17 Apr
1999
17 Apr
'99
9:45 a.m.
Sure they're useful to anyone. My first computer, a TRS-80 CoCo, was given
to me by my parents in 1990 or 1991... quite a while after they had gone
out of style (They got it at a garage sale for $90 or something). I didn't
get any magazines with it, but I did get loads of books... that first day,
I must have gotten through the first 5 chapters in the BASIC programming
book.. and I had a ball with it. People at Rat Snack laughed at me and
told me to get a REAL copmuter (286 or 386..heh), that I couldn't do
anything with this machine... I laughed at them because I had hours of fun
playing Space Invaders, Shooting Gallery and Wildcatting (I actually still
have that cart, even though I no longer have the computer :( )... and then
came my second computer, and apple IIe :)
Kevin
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After sifting through the overwritten remaining blocks of Luke's
home directory, Luke and PDP-1 sped away from /u/lars, across the surface
of the Winchester riding Luke's flying read/write head. PDP-1 had Luke stop
at the edge of the cylinder overlooking /usr/spool/uucp.
"Unix-to-Unix Copy Program;" said PDP-1. "You will never find a
more wretched hive of bugs and flamers. We must be cautious."
-- DECWARS
____________________________________________________________________
| Kevin Stewart | "I am a secret |
| KC8BLL ----------| Wrapped in a mystery -Milford High School |
| a2k(a)one.net | Wrapped in an enigma Drama Tech Dept. |
|jlennon(a)nether.net| And drizzled in some tasty chocolate stuff.|
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On Fri, 16 Apr 1999, Sellam Ismail wrote:
On Fri, 16 Apr 1999, Tony Duell wrote:
However, for people starting out, getting their
first computer, they are
going to want to be able to use the software from the local PC shop.
They're going to want to be able to use the 'learn to use your home
computer' type magazines. And, unfortuantely, you can't use a PDPx or a
PERQ or a TRS-80 or an Apple ][ or a PET or a BBC or a ... for any of
that. Sure _we_ can get these machines to do useful work, but probably
others can't.
Sure, anyone can. Just deliver them an old home computer with a stack of
books and magazines that were published around it and they could figure
anything out. You can find old issues of Nibble, Incider, A+ for the
Apple ][ in lots of places. I'm sure the prevailing magazines for the
other common machines can be found just as easily. Of course a PERQ or
PDP would be a different story, but the home micros are well documented.
I'm even more amazed by the amount of test
equipment that I've been given
as 'beyond repair' that's had trivial faults. It's one thing that the
little-old-lady can't fix the TV (even if the only fault is a wire off in
the plug), but an electronic engineer who can't find an blown fuse in
some expensive piece of equipment? What is this world coming to?
I've gotten some real good test equipment that had only trivial faults for
real cheap. Now to find those faults and fix them :)
Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
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