Computers

[russotto]

1st computer experience: Printing terminal, acoustic coupler. Playing the old "Star Trek" game (uses LOTS of paper). This thing was ARPANet connected, too, though I never wrote anything on that net.

Then to the Apple ][+, Apple //e, Lisa 2/10, and on to various Macs and powermacs. Along the way I used a VAX 11/783 (a bit more powerful than a Mac II), PDP 11/70, a few Ultrix and Sun boxes, RS/6000s, and even a VAX being used as a front end for a Cray (never wrote anything for the Cray myself, though).

Oh yeah, and I learned enough PC crap to get by, though the first and only Intel box I owned is the laptop I picked up off an employer's scrapheap a year ago or so.

As I prepare to enter my fourth decade, all I can say about computer capability is "Holy shit!". When I used that 11/70, it took a while to draw a freaking monochrome circle on the Tektronics terminal. Now we can do 30fps of interactive full-color graphics?

[mbpark]

I've owned a few systems

I started out on a Commodore 64 in 1984. I still own one, but I remember having one because everyone else did.
In 1985, I ended up with a Timex/Sinclair 1000 with 16K RAM as well, but that broke, badly. It was not a good thing.
However, I wanted to teach myself apps and hardware and how they operated, so I ended up buying a bunch of old TRS-80 machines such as a Model II, Model III, Color Computer 2, and a couple more Commodore 64's and a PET 4016 as well.
In 1993, I bought my first IBM, an XT. In 1994, after that one broke, I bought another XT. That was the last until 1997, when I bought a Compaq C140 Windows CE handheld and an Ampro Little Board XT so I could connect to my ISP and do e-mail for home and work.
In 1998, I got my first Windows 95 machine, an AMD K5-100 with 32MB RAM. It was nice, but not fast enough for MP3s so I ended up with a Cyrix MediaGX 200 laptop, which ran Windows 98 and eventually Linux after 98 pissed me off badly with virus issues.
Along the way, I picked up 2 286 laptops, which I still have one of, a 486 DX2/50 laptop, which I have @ work, a Dell Optiplex Pentium II/450, which I still have @ work because they bought it off me (because I never used it), an Amiga 1200 I sold because I didn't have time to use it, a Philips Nino 210 Palm-Size PC, a Handspring Visor Deluxe, and a couple more 486's to play with that I gave to work for testing machines or ripped apart for parts because my friends needed them. I just bought a Diamond Mako because they're cheap right now, and EPOC kicks butt, with 10x the apps that the PocketPC platform has.

Right now I have a Dell Dimension 4100 1GHz PIII with 512MB RAM, and every concievable add-on sans CD-RW you can think of, running Windows 2000 Pro. It's got a Commodore 64 sitting right next to it. I can just borrow my sister's, after all, it's USB

The point of the above rant is to show one thing. I started out on 1Mhz machines back in 1984, and now I'm calling the Cellar on a machine that's over 1,000 times faster, doing the same darn thing I did in 1992. In 1991, I got a modem, and the Cellar was one of the first places I called (January 1992 or something like that!), because Tony said it was a good BBS to call.

I started calling here on a 64, and I've GOT to find a way to "call" here again on one. That would be totally cool. I've got it sitting next to me. Now to get a high-speed modem on it so I can at the least call in via my shell account and bring back old memories!