Well, as long as we are reminiscing about computers, my first experience in
computing was with the lovely Apple IIc, programming BASIC and LOGO right
from the command prompt. I guess that was about 1980, I was in 2nd grade
Academically Gifted program and we were lucky enough to have 2 or 3 Apples
around for us to kick around with. I remember my first few programs were
horrid attempts to re-create the WARGAMES W.O.P.R. "Would you like to play a
game?" , and of course, who could forget seeing Eliza's reactions to
inputting dirty words and phrases!
My first home computer was a Timex Sinclair with 2k of memory, you had to
hook up a regular cassette player to store the programs. I then took the leap
to the STAGGERING ::grin:: computing power of the Commodore 64! I remember
well typing in hundreds of lines of code from magazines like RUN and
Commodore User. Onward into history, I finally convinced my folks to shell
out big bucks for my 486SX25. I actually spent 100 bucks on a friggin math
coprocessor! can you believe it! From then on, the sky was the limit.
I rather enjoy the horror stories people come up with regarding 80lb hard
drive crashes (literally!) and tearing out your hair over that ONE punch card
that got away, or typos on the teletype machine, etc. My how we have grown,
but on the other hand, my my my do we have a long way to go! I just wish that
Billy Gates, IBM, and all those other brains involved in early computer
development had though far enough ahead to design systems that were flexible
enough to handle unlimited expansion of memory, processing speed/power, and
storage capacity. It would have saved many a headache and hours of work
configuring and re-configuring hardware and software so that it worked
without causing too much grief! Plug and play my ass! LOL
TTFN!
Brian Shores
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:50:20 MDT