Ancient Dinosaurs

[Elphaba]

I was surfing the web and came upon this delight article, written in 1982, about a writer's first months using a computer.

Here's an excerpt:

What was so exciting? Merely the elimination of all drudgery, except for the fundamental drudgery of figuring out what to say, from the business of writing. The process works this way.

When I sit down to write a letter or start the first draft of an article, I simply type on the keyboard and the words appear on the screen. For six months, I found it awkward to compose first drafts on the computer. Now I can hardly do it any other way. It is faster to type this way than with a normal typewriter, because you don't need to stop at the end of the line for a carriage return (the computer automatically "wraps" the words onto the next line when you reach the right-hand margin), and you never come to the end of the page, because the material on the screen keeps sliding up to make room for each new line. It is also more satisfying to the soul, because each maimed and misconceived passage can be made to vanish instantly, by the word or by the paragraph, leaving a pristine green field on which to make the next attempt.

My computer has a 48K memory. Since each K represents 1,024 bytes of information—each byte representing one character or digit—the machine can manipulate more than 49,000 items of information at a time. In practice, after allowing for the space that The Electric Pencil's programming instructions occupy in the computer's memory, the machine can handle documents 6,500 to 7,500 words long, or a little longer than this article. I break anything longer into chunks or chapters and work with them one at a time.

When I've finished with such a chunk, I press another series of buttons and store what I have written on my disk drive. This is a cigar-box-shaped unit that sits next to my computer, connected through a shocking-pink ribbon cable containing thirty-four separate strands. Inside the drive is the floppy disk, which is essentially magnetic recording tape pressed into the shape of a small record and then enclosed in a square cardboard envelope, 5 1/4 inches on each side. The system transfers data from the computer to the disk, or vice versa, at about 1,000 words per second, so it is no nuisance to pause after each fifteen or twenty minutes of writing to store what I've just done. Each of the disks in my system can hold about 100K of information, or more than twice as much as a full load from the computer memory. If one disk is full, I pull it out and snap another in.

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Isn't that a hoot!

So, I thought it would be fun to tell our own first experiences with the new "computer," at least for those of us old enough to remember when they were a brand new invention!

Mine was on a IBM PC, two disc drives, and the program was Lotus 123. I caught on very quick, except I wasn't exactly sure how I was supposed to apply Lotus. I had never heard the word "spreadsheet," and was not an accountant. So it was just a fun new calculator to me!

My first word processor was one HUGE computer, no disk drives, where you had to insert every single command the document required. For example, if I needed to change the font, I had to know the command by heart, and place it in the text.

The only thing it did on its own was wrap sentences, and man, I thought that was so cool! (We're talking 1980!)

So, anyone care to share their own story of the dawn of the computer age?

Elphie

[Guest Yediyd]

My first computer is in my lap right now!! It's a Dell notebook...I've had it for less than 3 months!!!

[miztrniceguy]

my first computer i owned was a no-name box with 64k ram, 20meg hard drive it had, and an 8088 processor it used DOS. i had a 24k modem and could get online to the little bit of dos internet there was....actually was logging into peoples own nodes of their bulletin board. mostly all i did was download neat utilities. didn't know anything about word or windows at all, much less a spreadsheet. and the printer....hooo boy!! a daiseywheel that had great quality for words because it used actual letters to print, but gosh it has huge...weighed about 30 lbs, was so big it was hard to actually carry! the monitor had orange letters that glowed on a black background and was about 10" .

this computer died due to a lightning strike that fried the motherboard and proccessor.

at the time my only experience was using my work computer for proprietary data input for AM/PM...about 1992

[StosRob]

Commodore 64. I think that sounds right. Then an IBM PC. They were actually hand me downs from my dad. I remember no information on the hard drive and stuff. I thought it was a big deal when printers went from the roll paper to the single sheets.

[Gwen]

the roll paper i forgot about that!! lol we were taught about computers in elem school. they were so excited, they had one. how to handle and care for the floppy, floppy disks (that's what i always called them). didn't have one at home. by the time i got to middle school they had moved on to the 3.5 in disks (lol i hope that is the right size, can't even remember, the hard floppys). my dad did finally buy one by then. at that time all i was worried about was learning how to type on it. used those disks through high school, cause the schools didn't stay cutting edge and have the computers capable of cd's. (i'm not that old :) ) i take that back they did have 3 computers in the library that used them, and had internet access, the class room computers weren't cutting edge. i don't know much about the technical part of the computers i used, to be honest i cared less. lol

the branch i'm in now has a lot of grandparents that touch computers only when required. we were having a family history class and one of the sis said she had gone a couple of yrs before to the stake fhc and put a lot of her information on disk and didn't know how to utilize it. i'm not all that computer literate in the grand scheme of comparisons but i can figure out the basics, so i told her to bring it and i'd see if i could help her (no one else there had a clue). she brought all the stuff on the next sunday and it was on one of the floppy floppy disks. it was so hard not to laugh. a couple yrs ago, huh? ........ which reminds me of another encounter i have to share. lol right after i moved to this branch (end of 2000). this sis and another were punching holes in some sheets they had run off on the copier in the library. they had a sheet of notebook paper and were tracing the holes onto the copies and then single hole punching them. i picked up the three hole hole punch, and asked why they weren't just using this. they didn't know what it was. watching these two sis try to figure out how to use it.....i'm laughing just thinking about it....they had no clue. i finally had to show them before i started to feel bad for laughing. they were so amazed at my knowledge, the coolest thing they had seen all week. lol

in comparison, a recent trip to my dad's house had me trying to explain to my kid (5yr old) why grandpa only had 3 channels, and why they couldn't pause live tv. wow, my kids are spoiled. lol

[FrankJL]

First computer my family had was an Apple IIc.

My first computer that I owned was one of those old IBM Thinkpad laptops with the butterfly keyboards, I can't remember the specs exactly, but I think it was a 486 DX/2 66mhz, or something like that.

My first real experince, that I leared a lot about computers from, was when I was in Germany. My dad and I ran a 20-node WildCat 4 BBS.

[pushka]

My husband and I, (sounds posh dun it? lol) first purchased a Word Processor in the mid 90's. Before then, I'd used a simple computer where I worked, which was DOS only, and the only keys we used for transferring to different screens was F10 and probs F4...

In 98 I got interested in working with Windows. I took an 8 weeks IT course at college, and my husband purchased our first Windows computer...Win 97 or something...since then I've left him and have been upgrading simple computers since...I love the PC and the Net.

[Elphaba]

First computer my family had was an Apple IIc.

I LOVED my IIsi. It was my BABY!! It was my first computer in my publishing business.

Oh wait. I'm talking about a MAC IIsi. Anyway, I performed magic on that computer. Later, I upgraded to a Quadra. Once I had to go back to my IIsi for an emergency, and I wanted to take a power saw to it it was so flippin' slow!!!

I miss my MACs. They made work so much fun.

Elphie

[Alaskagain]

Paleontology, the study of really old stuff.

1979? Tandy Radio Shack -80 or TRS-80 (popularly known as "Trash-80", lol) Amber letters on a black screen. We saved the data on a cassette tape that was extremely vulnerable to disruptions due to changes in audio volume.

<slinking off to count grey hairs and liver spots>

[Traveler]

My first digital computer was an 8K Osborn. Prior to that I used various analog devices.

The Traveler