On Wed, Apr 07, 2004 at 07:48:49PM -0500, Scott Stevens wrote:
> I shudder sometimes to think of the things I walked by and ignored 10 years
> ago at swapmeets. I shudder to think of some of the hardware I passed up at
> surplus stores back then.
Hmm... I don't have too many of those regrets...
My first "vintage" machine was a $35 PDP-8/L in 1982. At the time, all I
had at home was a 32K PET and a Quest Elf (.25K ;-) It was joined soon
after by a brand-spanking new C-64 (on loan from my employer).
(Yes... I still have all of those machines and they still all work, except
for that C-64 which was replaced in warranty).
> So many of us were in pursuit of hardware we could strip memory out of to
> run Windows faster (speaking for self and some of crowd I associated with,
> not everyone here.)
I was not running Windows in 1994. My daily-use box was an Amiga attached
to the outside world via UUCP, picking up mail and a partial Usenet feed; my
server was an $800 SPARC 1 to which I added 32MB of RAM and a 1.8GB disk,
running SunOS 4.1. I was stripping DOS boxes for 4MB SIMMs for my Sun!
I was also running a business at home that used VAXen and PDP-11s (providing
support for former customers of Software Results). I didn't fire them up
every day, but set-up and ready to turn on were a uVAX-I, uVAX-II, an 11/03,
an 11/04, 11/23, and a VAX 8200/8300 (depending if I loaded the second CPU
or not). The 11/750 was in storage. *snif*
But, I do understand your lament... many of my friends were squarely on
the DOS/Windows track at the time (most of them have at least migrated to
Linux, part-time). I'm sure they, too, have regrets of interesting machines
that passed them by.
Since I got my start as a kid in the 1970s, I guess I always saw the stuff
that flowed out of Redmond as an abberation, not as the be-all-end-all of
computing. I know lots of people only slightly younger than I (37) that
have absolutely no clue that there's all this stuff that has *nothing* to
do with Windows.
-ethan
--
Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 08-Apr-2004 02:21 Z
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Ethan.Dicks_at_amanda.spole.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html
Received on Wed Apr 07 2004 - 21:45:59 BST