Sunday, August 7, 2022
Computers And Me
Many of you know that I am always in front of a computer and have been that way for the last 35 odd years. And that is in fact the truth especially now that I am retired. It wasn’t anything that I thought I would be doing, but things have a way of turning out.
My kids were in elementary school when the personal computer came into the household and my late wife, a teacher, felt the kids needed to be able to “keep up” if they were going to be competitive. I didn’t necessarily agree with it because in my mind, computers could have been a passing fad. Computers weren’t cheap in those days, but I soon realized they were here to stay, and so we went out and bought an Apple IIc computer, printer and software because Apple is what was being used in the school they were attending. That first purchase cost $1800 in 1984.
Suffice it to say that I was the one that jumped in with both feet and started to see the benefits of the personal computer. Keep in mind that the system we bought did not have a hard drive…in fact it used “floppy disks” that had to be switched out of the disk drive depending on their use. The program itself was on one disk and the data was on another disk. I was ecstatic when we were able to afford an external disk drive which meant I didn’t have to switch disks.
From there I would copy different applications from the Nibble magazine and would be proud of myself when I got it typed in right and the program would actually run the way it was supposed to. Suffice it to say that I was hooked. Enough so that the kids had to fight to get to use it…at least my son anyway. Both my late wife and my daughter weren’t that much into it. So, I moved from an Apple product to an IBM (in those days) because IBM is what was being used at my work. And the rest as they say, is history.
When the internet came into being, that was a whole other program. Imagine being able to get online and seeing webpages from all over the world, emailing people everywhere and being able to “search” for whatever you wanted to see. Back then, the internet was free…not so much today. I can still remember going from a 14.4 baud modem to a 28.8 baud modem and I thought it couldn’t get any faster when I was able to connect with a 56.6 baud modem. Now we become impatient if a site does not load instantaneously.
Today I develop and manage different websites and am involved with different computer languages…HTML, PHP, CSS and I like to cobble together open source scripts to make them look and act the way I want them to. That is not to say that I consider myself a coder, but I enjoy those times when I can get something to work the way I want. From an Apple IIc to today’s laptops that have considerably more processing power. Don’t you just love computers?
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Monday, August 8, 2022 - 15:33:06
Yes, computers are fun pieces of technology. Like you, I got into them quite early in their development. My “first contact” as you might call it, was with a Commodore PET. Then, my parents bought me a Commodore 64 in ‘84. There was no turning back for me. ;)
Thanks for sharing this story with us. I really enjoy nostalgic trips to the past like this.
Monday, August 8, 2022 - 15:36:16
Wow your story sounds a little bit like mine. I worked at Nasa in Houston for Ford Aerospace as a hardware computer techie (trained by IBM), and one of my co-workers had a computer for sale that I bought for $650.00 It was a Commodore-64 with a dot-matrix printer, 300baud modem, an RF adapter and a bunch of programs. Well when I got home with it I didn’t even know how to hook it up to the TV (no monitor), so I had to actually read the manual. I usually don’t have to do that as I just have always had a thing for devices and machines. Then I found a store where I could buy Compute magazines and others where I discovered a myriad of free programs that I could type in and save. One of the first ones I found was the SID Editor by Craig Chamberlain. SID is (Sound Interface Device) and then my future was set; I discovered that I could create music on the computer which had 3 oscillators (Voices/Instruments) and I was in hog-heaven! There were tons of other programs and games that I had to type in; some in basic format and some in machine language format. After that I bought myself a Commodore-128 which had a wopping 128,000 bytes to play with instead of 64,000 bytes. Double the size plus it had an 80 column output display for an 80 column monitor. Anyway that was my beginning into the world of personal computing. And I haven’t stopped since (though my wife has threatened to divore me on several occasions) and still does. But of course she never would!
Monday, August 8, 2022 - 15:46:58
It appears that I hit a nerve with this post…I had a feeling I was not alone in my computer infatuation. Based on the two comments posted, this article brought back some memories of the beginning of the personal computer age. Now if I could just figure out why I am not getting notifications of these comments, I would be in “hog heaven”, as Veeger says.
Tuesday, August 9, 2022 - 08:10:21
Sometimes this modern technology is too “smart” for it’s own good.