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.
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