentioned a common for twenty which it was a brand,
and it came complete with a pack drive. They mentioned
to see it compact, to see it also a joystick.

Speaker 2 (01:30:24):
They didn't mention, Oh, and did.

Speaker 3 (01:30:27):
You program it or did you program games? Straight away?
What did you use it for? Matt?

Speaker 4 (01:30:32):
Yes, I was the only one doing it because when
the hand pocket came with it had games that you
could program. The beg of it not one taught me
any think there's a little symbol of things that you
could just type in, and that was what the program
was on Basic. Like you said, I forgot what it
was called. It was Basic, and I did some course
at ATR Basic one, two and thir I didn't understand
there where they talk about strings, and I didn't quite

(01:30:53):
understand that it didn't go anywhere anywhere. It was two
D games. I was playing in the day. It was
eight Men that now mentioned amok yes, sort of like
a shedding game, city Bomb two D games. Realistically, what
they defined is I was mentioned. I went through D games.
I knew at the time.

Speaker 3 (01:31:13):
Were you were you buying new games or getting them
from magazines or how are you getting them?

Speaker 4 (01:31:19):
I couldn't afford the magazines in the day. A Farmer's
trading company, I was called Farmers at that time. They
had cartridges for so very expensive ones. And it was
sort of like a Space of Ata game, better than
the Space of Ata game. They had this mothership going
left to right two D game. Okay game and he
had Space of A's at the bottom.

Speaker 3 (01:31:40):
Okay, I'm just gonna leave it there.

Speaker 11 (01:31:41):
Mark.

Speaker 3 (01:31:41):
There has been a wicket in the cricket. Yeah, it's
not a great shot. It's not Revender, it's the other guy.
Just hit it high and easy catch, right down the
right down the catcher's throat. So there we go. That's
a situation there, Chris, good evening, Welcome, Hi Ma.

Speaker 9 (01:32:01):
Just first computer I owned was one that's probably most
people haven't heard of, and it was called a massa
Cheetah a mats de Sitters also make things under the
name Panasonic with people a bit more familiar with I guess, yeah,
what year, Probably nineteen eighty, nineteen eighty one, maybe nine.

Speaker 30 (01:32:24):
Twos come around there.

Speaker 9 (01:32:27):
But the interesting thing was this computer was available. You
could buy it before IBM launched their PC, and it
was a copy even down to the board level. It
was a copy of an IBM.

Speaker 3 (01:32:38):
PC, okay, and it was ahead of that. You get
it before that though.

Speaker 8 (01:32:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (01:32:45):
I bought mine just after as the IBM PC was launched,
But it had been available for a while before that.

Speaker 7 (01:32:53):
And what.

Speaker 9 (01:32:56):
It was alive and well and what were you able
to do on it? Well, I I I'd studied agriculture
science and as part of my master's degree, I looked
into ways that farmers might be able to use the
PCs that were coming on at that stage, how they

(01:33:18):
might be able to use them on their farms. I'd
already utmosy programs, you know, sort of as examples, And
when I left the university, I decided I would set
up my own companies superalizing and with you the software
for farming in general. So I did quite a bit
of contact work for the Department of Egg and the

(01:33:40):
farm accountants and those sort of people.

Speaker 3 (01:33:43):
I guess what were the first agricultural applications of computers.

Speaker 9 (01:33:50):
The first one I wrote was a stock reconciliation program
or simple task that farmers do. That on a computer,
it's a whole lot easier than doing it on a
piece of paper.

Speaker 3 (01:34:03):
And that's to keep a stock take of literally a
stock take of your stock. Right, that's to know how
many you've got and everything like that, right, buying and
selling and things like that.

Speaker 9 (01:34:13):
Yeah, okay, stuck in the stock out. Yeah yeah. But
I guess another one I did this is when I
was actually working, you know, for my own company, was
I did a contract job at the Department of Agriculture
where using soil test measurements and following research work that

(01:34:33):
was done by simply and corn scurse down at the tago,
you could produce the appropriate mixture of fertilizer.

Speaker 3 (01:34:43):
Yeah, I thought that. I thought that would be one
of the early kind of uses for computers, would be
something along those lines.

Speaker 9 (01:34:50):
Yes, And I mean, you're you're right. It's a really
good example of the sort of thing that you could
do interesting times, I must say.

Speaker 3 (01:34:59):
And farmers were pretty good adopters. Well, you're all on
your own. You've got a lot of time. Farmers were
pretty good adopters of technology, weren't they. Or computers.

Speaker 9 (01:35:07):
There were some farmers that absolutely blew my mind. There
was a guy in I can't remember where up the
North Island, but he had a system where he measured rainfall,
did grass production, and I measured grass production, and he
ended up where he could forecast for some time in advance,

(01:35:28):
what you know, sort of watch doc you could carry
and so on. Just amazing, absolutely amazing, did it all
by himself.

Speaker 3 (01:35:37):
So, yeah, are you still in that field, Chris.

Speaker 29 (01:35:44):
No, I'm not.

Speaker 9 (01:35:46):
I left that job when a job came up, and
what I did. My master's degree was on simulation modeling,
so that was sort of a bit different, bit more
advanced than what I was actually working on. And the
job came up in Victoria and in Australia where they
were looking for someone to do some simulation of sheep
and so I got the job over the here and

(01:36:08):
move our TOAs and for what eighth nine years write
a program which was a simulation model of a sheep
block basically, which was very successful.

Speaker 3 (01:36:18):
Amou add what would they use the simulation of a
sleep sheep flock for.

Speaker 9 (01:36:22):
A lot of the farm advisors in Victoria, well actually
Victoria and further a field, Nuzzy used it to get
a feel for just the type of advice they might
be giving their farmers in terms of you know, carrying
capacities and and and so on. So you know, you
could work out the optimal all sorts of things that

(01:36:48):
get what breed of sheep you should you know, was
best suited for your environment.

Speaker 3 (01:36:55):
Okay, it makes sense, Chris, Thanks for that, appreciate it.
It is thirteen to eleven. Hello lyole AT's Marcus Welcome, Oh,
hi Marcus.

Speaker 29 (01:37:06):
In the nineteen eighty six, I was doing a master's.

Speaker 6 (01:37:11):
Degree and.

Speaker 29 (01:37:14):
I needed to find information on various books and magazines
connected with the you know, what I was doing. And
then somebody suggested I use this marvelous new contraption called
the Internet, and so I which I was allowed to use.
And so in those days I had to go to

(01:37:35):
the university library pay I can't remember the figure five dollars,
ten dollars or something like that. You got value for
money for money in those days, so it wasn't quite
as low a value as it is now. Fill out
a form.

Speaker 20 (01:37:53):
And then the.

Speaker 29 (01:37:55):
One of the libry rooms had this tiny little like
portal with a tiny little screen like I can't remember,
like a six or seven or eight inch screen, and
she tied me and bring you those their green lettering
and that that shot off to the US Department of Defense,
which in those days owned the Internet, and that the

(01:38:16):
Internet was a way of distributing information in those days
in case, you know, Mageddon happened and they could you know,
they had multiple sources of information distribution. That's the whole
that's the.

Speaker 19 (01:38:27):
Whole original point of it.

Speaker 29 (01:38:29):
And about I can't remember when two of a couple
of days later, pard meat, I got uh coming back
to the library, and I got this a whole lot
of that, you know, that constant in the paper that
used to have with it on a dot matrix printer,

(01:38:50):
and all these this information came back on you know,
books and magazines keeping with my search, and we thought
that was marvelous. That was a straight new thing called
the Internet.

Speaker 3 (01:38:58):
And so did the Department of Defense have the database
of all the books or did they tap into something
else that was connected then?

Speaker 19 (01:39:06):
I don't know, but but I think I think that
from what I've read of the Internet, you know, and
I'm no expert, was I was an art student, that
the whole point of it initially was to sort of
have many different pathways to information so that if the
worst came to the worst on me, some of them
might survive, and.

Speaker 29 (01:39:29):
And and anyway, so you know, we thought that was marvelous.
But the first computer I had anything to do with
was an Apple to Apple to be, which my school
bought in the process proceeds of their annual illegal casino evening.
And I went to a Catholic school. Yeah, so you know,

(01:39:53):
that was pretty that was pretty standard.

Speaker 20 (01:39:57):
And.

Speaker 9 (01:39:59):
Uh, it wasn't.

Speaker 29 (01:40:04):
There wasn't And I thought it was pretty good. You
could play sort of a tennis game on it. I mean,
I didn't do any science or anything. But you could
play a tennis game on it with just like very
basic graphics of like just lines. And there was something
called sink the ship, where the ship was like a
couple of lines like a kid had drawn playing battleship

(01:40:26):
or something, and the plane with just a line and
then another line through it and another line to the
toil dropping this other line, which was the bomb. And
we thought that was pretty marvelous. And then by the
time I got to university, the standard computer, well not
the time I got there, at the time I finished university,
the standard computer was the Ethel Macintosh, and that you

(01:40:48):
could do.

Speaker 6 (01:40:48):
A lot more on that.

Speaker 29 (01:40:49):
You could publish, you could do a really good desktop publishing.
At that stage, this is nineteen eighty six, my friend,
you had one, yeah, going. And I showed all this
to a relative who'd been a master printer in Armoru
and he could, you know, he and he looked wistfully

(01:41:10):
at it. And I showed him and you know, all
this great copper plate work that he slaved and studied
years and years to perfect, and that I saw the
look in his eyes, like, oh, all that skill and
it's just been sort of just you know, taken away
and you know, in an instant and yeah, so you know,

(01:41:30):
it's a bit like what the writer's feeling like now
in the face of AI, I think. But anyway, that's
that's my story.

Speaker 13 (01:41:36):
Lyle.

Speaker 3 (01:41:36):
Did you go back and did you just have your
one experience with the Internet at the database or did
you go back and do that regularly.

Speaker 29 (01:41:44):
I just did it the once, but.

Speaker 2 (01:41:48):
There was.

Speaker 29 (01:41:50):
You know, I mean, I think the point is that
the Internet was a sort of initially a defense application,
and then it took tim Berner's Lee and a few
years later to write that hypertend, that hypertext language which
I was able to everything to talk to everything else,

(01:42:10):
and then that's the bath of this sort of the
Internet is not just being an offense department of property,
but the property of the world.

Speaker 3 (01:42:17):
Nice to talk, well, thank you, Hello, payments, Marcus, welcome, Oh.

Speaker 13 (01:42:22):
Hi Buck, our first call of a long time. That yeah,
this computer to bring back memories were the Sun born
in nineteen seventy eight with a few special needs, but
all he was was a Commodol six. Before computer, we
were having a clip to Australia and my year, that's

(01:42:46):
the cheaper to buy in Australia then, I'm sure, I'm
sure they must have been. I can't imagine why we
would have carried one back from Australia the otherwise. So
we carried this figmental Gloom and big box home. It's
Jeff about them, sure enough, Commodal six before we only
he only really learned to play a couple of games
on it, and he wanted me to join in on

(01:43:10):
the games all the time. So he played this game
packed Man, I think it was called Yes Yes, And
he used to jump over the buildings and do things
and carry on, and you'd say, play with me, I'm
cold of play with me, and I'd go and sit there,
and he got it up. It was a former therapy

(01:43:31):
for him in a way. Ready for you know, I
hand control.

Speaker 3 (01:43:36):
Great, it was a great thing.

Speaker 13 (01:43:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he used to do it all
go for about twenty minutes and then your turn, mum,
and I jumped a couple of things and Mum, you're dead.
So I have st there for another treaty. But it
only played another game. But what's a very exciting game
for me?

Speaker 3 (01:43:57):
And did that lead to another? Did that lead to
another computer?

Speaker 15 (01:44:02):
It?

Speaker 13 (01:44:02):
Eventually? Yeah, my cutch and all the technical details not
checked before light. These are the callers. But we did
progress through other different you know, home home computers. All
the games, yeah, our games and my game is vainly
but he's done to music, so he does a lot
of music on his computer. So yeah, it's really the

(01:44:28):
love of his life. It's been wonderful for the special
needs this music. So it's been great, great story.

Speaker 3 (01:44:37):
Pem, thank you so much for coming through. Lovely. I
bought my children's first few computers for very reasonable prices
from a repair at the university. They are now holding
up my bed. We're talking about the first computer board.
It's been extremely interesting only because this day, in nineteen
eighty one, the first home computer went on sale. And

(01:45:09):
I'm pretty sure that was anywhere in the world. There's
been some people with computers have been slightly earlier. I think.
Guess it all depends on the definition of our home computer.
O eight one hundred and eighty thirty nine two nine
two to text your first home computer. What I can't
remember is that that they would they would take the program.

(01:45:29):
The way to get the program into the computer was
on a cassette, yep, and that went as about that
went about as well as you could imagine, because it
wasn't that precise or effective. That was before floppy disks,

(01:45:50):
the five and a half inch floppy discs. And this
is when your computer was an isolation to It wasn't
connected to anything, and then the modems came, and then
of course it connected to the internet, and then the
rest is well, it happened for very quickly. Didn't readvanced.
It'd be good if there was a computer museum that

(01:46:11):
just went from the first one right through, be interesting
for about an hour. I'd like to look along that.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, I remember those. I was someone
that never I was someone that was never that obsessed
about computers whenever he had them, although I did have

(01:46:32):
spend quite a lot of time programming programmable calculators, which
had a similar sort of language to basic you do
quite I mean, calculator a big deal in the eighties,
so they're huge. Or a programmable calculator. Wow, that had
dot matrix, alpha umric. That was unbelievable. I just re

(01:46:53):
remembered that. Now some of em had graph capabilities. Oh yeah,
so what do you do? Why is so what you
would have bought your first computer for? Because it'd be
very hard to buy one and actually utilize it for
what you wanted. I think most ended up just playing games.

(01:47:16):
That would be my understanding of it. Good evening, Nolan's
Marcus welcome.

Speaker 9 (01:47:21):
Okay, Marcus.

Speaker 30 (01:47:23):
Back in eighty nine, I've got the receipt from my
computer that I bought from personal computer store, and it
was an Atari tarry st. I haven't heard many people
calling about them.

Speaker 3 (01:47:36):
I just could you tell me the letters again so
I can look at the picture of.

Speaker 30 (01:47:38):
It at tarry A t X T or I f
t oh No, it was a five twenty s.

Speaker 3 (01:47:49):
Is it is for Saira or if for Freddy?

Speaker 30 (01:47:52):
Yeah, Sierra Tango? Okay, Yeah, and I'm quite surprised. I
knew I had a receipt somewhere, but don't tell me.

Speaker 3 (01:48:02):
Don't tell me. Don't tell me that me.

Speaker 2 (01:48:04):
You brought a brand new, brand new with a printer
nineteen nine.

Speaker 6 (01:48:11):
Yeah, two thousand, three.

Speaker 30 (01:48:15):
Thousand, two hundred and thirty seven backs.

Speaker 3 (01:48:17):
Wow, a lot of money?

Speaker 30 (01:48:18):
Yeah, oh man, Yeah, well the computer and like you
were just saying, you know that it'd run up for
a three point five inch disk, and good grief. The
computer itself was twelve hundred bucks, and then the printer
was when am I looking at the printer itself was
five hundred and seventy five backs, and it was one
of those you know, had the little strips on the

(01:48:40):
side that you'd pull off. I don't know what you
call those, but you'd pull it out of the computer
and then you left to you know, tear off the
sides of it.

Speaker 3 (01:48:51):
Oh, with holes at the side of each thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I know that. What was that paper called? So tell
me you're an adult when you bought it?

Speaker 20 (01:48:59):
No?

Speaker 3 (01:49:00):
Right, yeah, yeah, what was the plan?

Speaker 30 (01:49:03):
Well, the plan was I had a couple of young kids,
one was a disabled boy. And yeah, the lady just
before was talking about games and things I think we had.
We had there was a tennis game and I think
the Mario Brothers might have been on there. And there
was a there was a car a car game. I
think it was called out Run or something like that.

(01:49:25):
But I used it for writing letters and stuff like that,
you know, instead of writing handwriting, I'd just do it
on the computer and tear these things off and put
them in an envelope and the way you go. It
was quite handy for writing programs for things?

Speaker 3 (01:49:38):
And but did it did it have it? Was it like?
It wasn't like a word. You couldn't like do tabs.

Speaker 10 (01:49:44):
It was just.

Speaker 30 (01:49:46):
It was pretty clunky.

Speaker 3 (01:49:47):
Could you could you edit your writing?

Speaker 30 (01:49:51):
Oh gosh, I can't remember that. It was pretty It
was very very clunky.

Speaker 3 (01:49:56):
For the money, for the money, for the money you
paid for it.

Speaker 30 (01:50:00):
Yeah, but it lasted fever.

Speaker 11 (01:50:02):
It was good.

Speaker 3 (01:50:03):
And did you did you do programming on it?

Speaker 15 (01:50:06):
No?

Speaker 17 (01:50:06):
No, no, I had no thought.

Speaker 3 (01:50:08):
I thought that ambits what you said you could do prograther?
I bet you didn't. Was was there a joystick for
your boy or was it? Did that work quite well?
Fame as gaming?

Speaker 30 (01:50:18):
Yeah, we didn't have a joystick. It was just done
on the keypad from and that had a mouse. Sorry,
he had had a mouse a cord, you know, cord
plugged and had a mouse to click on to move
things around here. And it was did the visit it
was quite good, But it's just quite extraordinary, how damn expensively?

Speaker 3 (01:50:37):
How many how many years it last year?

Speaker 30 (01:50:41):
I would have done probably seven or eight years.

Speaker 3 (01:50:43):
It's not bad. And the keyboard of the mouse didn't
break or anything like that.

Speaker 30 (01:50:47):
No, No, it was it was pretty good. But it's
me and it was a Tarry and you know, American mate.
I think Hasbro might have bought that company later on.
But you know, it was really good.

Speaker 3 (01:50:59):
Because I've always thought of a Tarry. I've always thought
a Tarry were games. The games came with it, did it?

Speaker 30 (01:51:05):
The Yeah, it came with a packet.

Speaker 16 (01:51:07):
There was a.

Speaker 30 (01:51:09):
I remember there was probably almost a dozen of these
little floppy discs in there, and most of them were games.
And there was a couple that had this. It was
kind of like a publisher program. If you wanted to
if you wanted to type anything, you had to put
the put the disc in and then it hadn't came
up with this publisher program. It was similar to word

(01:51:32):
but you know an old old version. Yeah, where you clinked?

Speaker 3 (01:51:36):
Is that what you did your letter? Is that what
you did your letters on?

Speaker 4 (01:51:39):
Yeah?

Speaker 30 (01:51:39):
Yeah, yeah, yeah it was good.

Speaker 3 (01:51:41):
Oh good to hear from. Yeah, I like that, Noel,
thank you, first computers, great topic eighty eight for one
Williamson twenty four or forty with Indra struck on forty one.
He's been there for a while. You might mightn't have
faced any balls molders bowling. He's a bit more successful
dot one dot three to come on this over, Laurie Marcus.

Speaker 2 (01:51:59):
Welcome, Yeah, Marcus, Yeah, I was certainly one of the
attar st five twenty and you know it was a
wonderful machine.

Speaker 3 (01:52:12):
Was that your first or you had had a Commodore
before that?

Speaker 2 (01:52:15):
No, we actually we had been shopping around looking for
Commodore sixty fours and stuff for a while and then
some red you know, it must have got a bit
of back player something I shot in and saw this
was the next next level stuff. We bought it in
the Square and Palms Minuit, miniture, TV and sound for

(01:52:37):
twelve hundred bucks.

Speaker 3 (01:52:38):
Wow, you got cheaper than Nles nineteen there was.

Speaker 2 (01:52:42):
I didn't have a printer initially when I eventually had
to pick up a second hand from those dot Matrix
Epton dot Matrix printers, but it had, you know, desk
Top Publishing got a very good what they called word
processing machine. Had the old Mavor speaking which was a
typing shooter. Kids used to use quite a lot of

(01:53:05):
game and they had a good connection. A lot of
musicians were getting into those. They had what they call
a MIDI system and people were doing a bit of
composing and sort of playing a music and it was
the first of well, very similar to the Amiga five
hundred in fact that it had what they called the
graphical user interface, where you actually were getting icons on

(01:53:27):
the screen and clicking on them openum up, you know,
just a bit like.

Speaker 3 (01:53:30):
Yes, it seems very very modern now, but I guess
for a while that was a new thing, wasn't it.

Speaker 2 (01:53:36):
That was new then. Yeah, and great colors, the games,
with action car games and stuff. Tetris. The whole family
used it. I really had bought it, you know, with
the intention of my son. He was getting into it,
wanted to get into bito graphics, designing and stuff. The
wife got hooked on Tetris.

Speaker 3 (01:53:55):
Ye, this is going to sound very this is going
to sound very sexist, But women like Tetris because I
think I think it gives them a seats of getting
things in order, which I think they find quite satisfied.

Speaker 2 (01:54:05):
Yeah, I've actually still got it here and I don't run.
But funny thing, you can buy emulators, you know, you
can run emulators on your PC. And I'm still going
to heap the games because it was a bit of
a breakthrough in so far it started using the new sized,
the three and a half inch sized floppy disc, and

(01:54:27):
it was a breakthrough. And so the first of the
ones actually you can only use one side of the
floppy disc, which got to gave you about three hundred
and twenty K I think it was, but they broke
through that they started using the double sided floppy discs.
So you know you've got quite a about seven twenty
sort of size, and it had half a megabyte hard drive.

(01:54:55):
The next one up, the next version up had one
thousand K ramps. So here they were getting amazingly just
what you know when you've got loaded up say the
car racing or you know the old emulators for the
when the flight flight from flight control. Yeah, yeah, the

(01:55:16):
graphics were really good and it played really well, but
just what was it?

Speaker 3 (01:55:21):
What's tell me about middy? What does MIDI mean?

Speaker 2 (01:55:23):
That's the well, it was a connection. And I didn't
use it myself, but I know quite a few people
that were getting into music.

Speaker 3 (01:55:29):
Because you put a keyboard into it or something.

Speaker 2 (01:55:32):
Yeah, yeah, you could do and and and sort of
almost composed, sort of musing and there. But the thing
was there was quite an active club in those days.
They used to meet sort of every fortnight at there's
sort of a scauffow in town here. Everyone went along
basically everyone with pirrating games.

Speaker 3 (01:55:50):
Actually they were on it wouldn't be taped. I don't
know how how did you pirate? Could you copy on
sloppy disks?

Speaker 2 (01:56:00):
Yeah, you could have on floppies because some of them
had a double side. You could either you had one
des drive and you could plug in another one read
right from together, or you could do a single but
that that was a bit slower, but you know, they
uh ripping them out, and there was there was quite
a few sort of sort of quite professional people around there.

(01:56:21):
The set of engineer. He was there and you were
talking about the old program called computers program will calculators
and that it was a great thing sort of from
the late seventies through, you know, for mathematical stuff. Did
you use the packard Yeah, one of those certainly, yes, yeah,

(01:56:46):
forty one c V and I'm not still on a
Facebook group. I still use of the year Packard calculators.
And but there was a version of them that actually
you could had little cassettes with it as well. We
could load programs and a card reader, so.

Speaker 3 (01:57:02):
Pretty geeky group to belong to.

Speaker 2 (01:57:04):
Well reminiscent. I kicked a lot of them because we
used them for work. But it's funny that just popped
up some one of those things on Facebook recently and
all these people showing off all their old HP things
in the in the programs and stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:57:19):
So I just remember going to sort of I don't
know what shops. I kind of had to be whit
calls or or at shops have all the programmic and
it seemed to they're looking through them a glass cabinet.
I mean, they're all reappealing looking with very complicated things,
very re appealing and luxurious to PROGRAMABLL calculators.

Speaker 2 (01:57:37):
Well that's right, I mean from surveying point of view,
that was the first time you could do away with
because yet to use logarithms and all the books of
signs and co signs part of that with everything was
sort of built in. Oh, it was a hell of breakthrough.

Speaker 3 (01:57:48):
Really, how did they have how did they manage to
store the They wouldn't have just stored the tables with
the logger rooms and the cosigns where they were they
I guess it was all pro.

Speaker 2 (01:57:56):
Program there broken and yeah, yeah, yeah, just it's funny.
I was the last when when I went to the
Antarctic and for that first time at nine seventy, I
was the last one to actually have to go take
log books and down there?

Speaker 3 (01:58:12):
Did you take us? Would you take a slide roll?

Speaker 2 (01:58:14):
Laurie, No, I didn't. We had I had one of
these sort of a coffee grinder to mechanical calculator that
it was a mainly you know, designed for using an office,
a hand hand grinder and you get.

Speaker 3 (01:58:29):
One of those. Was that like, could you use that
instead of a slide roll here?

Speaker 17 (01:58:34):
Ye?

Speaker 2 (01:58:35):
Yeah, there was a lot more accurate than a slide roll,
you know, sort of the slide roll sort of un
estimating to a few different points. We were sort of
for your going out to you know, six or seven
places this in the in uh well nine figures sort
of in the some of them for the angles. Yes,

(01:58:55):
co science and stuff like that. You're getting down to
you know, one or two seconds of art that sort
of stuff. But yeah, no, it was funny. That was
sort of the change over. Basically after that everyone else
had a provaimable computer that we found a problem with them.
You know, you could load and it was still the
same you find in parts and picking up around the

(01:59:18):
desert road. You could load all your stuff into the
calculator and you go out doing work, and you know,
if you in cold weather and it was you're wearing
nylon clothes and you've got the au static discharge if
you hadn't rounded you know, so before you you grabbed
your computer, sometimes your spark would go through and would
clean the memory.

Speaker 3 (01:59:36):
Yeah, wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (01:59:38):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:59:39):
Can you explain to me the coffee grindrig what would
that be called?

Speaker 2 (01:59:44):
There was an odner. An Odner was one of the brands. Yeah, uh.

Speaker 3 (01:59:52):
Hecla. I see something on the internet about though I've
never seen one in real life.

Speaker 2 (01:59:58):
And there was another one called a Curti, which was
just came in a small tumbler cylindrical one as well.

Speaker 11 (02:00:05):
Curta.

Speaker 17 (02:00:05):
I think we see you t Would you how would
you spell owner O d H in I think yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:00:19):
Oh yeah, I'm saying no, I don't I don't know.

Speaker 11 (02:00:26):
D h R.

Speaker 2 (02:00:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:00:29):
And would you what would you use that for?

Speaker 2 (02:00:32):
So they would be doing solving triangles, you know, trigger trigonometry.
You get into numbers and then you'd have to go
to a natural sign book and put the you know.

Speaker 3 (02:00:44):
You'd still have to it's still left of a sign book.

Speaker 2 (02:00:46):
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, and then you get good wind
forwards and backwards on it. You know, fact a lot
of people used to have races, so it just did.

Speaker 3 (02:00:57):
It just was still basic doing very long multiplication and division,
is it right?

Speaker 2 (02:01:02):
Okay, yeah, yeah, you couldn't you couldn't square rude it.
Well yeah, yeah. That was the breakthrough in the first
of the calculators come along with a square route button
basically because normally part of that you always was always
quicker to go back and do square roots for logarithms.

Speaker 3 (02:01:20):
Yes, are you on for a Facebook group with those?
Two were the openers?

Speaker 22 (02:01:24):
No, not yet.

Speaker 3 (02:01:28):
But the question, the question, the question I've been so
once you had your Atari and your you've always had
a computer studs. That was the first that you've never
been without one. That was the beginning. That was the gateway.

Speaker 13 (02:01:40):
That was it.

Speaker 2 (02:01:40):
Yeah, that was it, And so the whole family use it,
you know, it was it was well used. But it
was really former son, I suppose, and he did carry on.
I mean he played games like a lot, but did
he got into graphic design and eventually that's what what
his career was too. So yeah, and it was at
the stage when that was a really good computer for

(02:02:01):
that that you know, that got to the stage.

Speaker 3 (02:02:03):
It's funny that the Computer Club, the Who's Who and
Parmeston all thick, coffing and stealing stuffy.

Speaker 2 (02:02:10):
Yeah, there's somebody from the public, the guy from the public.

Speaker 3 (02:02:15):
Lovely to talk Larry, thank you, I love that to
talk about the owner. Look at one of those online jeepers. Creepy.
I'd like to give one of those a bit of
a tune up.

Speaker 1 (02:02:23):
For more from Marcus slash Nights, listen live to news
talks there'd be from eight pm weekdays, or follow the
podcast on iHeartRadio.