BoatBanter.com - View Single Post

iBoaterer[_3_]

In article 1596790600396888137.859481bmckeenospam-
, says...

iBoaterer wrote:
In article ,
says...

On 7/30/13 8:44 AM, Gogarty wrote:
In article ,
says...
(Snip)
I was on CIS and for a while on another similar provider, the name of
which I don't recall...wait a minute, was it The Source? I am proud that
I never tried AOL.

It was The Source. Thanks for jolting my memory. Never did AOL or
Compuserve.

My equipment was all Radio Shack -- TRS80 and TRS100 laptop. That was a
really usefful machine. Ran on AA batteries, used acoustic cups with modem.
We were early computerized travellers.

Really started witha huge IBM word processor in 1970.

Ahh, the Trash80. Lots of my friends had that one. They all called it
their Trash80.

My first "computer" was an IBM MT/ST. It wasn't mine, actually, but when
I worked at the teachers union, my secretary was the "operator." It was
a large, clunky memory typewriter that used selectric like type balls. I
had to run it on occasion on weekends to produce crap for board
meetings. It was just awful.

I learned Basic programming with my first PC, an IBM PC. Very
frustrating at first because just about everything I input came back
with "syntax error" errors. Cursed a lot...as a guy with two degrees in
English, I did not make "syntax errors," but of course these were syntax
errors of a completely different variety.

I had a freebie account at The Source because a friend had the company
as an advertising and PR account and he had "freebie" accounts to give out.

My first computer was a Sinclair that you hooked to the TV. Learned DOS
on it, then on to TRS-80 which wasn't an "IBM word processor" by the
way, it was a Radio Shack.

My first computer was an NCR 315. Filled a room. 10k decimal memory.
Tape drives, and mag card ( CRAM ) for storage. 1964. First times on the
net was ARPAnet with KSR33 and VT52 terminals on DEC systems. First PC was
about $10,000 total. Bought for company and had disk drive and 8" floppy.
Still have a recipe for spicy peanut noodles I printed out on a dot matrix
printer from the Bay Area forum in about 1982. As to VisiCalc, we had DEC
corp equipment at Visicorp I designed to run Edison drives. System
Industries was the employer then.

I remember when my brother was in college, I went to see him and he took
me to the electronics lab. We went to the computer which was in a large
room and he explained to me how he was going to have that computer talk
to another computer at another campus and have it print an answer back.
I was just amazed when the other computer printed out an answer to a
math problem for him!