USEFUL/PRODUCTIVE things you do with your Classic Computer

[Omega-TI]

Many of us play games on our old Classic Computers, spend a lot of money building them up/expanding them to obscene configurations never dreamed of 'back in the day', but how many of us actually use them for something practical or useful?

 

What do you use it for?

What software do you use?

Any photos?

 

[doctorclu]

Would a G4 Mac be considered classic yet?

 

I use a Amiga 1200, sometimes Atari 800 for calling BBS's and through the BBS's respond to e-mail, IRC chat, sometimes Lynx (all text) browse a internet site.

 

Posted a message on Atariage with an Intellivision (ECS (computer) module) earlier this year.

 

But basically telecommunications.

[am1933]

I still use a lot of the Scott Foreman educational modules with my kids quite regularly and they both enjoy using them, I would like to think this counts as a practical use.

[Seob]

A old 486sx33 laptop so i can trans fare file to a c64 floppy drive.

[jmetal88]

A old 486sx33 laptop so i can trans fare file to a c64 floppy drive.

 

 

I do the same thing, but with an early Pentium. What's funny is I have two laptops from this time period, and the older, slower one doesn't work for this purpose. The one that does work, if anyone's wondering, is a Compaq LTE 5300. Really anything from the LTE 5000 series would work, I guess. I'll also specify that this is with the cheapest/easiest X1541 cable. The one that doesn't work is a Toshiba Satellite 400CDT.

[Dripfree]

 

 

I do the same thing, but with an early Pentium. What's funny is I have two laptops from this time period, and the older, slower one doesn't work for this purpose. The one that does work, if anyone's wondering, is a Compaq LTE 5300. Really anything from the LTE 5000 series would work, I guess. I'll also specify that this is with the cheapest/easiest X1541 cable. The one that doesn't work is a Toshiba Satellite 400CDT.

 

I used to use a Toshiba 200cds for file transfer to my 800xl. I picked it up for $5 at a thrift store. I've since found a better option and I'm probably gona toss the old guy. The battery doesn't charge and the screen is all washed out. I wanted to mess around with different OS's but you need an external floppy. I had some neat ideas for that thing but turns out it just wasn't practical.

[Britishcar]

I may have mentioned this elsewhere on AA.

 

I'm a teacher:

 

130XE used to display a master calendar running on a CRT just outside of the classroom. Attract mode gets attention.

800XL on a rolling cart inside the classroom doing something similar -- different announcements from the outside one usually. Often scrolling or other colorful announcements (ROTBERG MARQUEE for example).

VIC-20 sitting on a desk displaying the day's classroom activities for each period.

Apple ][+ showing inspirational quotes on a green Apple monitor using an APPLESOFT BASIC program that scatters, recombines the letters of each quote that I usually change daily.

[Goochman]

My Mom was a Realtor who paid for mailing labels to attach to flyers she sent in bulk. It was quite expensive and looking at what was required told her I could do it for 10% of the cost if she bought me a nice 24 pin dot matrix printer

 

I wrote a simple printing program on my 130XE that allowed me to hold over 20,000 addresses on 1 single sided floppy disk. We bought a 64k printer buffer so we could load a # of addresses to print and walk away. Also bought a 'ribbon reinker' so we didnt need to buy new ones all the time. The reinker was a PIA and didnt always work that well.

 

Anyhow,

After a few years I headed out to college so I wrote something that output the addresses into 'txt' files that could be double clicked and printed from a stock 1040ST.

I eventually converted everything into an Oracle database so creating new entries was a snap.

 

The USPS changed the format on how they handled bulk mailings which would've meant touching up all 20,000 addresses so after 6 years I had to retire my solution