Computing History

[Wally Balljacker]

I was just thinking, it would be fun to post some of the milestones of our personal computing histories. Mind you, I'm only 20, so mine will probably seem fairly recent.

1993 - First PC - 486 running Windows 3.1, handed down to me from my father
1995 - First Mac - Power Macintosh 6200, running Mac System 7
1999 - First laptop - Compaq Presario, running Windows 98, PIII 700
1999 - Got 56k dial-up internet access at my house, via MSN
2002 - Got broadband access for the first time
2004 - Tried Linux for the first time in the form of live CDs
2004 - Did my first install and dual-booted Mandrake and WinXP
2005 - Completely wiped out Windows XP and installed Fedora Core 3
2007 - Been running various flavors of Linux and BSD ever since.

[greggh]

My first was an Atari 800 in the early 80's. Someday folks will post "I started way back with Windows when that OS still existed."

[KStorm]

I had a Timex Sinclair T1000 for my first "PC" back in '83 (no, not 1883), complete with the plug-in 16k memory module and cassette tape drive. I didn't have a PC again until 1998 (a Gateway G6-300 w/Win98). My first LInux install was on this PC five years later (Redhat 9). That same year I bought a Compaq Presario 6000; in 2004 I went the live cd route with Knoppix v3.0. In 2006 I installed PCLinuxOS on it; various distros have been on my PC since. The Presario is starting to show its age, so I'm planning on a homemade Shuttlebox hopefully soon.

[davijordan]

Whoa this is making me feel old. Do you really want to be bored to death?
I started out in puters at school on a ibm 360 model 40 mainframe using punch cards to write fortran programs. Yes the days of the thick glasses and shirt pen pouches. This was before cs was a major! My first computing job was on old datapoint machines doing maintenance programming with databus and rpg. I think Datapoint gave arcnet a start. I remember we had these old hd diskpacks with a whopping 10 megs that you have to wait 5 to 10 minutes for them to come up to speed before you could use them.

I worked in a small computer store getting paid to have fun for about 5 years from the 8 bit to 16 bit era. Microsoft and other companies use to get us software for almost nothing for those times. I was lucky enough to meet a few of the famous game programmers and even helped on a few programs myself. So i have used about every commodore, apple, atari and early pc's back then. I played on some of the earliest atari st's and amiga's. I even had my own private bbs at one time. Even played with the real unix on some dial up systems. I would make money on the side converting data files from one platform to another before the mediia compatablility we have now.

I taught college part-time for almost 8 years where I started using cpm and mpm and then graduated to Msdos and it;s clones. Eventally, I landed a job as a tech at another college and was there for almost ten years. I used about every 32bit pc and mac computer and os. I also worked with Novell, NT, Windoze, and etc. We had SCO for a short while till i converted the labs to RH7.

Now that I am semi-retired, my brother calls me fred sanford for all the toys i have from collecting over the last few years. I do contract support and write code on occation. I do not have any multicore machines, but maybe eventually. I do not need any more horsepower with the equipment I have now. I have forgotten more than most people have learned. I could tell some stories though. I use mostly linux and still have a ms box or two to keep my skills up. Looking back now. My first computer I owned was a vic 20 but, I think the trs-80 was the first one I played with. Been there done that. Good thing I became a dad before I went into computers or I might not have been one. I have the most beautiful daughter in the whole world (and she got her looks from her mom). Family is more important than any computer...... I need to hit the sack.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

p.s. to all my fellow paisans out there: Happy Colunbus day!!!!!!!!!!