some pics of the hoard
Apple 2e The first PC I ever played with was a mates Apple 2e. Absolutely
fantastic machine at the time. If I could get some of the games
that machine had for my current PC, I would still play them.
Tandy TRS80 Next was a Tandy TRS80 (known in the business as a ‘trash 80’).
I wrote my first solo programs on this thing in about 1980, and
they worked!
Mini-computer Got to play with a friends, fathers, machine on loan from
his university. This was my first experience of a ‘mini-computer’.
Boy was this baby fast! Used an eight inch floppy drive though!
Fujitsu M780 In my second job I was introduced to the world
of Mainframes, really big computers.
It was a Fujitsu M780. I loved it.
Olivetti 8086 I drove (and maintained) the first Olivetti 8086 PC to make it
into my workplace in 1986. No networks then, but I got involved in the first attempt to network them and was heavily involved in
the first (card based) attempts to get them to emulate a terminal and connect to the ‘Main-Frame’.
Toshiba ‘laptop’ I got to use several of the early Toshiba ‘laptops’ or ‘portables’
while my work PC developed into a 286, I still had a ‘dumb
terminal’ on my desk, the PC was a shared resource. I remember having to book time-slots to use the one 386 we had on the floor.
NEC Powermate Portable My first PC was an NEC Powermate Portable, 80286. A brilliant machine that I could carry (read ‘lug’, at 8 kilograms) around
and pretend I owned a portable PC. I eventually gave it to a friend with no PC, he quickly upgraded and uses the NEC as a
footrest currently, I expect he will find a better footrest soon and the NEC will find a final resting place.
Amdahl5995 IBM9600 Hitachi GS8664 By now of course I was a mainframe bigot and continued to
associate with an Amdahl5995, IBM9600 and Hitachi GS8664.
I was hooked.
Toshiba 310CDT Since then I have owned a number of X86 based PC’s, all of which I have built myself. A while ago I made a small investment
in a second-hand laptop. When I started travelling I found it invaluable and have since invested more seriously in a decent
Toshiba lappy. It is my lifeline to the rest of the world and my development/experimentation machine as well.
Celeron 333 I’ve recently bought a second hand desktop 333 Celeron quite cheap. I’ve networked it to my laptop as a file server. The plan
is to use them both as Linux boxes, networked and sharing
devices with ADSL constant internet connection serving this site. Just got to find the time.
Dual Athlon 1.67 Ghz Just fnished building a new system. Spec included SMP, 1/2 Gig RAM, SCSI disk, wireless LAN.
Machine runs SUSE Linux 7.2 and is primarily used as a file server.
What a waste!