[olug] "I remember when..."

Dave Thacker dthacker9 at cox.net
Sat Apr 25 15:19:43 UTC 2009


On Thursday 23 April 2009 23:12:19 Dan Linder wrote:

1983-Timex-Sinclair, later added a thermal printer and the enourmous ram 
expansion module. Had several cassette recorders with nail polish on the 
volume control to mark the sweet spot for loading programs.  My first flight 
simulator. 

1984-Commodore 64, wrote my first basic program.  My first word processor was 
a cartridge based program called Quick Brown Fox.     My first dot matrix 
printer was a Commodore 1525. The letters "g" and "q" didn't have true 
descenders.  Several of my professors asked me what was wrong with my printer 
when I turned in papers written on this.   I later got the 1541 floppy drive, 
what a beast!   Went to my first pirate party.  20 guys in a room swapping 
games.  

1988-Got a job with a company running SCO Xenix on an IBM AT with an 8 port 
Computone board going out to wyse 30's and 60's.  You never forget your first 
girl or your first Unix.  This company paid $10,000 for a Compaq 386-12 with 
12MB of RAM and a 300MB ESDI disk.   It supported 15-20 users via 
Computone/Wyse.

1992-Got my first PC, a Packard Bell 286 reclaimed from the junk heap.  No 
hard drive, but I eventually put a 100 MB hard card in it.  

1993-attended a meeting of /usr/group/nebraska on the Creighton Campus.  Came 
home with 20 1.44mb floppy's for a system called "Linux".   Never got it 
installed on the packard bell. 

Eventually Linux and I meet again with Red Hat 4.     

DT




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