Mmm, don't think the Apricot F1 was 1979, it was much later than that! The F1 was mid 80s, I believe.

In '79 you didn't have a lot of choice of pre-built machines - Apple, PET or wierd-ass stuff like Ohio scientific were the only mass market things. Maybe Cromenco(sp?) or Altos were online by then, actually, but Apricot wasn't until years later.

I have an old apricot keyboard with a 2-line LCD built in. Funky

Hugo

wfaulk: One of it's functions...

Perhaps I am mistaken, however I believe 's added onto a pronoun such as "it" results in a contraction and is not possessive. Hence, your sentence would mean One of it is functions...".

Sorry, but you've nailed me TWICE on improper grammar (once in a flattering way) so I just had to point that out.:D

In some circles, improper use of "it's" is grounds for justifiable homicide.

"It's", with an apostrophe, is a contraction for the words IT IS or the words IT HAS only. All other situations, use it without the apostrophe.

The reason people get confused is that the opposite rule applies to the possesive form of other nouns.

You are absolutely right. I can't believe I did that. Typing too fast, I guess.

One might note that it is not a noun, by the way. It's a pronoun. The construction of its mimics that of both his and hers. And it isn't true that the opposite rule is used with nouns, but, rather, that both possessives and contractions of small verbs gain an apostrophe.

oh come on y'all, lets just let the semantics & syntax go as they will

just .02 from a southerner

I was born and bred in the South. That's no reason to let your grammar slide. That only leads to us continuing to be considered the ignorant ghetto of the US. By the way, I, for one, find absolutely nothing wrong with the word ``y'all''. English desperately need a second-person plural pronoun. (Well, I do have a problem with Yankees misusing it as single-person.)

By the way, I, for one, find absolutely nothing wrong with the word ``y'all''. English desperately need a second-person plural pronoun

Here in Philly, we have "youse" as in "youse guys need to get off my back." I always found it very odd that modern English didn't get a plural of "you" like the other languages all have.

The problem with ``youse'' is that it never seems to be used on its own. It always seems to modify ``guys'' or ``goils'', and, therefore, is an adjective, not a pronoun. You could make arguments that it is a pronoun because ``guys'' is being used to redefine ``youse'', but I don't buy it since it never seems to be used alone.

Regardless, if anyone would like to continue this dialogue, to which I would not necessarily be averse, let's start it back up in Off Topic.

RSX-11M+ 2.1, actually (crammed on uPDP-11/23, 64kB (or kw?) memory and a 10MB Seagate

I struggled with them for several years (at work) - rather powerful (for a time), but painfully slow. (I am 44, BTW, and haven't owned a home computer untill recently; the first exposure was on HP-2000, IBM/360 and Univac-1100/42).

My first taste was on a Commodore PET.

Ah, another dark memory. Imagine writing X-ray spectroscopy programs on that? I remember working around some obscure DOS bugs by downloading my own programs (IBM-ers would call them 'channel programs') to that dual-unit, 6502+6504 based 5.25" floppy drive hooked on IEEE-488 instrumentation bus.

From a previous post of mine:

"But 'you' is plural. English has lost singular, thou (objective thee, possesive thy or thine, reflexive thyself). "


Nice shot, from best price of IBM drives to English.....

Back to the drives.... when are these going to hit the open market? Nothing shows on www.pricewatch.com.... i want them to push down the price of 48gb drives...

Thou art correct, bonzi. Man, that just doesn't sound right...

Continued in Off Topic(Grammar)

Oops, you're absolutely right (as usual...). it was more like '89.

30 years old. 1st computer (and first portable) was an Osborne. Can't remember the model number, but it ran CPM off 2 8" floppies. 3 1/2 " CRT - still works and I have some games for it. It is the size of a large suitcase though.
First desktop BBC & BBC model B, closely followed by ZX81, Jupiter ACE (still love Forth ) and Dragon 32 and 64.
Now I just love my collection - have added to it with some SGI Personal Iris' and Indigo 1's. My attic museum of old computers.

Very jealous of a colleague at work - his garage is filled by a Cray. It's old but you should see it run dnet

Boy - how off topic am I?

All I can say as I am glad to live in these times, as far as technology goes. I remember playing my Atari 2600, thinking that this was as good as it got in gaming. Pong was the best I had played at home until that point.

Boy was I young and dumb.

eddie

Yeah, but a CRAY in the garage! Now that's GEEK! I remember knowing of only 2 single Cray machines in all of Canada. And that wasn't all that long ago.

There were better home alternatives to the 2600 if you wanted to spend some time and money with a computer instead of a console. It's kind of sick to think about certain devices that are now long outdated, but were far ahead of their time.

Bruno

You can still buy Atari 2600's on Ebay. Not sure about Crays though.

Calvin