Does this bring back a lot of memories!!!

My very first computer was a “Digi-Comp I” that my Grandmother bought me when I was 10 at the Museum of Science and Industry’s gift shop. I think it was 5 or 10 dollars…a lot of money for a “toy souvenir” back then, but since I had begged her to take me to the museum to see the Univac Display in the first place, she gave in. She knew I could put it together as I could build complex plastic models before I could even read. …and she knew all I talked about were computers! When my dad saw it, he said, “what are you going to do with that piece of junk?” I told him build a computer!!! He would fix TVs (vacuum tube TVs) in our basement for people. I told him we should somehow connect a TV to a typewriter and make our own computer. We should somehow make it so you could type on a TV Screen and get the thing to do logic and math. I told him then that someday everyone would have a computer (this was 1964). He laughed at me!!! …then called me an idiot!!! He said computers were only going to get bigger and bigger!!! …that they would take up whole buildings and more power than an entire neighborhood block!!! …and they would cost millions of dollars!!! I said, “No! They will get smaller and smaller and someday they will fit in your pocket or be wearable on your wrist like a ‘Dick Tracy’ video, wrist, radio!” Again he laughed and told me what an idiot I was! He said, “You’re ignorant!!!” …which to him was the worst thing you could call someone without being vulgar or using bad language! At age 10, I gave him the idea of a lifetime and was labelled ignorant. I wished he had lived long enough to see my first iPhone! He developed a brain tumor when I was in 8th grade and they finally did surgery on him when I was a Freshman, but he was never the same. He never got to play with any of my computers.

Then I remember using a slide rule in math classes in high school! My senior year (1972), I was the first person (and the only person) in the school to have a TI SR-10 Calculator! I was forbidden to use it over the slide rule for tests in math and physics and was told it was a “passing fancy!” Mostly, I think the instructors were jealous! It was faster and more accurate than a slide rule!!! I would bring it to school every day to check the instructor’s “work” compared to the slide rule. It became routine for the instructor to ask…”what did you get?” LOL

I built an Altair 8800 for a friend in 1976! I got the job having built my very first computer on a bread board using a 4004 chip and he was impressed. I later upgraded my bread board computer to the power of an 8008!!! I was also working with PDP11s and PDP16s at work (I hated bootstrapping them! I eventually had to have management keep women from wearing “Nylons” to work as they would create electrostatic fields that would “wipe” the memory of a PDP 11 or a PDP16 when they would walk by and I’d have to reprogram it from scratch). In 1977, Processor Technology came out with the very first “everything” in one box microcomputer called the Sol 20. I bought one to build in 1978. The most amazing thing about the Sol 20 was the personality module which allowed the computer to self bootstrap (YAY!!!). Turn it on and it was ready to install Basic (via a cassette tape) and then load your programs! I still have that computer. While I was an advocate at work for the 8080 and the Z80 Chip, my supervisor and an engineer in our Production Test Equipment Lab at work were building a SWTP (SouthWest Technical Products) 6800/2. We argued about which system would better serve the range of Production Test Equipment that we were going to build for the company’s high volume production (50,000 units per week). I lost out to the Engineer and my supervisor since I was only a technician and had only built and debugged 4 microprocessors before they had started even one! It did force me to learn machine code for the 6802 and later the 6502. In those days, there was a lot of competition of ideas and hardware. The 8080 and Z80 were using a fairly standard (for the time) S100 bus. Very little was organized in the 6800 and the 6500 processor market until the “Big 4” came along…Apple, Atari, Commodore, and Radio Shack (with an honorable mention to Sinclair).

In 1980 I graduated to an Apple II Plus (which I also still have) with dual 5 1/4″ floppies. At the time, I had considered “Apple I” & “Apple II” toys and I had to do a lot of reading to convince myself that an Apple II Plus was the “best” (at the time) investment for a usable “Home Computer. It was also one of the most expensive! I had to get a job teaching Night School at the junior college in electronics to make enough to buy one. The wife wouldn’t hear of it otherwise!!! LOL That computer had to last me until about 1991 when I could finally afford a Zeos 486-50. ( I was busy starting both a family and a business! …cash was tight.) That unit lasted several mother board, memory, and hard drive upgrades until I bought a WinBook Si (which was stolen) and then a WinBook Si2 (still have and use).

Finally, in 2008, I bought a MacBook Pro that has served me very well for 8 years. At the time, I bought the fastest and most powerful processor they had knowing it might be awhile before I could buy another computer (kids, college, weddings, etc…you know how life can get in the way of having a good time! LOL) Memory and Hard Drive upgrades as well as the advent of “Parallels” for the Mac to allow Windows to operate on my Mac has been a real “boon.” I’m not a huge fan of Windows, but sometimes business requires its use to “get along.” Thus has been my life in the field of computers and Microprocessors! Many of you probably have very colorful histories as well when it comes to computers!!! It has been a very interesting half century!!! I’d love to hear your stories!!! :)