Remember When :-
The Z80 chip ruled.
8 kilobytes of memory was enough.
We loaded and saved our programs to cassette tape.
The TV set was the monitor.
Start up was instant.
Two colours was state of the art – then four colours., oh wow. !
Printers were rattly dot matrix.
The Commodore VIC-20 was released. Then the Commodore 64. Be still my beating heart. !
Home computers actually had sound, beep beep beep.
We knew how to manually calculate check digits.
We spent hours typing our first BASIC program in, saving it to tape, then testing.
Many home computes ware named after fruit, not just apples.
True computer geeks hand built their machines or used a Sinclair.
DOS (in many flavours) was the only OS. (Apart from CP/M).
IBM had not yet released the first “standard” PC.
Floppy disks were 8 inch, 5 and a quarter inch, and 3 inch (the Apricot and Amstrad standard).
We paid a fortune for our first floppy drive. Whirrrr, clunk, buzzzzz. !
Then Sony 3 and a half inch became the standard. Dang. !!
PC's had two 5 and a quarter inch floppy drives.
Jim Button's PC-FILE 3 flat file database was king.
We used Sidekick.
X-TREE was a great “front end” interface.
We had to beg our company/department for a hard drive.
Hard drives of 10 Megabytes we considered HUGE.
Viruses, trojans, malware, spyware, adware, hijackers did not exist.
Microsoft told us 640 kilobytes of RAM was more than we would ever need.
We wrote our own AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files.
We knew how to write programs with BASIC.
Poke and peek meant putting a line of code at a high memory address and recalling it.
We tried LOGO, LISP, FOTRAN, COBOL and so on to learn.
We discovered that a routine written in Q-BASIC would patch into COBOL.
DOS really bombed out with Ver 4.1 with it's disaster DOSSHELL GUI.
DOS 5 was the best DOS of all.
OS/2 lived and died.
All was well.
Then – Windows. “Papa's Got A Brand New Bag”.
We took to Windows 3 and 3.1 for Workgroups like ducks to water.
Solitaire became the greatest time waster/stress relief/just one more game thing ever.
The brave began modifying the WIN.INI file.
Dear old Windows 3, was it that long ago.
Our real introduction to the Blue Screen Of Death with Windows 95.
Things are getting better with Windows 98 and 98 SEII.
Modems and dial up with 14.4 kilobytes per second, wonders will never cease. !
The most solid OS ever, Windows 2000 Professional.
And what went wrong, Windows ME.
What could have been. Windows Neptune and Windows Triton.
XP, yehaaaaa !. At last a great robust and “do anything you want or need OS”.
Oops, Vista. Or is Vista really so bad after all.
And so to today with a mixture of XP, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1,being used along with so many other OS's and more changes on the horizon.
Well, PC's, operating systems, success and disaster, the net, all of it in about just under 40 years. (Not counting Charles Babbage, Alan Turing, Eniac, and the pioneers of what we have today).
Remember When ?,
Cheers,
Aunty Jack.
The Z80 chip ruled.
8 kilobytes of memory was enough.
We loaded and saved our programs to cassette tape.
The TV set was the monitor.
Start up was instant.
Two colours was state of the art – then four colours., oh wow. !
Printers were rattly dot matrix.
The Commodore VIC-20 was released. Then the Commodore 64. Be still my beating heart. !
Home computers actually had sound, beep beep beep.
We knew how to manually calculate check digits.
We spent hours typing our first BASIC program in, saving it to tape, then testing.
Many home computes ware named after fruit, not just apples.
True computer geeks hand built their machines or used a Sinclair.
DOS (in many flavours) was the only OS. (Apart from CP/M).
IBM had not yet released the first “standard” PC.
Floppy disks were 8 inch, 5 and a quarter inch, and 3 inch (the Apricot and Amstrad standard).
We paid a fortune for our first floppy drive. Whirrrr, clunk, buzzzzz. !
Then Sony 3 and a half inch became the standard. Dang. !!
PC's had two 5 and a quarter inch floppy drives.
Jim Button's PC-FILE 3 flat file database was king.
We used Sidekick.
X-TREE was a great “front end” interface.
We had to beg our company/department for a hard drive.
Hard drives of 10 Megabytes we considered HUGE.
Viruses, trojans, malware, spyware, adware, hijackers did not exist.
Microsoft told us 640 kilobytes of RAM was more than we would ever need.
We wrote our own AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files.
We knew how to write programs with BASIC.
Poke and peek meant putting a line of code at a high memory address and recalling it.
We tried LOGO, LISP, FOTRAN, COBOL and so on to learn.
We discovered that a routine written in Q-BASIC would patch into COBOL.
DOS really bombed out with Ver 4.1 with it's disaster DOSSHELL GUI.
DOS 5 was the best DOS of all.
OS/2 lived and died.
All was well.
Then – Windows. “Papa's Got A Brand New Bag”.
We took to Windows 3 and 3.1 for Workgroups like ducks to water.
Solitaire became the greatest time waster/stress relief/just one more game thing ever.
The brave began modifying the WIN.INI file.
Dear old Windows 3, was it that long ago.
Our real introduction to the Blue Screen Of Death with Windows 95.
Things are getting better with Windows 98 and 98 SEII.
Modems and dial up with 14.4 kilobytes per second, wonders will never cease. !
The most solid OS ever, Windows 2000 Professional.
And what went wrong, Windows ME.
What could have been. Windows Neptune and Windows Triton.
XP, yehaaaaa !. At last a great robust and “do anything you want or need OS”.
Oops, Vista. Or is Vista really so bad after all.
And so to today with a mixture of XP, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1,being used along with so many other OS's and more changes on the horizon.
Well, PC's, operating systems, success and disaster, the net, all of it in about just under 40 years. (Not counting Charles Babbage, Alan Turing, Eniac, and the pioneers of what we have today).
Remember When ?,
Cheers,
Aunty Jack.