The Computer room
Computer central - Hal9000 to Colossus to Pivio


My first exposure to computers, in real life, were the mainframes at my dad's office. Compared to the computers on Star Trek, Lost in Space, and any other late 60's -early 70's science fiction shows, these were big, boring and noisy. Rows of reel to reel data tapes, hard drives which looked like stacked fat records, and those loud clacking printers.

I kept wondering what these things could do. Yeah, yeah, they printed out those big business reports on that green bar paper, but what COOL things could they do? Tic tac toe and a version of Pick-up-stix.

I was a little disappointed.

Calculators were coming into use but were terribly expensive. I found ads in magazines to build my own computer, but then found that each module was expensive, even more so considering my weekly allowance was about $1.

Then came high school and the Radio Shack TRS-80. Now we were moving up to the big time!. Of course, it didn't really do anything either. We had to program it to do things, and "save" our program out to cassette tape. Still, I suppose that was better than using punchcards -- I just missed that horror by a few years. Senior year of high school, we had a BASIC programming class, taught by the football coach. I have to admit that all those phys ed stereotypes ran through my mind and I thought "Now what is this going to be like? A football guy teaching high tech?" Sorry, no stories of a fantastic year with a multi-purpose teacher. He was a coach first and a teacher second. I got more out going to the library and reading up on programming than I ever did sitting in his class. Still, I did get to make some wiggly lines and print out a calculated bill.

College brought a whole new vista of computing. The U of Illinois had the PLATO system - a mostly text based on an orange plasma touch screen, but fast and useful. And I didn't have to program anything into it. We had online courses and tutorials, along with some games and chat rooms. I knew several people who didn't come back the following year because of too many late nights gaming. It was the era of Dungeons and Dragons, and a little text "X" in a maze of lines translated reality into an alternate universe of sword and sorcery.

After a few other stops, roadblocks and potholes, I got my first computer - an Intel 386-25 mhz clone computer. I was so excited - I had saved up for it, budgeting carefully and planning all the things I wanted to do. I wouldn't have to write my stories on that old fashioned electric typwriter anymore, no more hand-editing.

I lugged it home, cleared space for it, powered it up, and ...

Watched it just sit there, the white cursor blinking on a black screen at the end of the first line, "C:\_" Oh yeah, it was exciting. Suddenly I recalled all those days of high school and that TRS-80 (which was then 10 years old).

OK, I needed help and eventually found it from a few friends. People gave me some shareware and some utilities, and my first upgrade was to buy a 14.4 modem. Sure, it was fast for the time, but at least it let me get online to CompuServe and access the larger cyber world and the beginnings of the "global community".

The following years saw hundreds of hours online with various bulletin boards, downloading hundreds of files, using hundreds of floppy disks, and continually upgrading hardware and software, trying out new things, and getting new toys.

My home is filled (not exactly "Littered") with computers and parts. There are a few computer "antiques" like a compaq portable (the size of a sewing machine) and a toshiba laptop, a 386-25 in pieces a 486-66 with Windows 3.11, kept around as my scanning station and running programs which won't run on Windows 98, and the "newer" Pentium 233 with Windows 98. With computers changing as fast as they do, we all know that anything we buy today is outdated in about six months. I keep telling family and friends not to upgrade until you absolutely have to - there is no reason to spend money in anticipation of what you might want when waiting a little while will get you the same thing for less.

Getting a fast processor is helpful, but so many people are just surfing the web, writing email, and for that, a 1 gigahertz computer is a little overkill. Games, video, running multiple applications at the same time - those could use the faster processor. But do get the biggest hard drive you can afford -- you will always need more storage space.

And the internet... after all this time, it's still in its infancy. Despite broadband connections like DSL, cable and sattelite, transfer speeds could be faster. Bypassing the gazillion personal homepages, there is some good information and content out there but it could be even better. Looking past the failure of hundreds of "dot com" companies, e-commerce is still a viable and worthwhile option.

Beyond the desktop, there are still large scale mainframes and super computers, special task computer graphics computers, and specialty computers everywhere - from refridgerators to cars to the space station. Everything just gets better and faster.

Happy Computing!



Go to the HTML room (second floor)

Search Engines
Google
Copernic
MSN
Yahoo
Geocities

Hotmail
MSN Communities
Microsoft (Support - Knowledge base)
AMD
Intel
Adobe

AMNESI Reverse IP Lookup
Internet Swiss Army Knife
EONS IP Lookup
Bear Computers

MP3.Com

Maxis - Sim City creators
Interplay

Read Please - text to speech
SpeechWorks
WinSpeech

Defaced Pages Archive
SlashDot
2600
FreshMeat
Internet Engineering Task Force

Urban Legends
Urban Legends Reference pages
Urban Legends (another one)

CIAC Hoax Busters
Hoax du Jour
V Myths
Symantec Virus Hoaxes
F-Secure Virus Info
McAfee Virus Alerts
Security and Virus Info
V Myths

Network Tools
MSN Virus Alerts

The Onion (satirical site)
Digital Charity - click to make sponsor paid donations
Non-Profits - click to make sponsor paid donations

Linux Newbie Guide
Linus Documentation Project


Trend Micro and Websense offer spyware filters from their Web sites at trendmicro.com and websense.com. A search on Google.com for Spyware blockers reveals a variety of free and payment-required downloads at sites like spyguard.com and bulletproofsoft.com.

Heads Up Displays
Stereo 3D
Gen Reality
Nuvision
Stereographics


Printing
Desktop publishing printers
wide format printers
large format printers


Epson Stylus Photo 1270 -- Color inkjet. 1440x720 dpi. 256KB. Prints up to 31"x44". Photos: 4" x 6": 48 seconds. 8" x 10": 1 minute 50 seconds. USB/Parallel. About $500.

Epson Stylus Color 1520 -- Color inkjet. Up to 6 PPM. 1440x720 dpi. 64KB. Parallel/Serial. Prints up to 17"x22". About $500

Epson Stylus Color 3000 -- Color inkjet. Up to 6 PPM. 1440x720 dpi. 64KB. Parallel/Serial. Prints up to 17"x22". About $886



First Floor
Foyer Kitchen Living Dining Conservatory Greenhouse Garden
Media Game SciFi Collectors Library Gallery Computer Workout
Tower Lab Crypt Secret Garage Office Outside

Second Floor
Spirituality Power Gay Crafts Work Egypt
Bedroom Geneology HTML Tower Castle Misc
Family Mike Danny Randy Jon Michael Garth

This page last updated December 23, 2003
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