Photos: The old technology lurking in Australia's cupboards

We’re celebrating the early days of IT by collecting nostalgic images of the technology that still lurks in our readers' cupboards - and in some cases, are even still being used.

Pictured: the collection of reseller Syd Borg of PCS Australia. Among the items are an NEC mobile phone from 1987, NEC's first tablet (from 1990), the Word Perfect Word Processing Software Kit for DOS from 1987, an Olympia Carina 2 typewriter from 1984, and the world's first colour notebook (also by NEC) from 1990.

"It was programmed by switches in raw binary. Each program address was set on the address switches, the data/code switches were set, and then the 'deposit' button was pressed to load each program (or data) byte," he told iTnews.

"Interactive data input was also by the binary switches and the only output was binary lights. There was no storage. The programs had to be manually re-entered with thousands of switch settings every time it was turned on."

Amazingly, it still works.

It cost between US$12,000 and US$14,000 when it launched. However the computer was not as portable as its name may suggest - it didn't have a battery, and power was supplied by plugging it into a mains outlet.

The mouse was invented and developed by Douglas Engelbart with the assistance of Bill English during the 1960s, and patented on the 17th of November, 1970. It was originally called the “X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System” and was first used with the Xerox Alto computer system in 1973.

The original concept never took off commercially until Steve Jobs' mouse - the design of which borrowed heavily from Engelbart's device - arrived with Apple’s Lisa computer.

The setup allows Short to connect to other amateur radio enthusiast networks and bulletin board systems "at the blistering speed of 1200 baud (0.12kbps!) using the AX.25 protocol, similar to a pager network, and as a result has all those glorious sounds like a pager network as well," he told iTnews.

"Amateur radio has come a long way from this."

Thanks to AL's Tim Marshall for this one.

Thanks Hugh Wilson for sending this in.

The device is from 1997 and fits 9.1GB. Saarinen ran his FreeBSD mail, DNS, web and remote access server off it for many years.