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Drifter[_2_]

On 10/6/2011 6:30 AM, X ` Man wrote:
On 10/6/11 1:42 AM, wrote:
On Wed, 05 Oct 2011 21:43:24 -0400, Wayne B
wrote:

Few people realize it today but the mouse and windowing concepts
originated in a Xerox Corporate R&D operation called the Palo Alto
Research Center (PARC). It was a classic case of not knowing what
they had invented and not knowing what to do with it.

I was a computer guy watching all of those missteps in the early days
of the desk top computer. I never understood why Wang had all of that
computer horsepower under the desk and only used it to type letters.
I was frustrated that my Atari 2600 didn't have a keyboard and a user
accessible program language. It was clear that this thing had as much
power as a late 60s mainframe.

I did have a first day ship PC tho.

I was not as impressed with the cartoon interface as I was supposed to
be. I stuck with DOS until it was pried out of my dead cold hands and
I still have DOS applications I run almost every day now.
I suppose the difference is I was raised in a text based computer
world. Command line does not scare me,
In fact the first computers I worked with did not even have a console
or a keyboard. You either inputted with cards or you manually entered
things with switches and buttons.
Of course a whole payroll system might fit in 4K of core. Programs
were a lot smaller.
My basic school "penny a day" program for a 1401 fit on three 80
column cards

I bought one of the first IBM PCs available at a retail store in McLean,
Virginia, in either 1983 or 1984. It was an 8088 machine, with one
floppy drive. I bought a second floppy drive...it was very expensive.
Looked at a Macintosh about then, too, at a store in Bethesday. I was
not that impressed with it. Much much later, after I had written a few
articles for PC Week, PC Mag and Byte, I started corresponding with
Jerry Pournelle, the sci-fi writer, at Byte, and he arranged for me to
receive an S-100 bus computer similar to what he was using. I messed
with it for about six months and told him I didn't think the S-100 bus
had much of a future in the face of what IBM and Apple and the IBM
imitators were doing. Later I sold the IBM and got an Eagle, with an
8086 CPU and an AST graphics board.

*Hard to believe that was close to 30
years ago.*

Hard to believe, period.

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