Trip down Computer memory lane

For some reason I wound up on the computerhistory.org website. For a computer nerd like me it was great fun. It reminded me of when I was a teenager reading magazines I acquired from a local video game producer - Byte, Interface Age, Computerworld, Datamation and Compute!

My Uncles Dad (a really nice man) owned an Osborne computer which I got to play around on. This was the first portable computer for the average Joe. At 24 pounds it was anything but light. Compare that with todays ultra-lights weighing in under 3 pounds! (Mac Airbook anyone...)

I remember watching as he filled in numbers and formulas in Visicalc. My first experience with a spreadsheet. We also played around in BASIC a little bit - wow, programming is fun I thought!

While I never finished a degree in programming I have had years of experience as an amateur with classes in BASIC, Pascal, dBase, C++, and Assembly language. And then self teaching HTML and web development; and a stint with Real Basic.

I often think that I should have stuck with it and become a full time programmer. It is something I enjoy doing and in my current job I get to help a great deal of software development companies in diagnosing issues in their interface programming to our companies programming interfaces for scanners.

Back to the computer history - I often think about the computers I have seen come and go: DEC, Rainbow; NEC PCs (my first real computer the NEC PC 8001 running CP/M) Timex Sinclair (my first toy computer the Timex Sinclair 1000 with 2KB internal RAM and the worst 16KB RAM expansion module ever!) the Commodore Vic-20, Commodore 64 - some of the computers I first programmed on for a class. IMSAI, Pertec, Northstar, Heathkit (some assembly required) and so many others that were early systems on the scene.

Now I think of the more modern computers I have owned or worked on: Apple II, Franklin Ace 1000 (an Apple II knockoff), Apple Macintosh - models ranging from the original Mac, Mac II Mac SE, Mac Quadra 605, Quadra 630, Performa, iMac, iBook, Mac G4, Mac Quad G5, PowerBook G4, MacBook Pro. IBM PC (the original with the 8086 and 8088 chips) PC compatibles ranging from Intel 286, 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium IV, Celeron the AMD compatible chips.

Do you remember when you had to have a math coprocessor chip if you wanted to get accuracy in your math calculations? Now processors have specific sections built in to do the same thing only much faster and with ever increasing precision.

Now we all wonder what the future will hold? My brother-in-law is an electrical engineer that works on chip design for a very large well known electronics company. He was just telling us about a meeting at a customers site where his competitor came in with the old technology and some band aids to get it farther along. The competitor was touting how my Bro-in-laws companies technology as unproven at which point my bro-in-law asked the customer to step into the other room to see the technology working if they had any doubts. The technology was a dramatic new approach that did not incorporate any of the old technology but a whole new approach to take the project to the next level.

This is what is in store for us all - in meetings everywhere from hundreds and thousands of companies - new technology presentations which are leading to sales leading to new products that will affect all of our lives.