I just came across this article.
https://www.howtogeek.com/what-came-before-microsoft-windows/
It reminded me of my former boss. We think we are old. His computer learning was using punch cards. He described pushing them in one section removing that result and pushing them in another section to continue the program.
My my how far computing has come in 50 years.
Commodore Pet from Dadās workplace, own ZX81 then Acorn Electron. Used friendsā Atari 800, ZX Spectrum, VIC 20, BBC Micro, Commodore 64. Something with a green screen and 8in floppies at school. School also had a Research Machines 380Z (from an Oxford startup).
All these and more are described in The Computers That Made Britain.
None of the above did gaming as well as the machine-coded arcade games from the late 70ās to the mid eighties, I would add.
Sent an original game program āZX Hangmanā in to Michael Orwin Software, a company that put out compilations, but it failed to load for them off my tape.
I love topics like this.
Our first family computer was a TRS-80 Color Computer, in 1979. The silver one with the chicklet keys. Next was an IBM PC (Dad worked for IBM), then an IBM PC XT. My first computer that was my own was a PCjr, in 1984. In 1989 when I went to University, I got an IBM PS/2 Model 25. While at university, I was introduced to Unix (SunOS) and I fell in love with the NeXT. I still own the NeXT Computer Prototype (yes, my Cube is a prototype) that I bought in the early 1990s from a NeXT employee named Blaine. In 2001 I went to a conference, where I saw Mac OS X for the first time; this was around the time of 10.0.4, and the NeXT heritage was obvious. I called my wife and told her that we were buying a PowerMac G4 Cube to sit next to my NeXT Cube. I sold that a while back, but have been a Mac user since 2001.
Currently as a family we have a fleet of five MacBook Air M1 (2020) units, and I have a M2 Pro MacBook Pro from my employer.
I have a Lenovo M900 on which I run VMware ESXi (v6 I think, not sureā¦ I never need to manage it anymore), on which I run about a half-dozen VMs. This is nowhere near as capable as the Dell R610 it replaced, but it is much quieter, generates much less heat, and consumes much less electricity, so it was a huge win in those respects. (The R610 had 192GB RAM and 32 vCPUs; the M900 has 32GB RAM and 8 vCPUs.)
As an employee of IBM, my father would never consider getting a Mac, so all I could do was play with those at a friendās house. I wanted an Atari 800 too, but that was also a no-go. I now own an Atari 800, 600XL, 800XL, and XEGS. (Not directly related, but not far off: I also wanted an Atari 2600 but my parents never bought me a game system. I now own multiple Atari 2600s and multiple 2600 emulators; similarly I have a real Atari 5200, with trackball, and this is my favorite game system of all time.)
Thatās nice to read you dad worked for IBM, does the most passion about computers and IT in general derived about your dad? Or you discovered something else by yourself?
I definitely wanted to do something technology-related because of my fatherās career: He worked as a contractor for NASA in IBMās now-defunct Federal Systems Division. We lived in Huntsville, Alabama, from 1971 to 1976, and then in the Cape Canaveral, Florida, area from 1976 to 1984. Rockets and space were a daily thing for me groing up, and that made an impression.
I used MANY computers before I purchased my OWN first computer. The very first computer I used was a minicomputer I never personally SAW because it was in a county-wide school district location. I got into it in high school from an AT&T Teletype which happened to have an āacoustic couplerā [pre modem stuff]; this was BACK in 1972. Despite the clumsy, slow access, it did capture my interest and led me to a career decision in Computer Science.
The first computer I actually purchased and owned was a Micron P100; the ā100ā was apparently significant because it was a 100 Mhz processor running the system. The unit came with Microsoft āWindows for Workgroups 3.11ā, but around the time I got the system in 1995, Microsoft had just introduced Windows 95, so I DUAL BOOTED that with Linux - which was my actual intent. Slackware was my choice for the first introduction to Linux software, and I picked up a book containing a slightly dated version; it worked, but gave me low resolution (640x480) and only 8 colors, so one of the first investigative things I did with Slackware was to learn how to improve that; I found a newer graphics driver and brought things up to whatās commonly called VESA (1024x768) graphics today, with 800x600 as backup; MUCH better.
A few years later I got a Toshiba laptop and did more. Iām not sure I even remember all of the systems Iāve used over the years, but professionally Iāve used scores of different operating systems, applications, tools and programming languages. Iām NOT a great programmer; Iāve been more of a systems integrator with a good general knowledge of software-hardware capabilities and capabilities. Iām using a Lenovo IdeaPad now; I think their āThinkpadā line, which they acquired long ago from IBM is far superior to the IdeaPad, but āthe price is rightā with what Iām using, since Iām now retired.
The first computer I programmed was an IMSAI 8080 that was sitting in the metal shop I worked at (we were fabricating prototype/early production sheet metal parts). I have vague memories of flipping the switches (no keyboard) and saving programs to cassette tape. I also have memories of 80 x 20 terminal ouput while learning MASM (macro assembler), but that may have been on a Cromemco system that was also around and was the heart of a commercial video arcade game being developed. Those systems were so simple: line up machine code and press the go button.
Brian, I remember the Atari 830 acoustic coupler, and always wanted one of those. And an 810 disk drive. And lots of other Atari peripheralsā¦ lolā¦