Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Memories
My guess is it's been about 20 years since I got my first computer. Not the family computer, not the computer my brother and I shared to learn programming (tho' my brother started out on this, also shared). My own first computer.
It was this beauty. Two floppy drives (not the 3.5" discs, mind you, these were the glorious 5.25" floppy floppies), 9" amber screen. detachable keyboard, 30 lb freeweight carrying case. Lasted me through college (got it some time during my junior year of high school IIRC), though the monitor died on a Thanksgiving trip to Oregon (thanks Bob & Sue for the loaner TV so I could write my paper) and the second disk drive eventually got wonky (nothing like swapping WordPerfect disks to load the program, spell check, thesaurus, and then a fourth disk to save your paper). It's up in the attic, along with computer #2, which lasted a year or so less than the first ... not that it broke, but tech advanced so quickly in the 90s (from a DOS 3.31 PC in '92 to a Win98 machine in '98) that you had to upgrade more often (managed to skip Win95 somehow, thank goodness). The '98 machine only lasted 3 years when XP came out in '01. It doesn't get much use these days since I got the PowerBook two and half years ago. Hmmmm, I'm due for a new computer next tax refund season...
As outdated as it is now, I still remember Oliver fondly. (Named the PC after the brainy kid in Bloom County; remember Bloom County?) King's Quest. Infocom text adventures (the computer where you first got the babelfish is going to have a special place in your heart). Asteroids knock-offs. Good times.
It was this beauty. Two floppy drives (not the 3.5" discs, mind you, these were the glorious 5.25" floppy floppies), 9" amber screen. detachable keyboard, 30 lb freeweight carrying case. Lasted me through college (got it some time during my junior year of high school IIRC), though the monitor died on a Thanksgiving trip to Oregon (thanks Bob & Sue for the loaner TV so I could write my paper) and the second disk drive eventually got wonky (nothing like swapping WordPerfect disks to load the program, spell check, thesaurus, and then a fourth disk to save your paper). It's up in the attic, along with computer #2, which lasted a year or so less than the first ... not that it broke, but tech advanced so quickly in the 90s (from a DOS 3.31 PC in '92 to a Win98 machine in '98) that you had to upgrade more often (managed to skip Win95 somehow, thank goodness). The '98 machine only lasted 3 years when XP came out in '01. It doesn't get much use these days since I got the PowerBook two and half years ago. Hmmmm, I'm due for a new computer next tax refund season...
As outdated as it is now, I still remember Oliver fondly. (Named the PC after the brainy kid in Bloom County; remember Bloom County?) King's Quest. Infocom text adventures (the computer where you first got the babelfish is going to have a special place in your heart). Asteroids knock-offs. Good times.
Labels: Nostalgia
Mikesell
2 Snarky Remarks:
Unknown, at 12:11 PM
512K. Took me a moment remember you're not talking about half a gig. 512K used to be huge ... and expensive (almost $900).
I really liked the early all-in-one Macs back in the day. Mostly because they didn't weigh 30 pounds.
I remember in college you could tell who had a Mac because their papers were all printed with the Chicago font instead of Courier. Man, I hated Mac users back then... :p
I really liked the early all-in-one Macs back in the day. Mostly because they didn't weigh 30 pounds.
I remember in college you could tell who had a Mac because their papers were all printed with the Chicago font instead of Courier. Man, I hated Mac users back then... :p
Really don't miss swapping those floppies. And remember when 512K memory was huge?