On Generations of People and Computers - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

11 Apr 1997

   On Fri, 11 Apr 1997 14:58:15 +0100, Kevan is rumoured to have said:

...
  [On Fri, 11 Apr 1997 01:24:34, PEC wrote:] 
...
   Is this a
generational thing?  My first computer exposure what to a
 mainframe in the late 70's, but my first computer was an 80's micro.
 Are people in the 40+ age group more likely to have fond memories
 of minis? 
 I think there will be a strong corrolation here. 
   Oh come on, guys. I'm not _that_ old :-) (36). 

   One of the reasons that I cherish the minicomputer architectures is,
admittedly, nostalgia, but the other reasons include the fact that
they're very servicable (frequently with off-the-shelf components) and
they provide a wonder tactile sense of the essence of computing. Few
things compare to hand-assembling programs, entering them in binary
via a front panel, and having them work. Also, the average minicomputer
is simple enough to understand its' inner workings at a gate level;
this makes minis admirable teaching tools.

...
   I started my computing on my older brothers ZX80, I
was 13 at the
 time. Thus I was brought up on the home computer boom of the early
 eighties. 
   I was a bit of a "late bloomer" when it comes to computing. I was
always interested in the machines, all the way from early childhood,
and was lucky enough to have relatives with contacts at MIT and
Harvard. I got to see some wonderful stuff then (even played Space-
war on Harvard's PDP-1!) but never got to do any programming until
my second year of secondary school in the late '70s. The first
machine I programmed on was the Nova 840 I have in my collection
now. The machine I "cut teeth" on in a hardware sense was an Inter-
data Model 3, in my third year of ss.

   Although I bought a VIC-20 (for the princely sum of (US)$300) in
1980 (?), I never really "took to" the micro- architectures (it
might also have been that they were so _slow_ compared to the PDP-
10s I was working on at the time). I think I still have the VIC
around someplace.

   Cheers.

 ______________________________________________________________________
|                                                |                     |
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin)            | West Boylston       |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast            | Massachusetts, USA  |
| mailto:carl.friend@stoneweb.com                |                     |
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