My First CAD Computer

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Here is my first CAD computer, we wrote the CAD software in house using HP Basic and it allowed Scaffolding Great Britian Ltd to design the temporary works to a bridge on the M25 in a day rather than two weeks manually, including a full schedule of all the components required to construct the temporary works.

I also recall the delivery of the 10Mbyte hard disk and Twin 8" Floppy Disk drive arriving. A fan was fitted into the room because of the heat it all generated 

The 9845 was HP's high-end technical desktop computer of the 1970s until the introduction of the 200 Series in 1981. The 9845 was the first HP computer to incorporate a twelve-inch CRT screen. Previous computers had only one or three line screens. The large monitor of the 9845 made program debugging and program listing much more convenient. It also provided (optional) graphics display for the first time, with a resolution of 560 x 455 dots. The 9845A came standard with a built-in mini-cartridge tape drive (217K capacity). A second tape drive was optional as was a built-in thermal printer (80 characters wide, 480 lines per minute and graphics capable).

The 9845A shipped with 13K RAM standard, expandable to 62K. The computer came standard with four I/O slots and used the same interfaces as the 9825. The 9845S came standard with the additional tape drive, printer and graphics package. The 9845B replaced the 9845A in 1979. The original 9845B came standard with 56K RAM, expandable to 449K.

Click here to see this original green screen drawing the SINX/X function (file size 1.5 MB).

At the time these computers cost a fortune, later when completing my degree in Civil Engineering (1991/2) I found one at a car boot for £15 including a bag of thermal paper and 10 tapes, Ummm and it's still in my loft together with my CoCo, Spectrum, Amstrads (3No) and Tandy Model 100 etc.

For more details on this machine CLICK HERE

Here are a few more from my yester year collection that still live in the loft!.

Hours spent copying code from mags and writing your own programs with the old Spectrum.

I programmed the CoCo to "ask"  my girlfriend at the time

(made it talk)  "Will You Marry Me"

The result was she is my wife and tells everyone that I never actually

asked her to marry me, and that she has been a computer widow ever since then ;0)

The joy of having a disk drive .......I had two

I surfed the net or www before it was called the net or www with this one!

This one broke your back and looked like you were carrying a sowing machine around

Yes Mr Sugar - "Luggable" is a perfect description.

I spent an evening with Joanna Lumley after I sold her one of these, setting it up and giving some training.

She even made me a couple of cups of coffee.

Sometimes it pays to be a Computer Geek ;0)

Then on to MS Dos Machines