First personal computer nostalgia

From: Mark Price <markp_at_wccls.lib.or.us>
Date: Tue Dec 12 13:35:20 2000

1985,86? Atari 520ST, still have it, and thanks to John's question, anxious
to put it back together and see how it's doing. My wife was still writing
grad-school papers on it in '90 or so. 1st Word, no spell-check, no page
numbering, not much formatting at all. The printer was a Silver Reed
daisy-wheel typewriter with an optional interface box. (Still have that,
too.) Clackety-clackety-clack. It paused between pages so you could switch
paper. I recall with mixed fondness/not-so-fondness pulling all-night term
paper sessions, the last hour or so of which consisted in sitting there,
changing paper in the printer...zzzzzzzzz. At time of purchase, I was
insanely jealous of my friend's Atari 1050ST with the humongous 1mb hard
disk: "The silence of those infinite spaces terrified me." --Pascal.
(Blaise, not Turbo.)

1996 Intercepted an IBM XT that a co-worker was tossing. Knew nothing from
nothing, so never could get it to do much. Got it to find it its 10mb hard
disk for exactly one format of PC-DOS, then I never saw C: again. You could
still run PC-DOS and WordPerfect from the floppies when I gave it away.
(Kinda wish I still had that one...)

2000 Bought a house with a BASEMENT, bwahahahaahaaaa! Have cluttered it all
up with various PC clones in various states of completion/disrepair.
Acquired a Mac SE, an old Zenith luggable which I haven't had time to check
out yet (but I know it can't find its hard disk either), the Atari, a 90mb
Bernoulli drive in its own carrying case, the Toshiba laptop mentioned
elsewhere on this list.

You guys have got years and years on me and have forgotten more than I'll
ever know, but I really enjoy this list and learning about rescuing
junkware. Thanks!

==============================
Mark Price, Library Computer Specialist
Washington County Cooperative Library Services
e-mail: markp_at_wccls.lib.or.us
voice: 503-846-3230
fax: 503-846-3220
Received on Tue Dec 12 2000 - 13:35:20 GMT