Well, literally, my first digital computer was a plastic contraption I got
in the 1960s sometime. It consisted of wires (for strength, not
conduction) and a lot of levers and plastic slides. You could rearrange
the sliders and levers and get the computer to either do addition or
subtraction or generate random numbers -- all on a 3-bit "display": three
of the sliders that represented 1 if pulled out and 0 if pushed in. No
Altair, but I certainly got an understanding of the process in adding
numbers in a digital computer -- and an appreciation for the time and
rework needed to get even the simplest computer program to work. Once you
spent the hours to assemble the thing and worked out how to do the small
number of things it could do, that was that: there was nothing more you
could do with it. You couldn't even dismantle it so you could store it
safely (easy-snapping polystyrene, remember?)
A few computer museums have these, but they were made of soft steel wire
and polystyrene ("high-impact," of course!), so they have VERY little
resistance to breaking.
A bit of experience with a mechanical digital computer goes a long way
towards breaking down any awe for the magical electronic "brain." I will
never think of computers as anything but extremely fast, extremely stupid
adding machines. Of course, they are also examples of how much can be done
with lots and lots of simple-minded processes -- but then, so are ants and
bees; the tiny, self-replicating robots that some labs have running around
on lab floors are really just an order of magnitude or so simpler than the
"brains" controlling insects.
The Kaypro 2X in the garage is a different animal, of course: 4 MHz Z80
with 64 K of memory and two 390K floppy drives. Over 6 years, I wrote
about 1 1/2 million words on it, all of which were printed on a Juki 6100
daisy wheel printer. And Wordstar -- made in hacker's heaven, for hackers.
"Trainor, Kevin T." wrote:
> Jeff wrote:
> > I still have my first computer (Apple II+) and monitor (green
> > monochrome made by apple) in the basement.
> I have an XT clone that my son has "inherited"; bought it
> for about $2000 worth of grad school student loan money in 1988.
> I remember being thrilled because it had 10 expansion slots and
> a CGA monitor.
>
> <snip>
> > Scary, though,
> > that my TI-89 graphing calculator is many times more powerful than my
> first
> > computer, or even my first Mac. (16MHz 68000 vs. 8MHz 68000
> > vs. 1MHz 6502)
> I feel the same way about my Palm Pilot (a Personal, not
> even a III!) and that 8088. Very scary.
>
> Kevin Trainor
> [Snip!]
--
Peter Schuman paschuman at uswest.net
Vegetarians eat vegetables: Beware of humanitarians!
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