Old computer memories ...

My history with computers goes back as far as the Apple II. From kindergarten to middle school I happily typed away at school on those classics and since my parents were too poor to afford a computer for the home, I never really realized how tech had jumped up.

The first computer I owned was in 1995 or so and it was a ten year old Commodore 64 hand me down. I admit that by then I knew there were things like the internet and actual processing power that it couldn't handle but at least it was mine, much to the ridicule of many classmates.

Once I got to high school things did change. Thanks to my electronics shop and some friends I was able to slowly piece together from found parts some various PCs. I went from an 8086 to a 386 or a 486 to by graduation time a Pentium 75 running Windows 95 and using free internet from NetZero. Through four years and at least a half dozen computers (most of which I found some way of breaking) and then after NetZero decided to kick off heavy users I actually coughed up the money and got Adelphia cable internet.

I entered college under the computer science program and soon discovered that while using the lab computers was alright I really needed a home computer of my own. Enter the AMD TBird 750. Now there was a computer I had loads of fun with. It was my first real modern computer and since then I've had at least fairly modern ones and I'm actually typing on a two month old PC right now.

Strangely the further forward I go, sometimes I want to pick up those things I've left behind. In future blog posts I plan on talking about how I now use old outdated word processors and RTF files. I type on a 20 year old keyboard and take my notes on index cards. It should be lots of fun to talk about.