OT Nightmares of the Modern Age

Avery Todd avery@ev1.net
Wed, 04 Jun 2003 19:06:58 -0500


Well, Sarah,

My first computer (15+ yrs. ago) had a 10 mg. hard drive and a
640 K ram with one of those yellow screens with black letters
and a dot matrix printer, of course!

It's still chugging away, though. I STILL have all my business
ledger stuff on it and do my income tax on it every year! :-)
Gonna have to change sometime soon, though.

Avery

At 07:41 PM 06/04/03 -0400, you wrote:
>Hi Avery,
>
> > Some good advice. For my curiosity, what is a Wang Z-80?
> > I haven't been "doing" computers for 25 yrs.! :-)
>
>Z-80 is the type of CPU chip (with its own set of instruction codes).  The
>Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I and Model III were more popular Z-80 machines, if
>that helps put it into perspective.  Our Wang (at my high school) had a
>whopping 16 KB of memory and a digital tape drive.  We were also blessed
>with a dot matrix printer!  High tech stuff!  I later did computer modeling
>on my own 48 KB, 1.2 MHz (?) TRS-80 Model III, which was my first research
>computer.  When I went to a "real" machine, a 5.77 MHz XT-clone (8088 chip),
>I ported all my source code from the TRS-80 to the XT via a hand-wired 110
>baud null modem link.  I watched on my screen as the letters and numbers
>were transferred -- like a someone was typing at the computer with a good
>caffeine buzz.  How far we've come!  ;-)
>
>Peace,
>Sarah
>
>_______________________________________________
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