Video of AutoCAD in 1987

Leif Steinert resurrects the good ol' days with 45 seconds of video from 1987. The video shows AutoCAD Release 9 running on an 6MHz NEC 286 AT clone and MS-DOS. He enters the plot command, and we briefly see his HP DraftPro plotter at work -- which he calls "the money machine."

http://www.youtube.com/user/AutoCad9in1987

Comments

[Sean Doughtie]

That would have been a dream to have that setup in 1987!

[Charlie Peil]

When I started using AutoCAD r9 in late 1989, I had my very own office. The only problem was that I "shared" my office with two pen plotters.

They were connected to the CAD workstations in the office by specially made serial cables that were run through the ceiling space from each workstation and connected to switch boxes at the plotters. Prior to plotting, one needed to go to the plotter, load a sheet of paper, uncap the pens and test them on a piece of paper before loading them in the plotter, return to the workstation and start the plot command.

There were three CAD stations in the office and since plotting the average sheet took 30-45 minutes, there were days when the plotters never stopped. The noise wasn't too bad except when the little single pen plotter was used. It used to "sing". The combination of the vacuum that held the paper down and the pen mechanism made a "doo-do-dooo-do-dooodleooodl-doo..." sound. that combined with the movement of the paper made for quite a symphony.

I don't miss it.

[Ralph Grabowski]

Back in those days, I always wondered if it were possible to produce "music" by recording the different sound dot-matrix printers made for each letter.

[Michael Jackson]

I loved to watch the plotter and try to understand it's sometime random optimization.
And Ralph, even earlier than 1987 we had little tunes we made using the TI silent 700 thermal printer

[Ralph Grabowski]

In those days, I did a lot of testing of pen plotters as my role of Technical Editor for CADalyst magazine. AutoCAD had multiple levels of plotter optimization, which were supposed to make plotters finish plots faster by reducing the distance the pens travelled, how much they over printed, and so on.

Fascinating problem I found was that computers of those days were so slow that plots could take longer with higher levels of plot optimization than without, especially for the fastest plotters from HP and Mutoh.

[Free 3DS Max Models]

wow! that looks like a recent video, but the software is a relic now. who knows maybe in the future the old versions of Cad will be more valuable than the updated new ones.

I like the plotter I wished I had one at home, but they are so much expensive for me.

[Bill Fane]

Ah, the good old days. I started on AutoCAD 2.17(g) in September of 1985, using a "power" setup: 6mHz AT, 20mb hard drive, 16-colour Techmar Graphics Master... but I could go from a power-on cold boot to the AutoCAD Command: prompt in about 30 seconds. Today, my 2.7gHz core2 quad takes over 3-1/2 minutes to get to the same point.
And when I was finished, I simply turned the machine off. Now it takes 2 or 3 minutes to shut down, and even longer if Windows decides to install updates.