Bender's Brain

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Thu May 07, 2009 1:15 pm

Interesting history about Bender the Robot in Futurama and why he had a 6502 microprocessor for a brain. (1977 Apple II, for any of you old enough to remember!)

Geek history here:

The Truth About Bender's Brain

TechPro · Post by **TechPro** » Thu May 07, 2009 8:03 pm

Nice!

Sedwick · Post by **Sedwick** » Thu May 07, 2009 11:28 pm

I can relate to Cohen's enthusiam; it really can be a blast trying to max out the capabilities of limited hardware.

Gekko71 · Post by **Gekko71** » Fri May 08, 2009 6:44 am

I still have very fond memories of playing games on an Apple IIe in highscool. God I thought the graphics were brilliant back then. Happy times.

Duper · Post by **Duper** » Fri May 08, 2009 12:59 pm

Gekko71 wrote:I still have very fond memories of playing games on an Apple IIe in highscool. God I thought the graphics were brilliant back then. Happy times.

X2, Man, my dad had it for years even after it quit working. You needed a double-sided floppy to boot it!

TechPro · Post by **TechPro** » Fri May 08, 2009 2:50 pm

Duper wrote:... You needed a double-sided floppy to boot it!

Man, those were the days. I have fond memories of using an oscilloscope to re-align the diskette drives used on those things.

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Fri May 08, 2009 4:00 pm

Glad there's some older geeks that enjoy history. My parents owned an Apple II and my husband and I had to help teach my mother how to use VisiCalc!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc

Love the 2 color display back then! Enough to fry your eyes. Edit: Opps! Eight color, eight color!

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Sat May 09, 2009 9:18 am

You guys will NOT believe where this is STILL being used and in manufacturing no less!

I was watching the Science Channel Show \"How it's Made\" and this Apple II popped up on the screen. A company called QRS Technologies is still using it to run a paper punch machine to manufacture the paper music rolls for player pianos! I didn't even know that people even BOUGHT player pianos anymore, LOL! They used the 5 1/4\" floppy to load in a selected music pattern to the paper roll punch machine on the left. This was a Hi-Def picture, so I'm assuming that this thing is still in use today, not just old file footage!

Old technology being used to make even OLDER technology!

http://www.qrsmusic.com/about.asp

Canuck · Post by **Canuck** » Sat May 09, 2009 4:28 pm

There are tons of factories using even older equipment. There is a large market of old equipment for parts and replacements as it is extremely expensive to revamp a factory to newer technology. DOS and older is still driving allot of funky stuff.

Octopus · Post by **Octopus** » Mon May 11, 2009 6:19 am

And dos based programs are satisfying to use, once you know all of their text commands.

Sedwick · Post by **Sedwick** » Mon May 11, 2009 9:53 pm

What happens when that old stuff breaks down?

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Tue May 12, 2009 5:37 pm

The OLD APPLE COMPUTER HOME for parts and service?

Bender's Brain

Bender's Brain

Re:

Re: