Do I get to count the year I worked for the US Gubmit Communications Service
as a transceiver operator? Transceiver was a big machine that sent and
received IBM punchcards. That was 1962.
My first home 'puter, around 1982 was an IBM PC Jr., that I later boosted
with an external hard drive and a "hotshot" to make it run a bit faster.
To copy a column of 100 names in a spreadsheet program -- first name in col
1 and last name in col. 2 -- took about half an hour. The only things I
could do was word processing, spreadsheet and e-mail. No internet access. No
games.
Later my father-in-law gave me his first Gateway. Now the 100 names would
copy bip-bip-bip-bip in maybe 30 seconds. I thought I'd upgraded to
incredible speed. Was still using the IBM programs on it, but they worked
faster.
Next Gateway would copy that name list in one "bip". Thought that was fast
then. Discovered Word and Excel and gained internet access.
Current one has 6 gigabytes of memory. Thought it was all the room in the
world in 1998 (and I still only use about a third of it). We just bought our
next one -- should be on the truck enroute as we speak -- is 120 gigs, and
with a plasma screen.
the PC Jr. with a word processing program loaded and the spreadsheet program
extra, ran damn near $3k, and that did not include the hard drive and
hotshot. And that was at a closeout price because IBM was phasing out the PC
Jr. The one on the way, well put it this way -- for that $3k my wife and I
each get one with a bunch of programs loaded (Works, Word, Excel, IE, OE,
and several others including some games) and they include an inkjet
printer/scanner and throw in a couple of digital cameras to boot.
Do NOT really look forward to transferring everything over, but the new toy
will be much better than the old. The kids (age 8 & 11) will get the old
ones, mostly for computer games and homework (but NOT internet access -- too
much bad crap there).
--Rocky Entriken
----- Original Message -----
From: "David W. James" <vnend@adelphia.net>
To: "National Autocross Mailing List" <autox@autox.team.net>
Sent: Monday, December 22, 2003 11:20 PM
Subject: Re: First computers, was: team.net history
> On Monday, December 22, 2003, at 11:24 PM, Matt Murray wrote:
> > What did YOU start on?
>
> > Matt Murray
>
> > DEC PDP-8L in high school (semi public, definitely not mine)
> > Teacher got pissed that I was "playing" on it.
>
> Piker.
>
> I remember playing around with tape in 1962.
>
> Paper tape. Round confetti.
>
> The computer was probably an IBM 1400, the big upgrade from the 800.
> The programmers were trying to figure out what they were going to do
> with all that extra RAM.
>
> All 600 bytes of it. Or was it bits?
>
> Of course, I was 4 at the time, so when I say "playing with" that's
> accurate. :-) Card punches were a year or two in my future then, and
> it was another 12 years or so before I actually wrote a program. But
> there weren't a lot of 3rd graders in '66 who knew what octal, hex and
> binary were...
>
> But then I also remember programming blocks in use, and I have no idea
> what machine those were for.
>
> David
> young old fart
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