Barbara Duprey wrote: > Jack D. Lewis wrote: >> Lisi Reisz wrote the following on 2/13/2008 4:27 PM: >>> Sorry to quibble, but the first PC wasn't launched until August 12, >>> 1981. So it can't be _over_ 30 years!! >>> >>> My ability to _remember_ the history of computers is very >>> distressing. Well, at least I can say that I don't remember >>> Colossus, tho' I do ante-date it. :-( >>> >>> Lisi >>> >>> >>> >> >> I suppose it depends on what you call a PC. My first experience was >> in 1979 with a State-of-the-art, 16 KB mem, Trash-80. I had ample >> storage on my 8-inch floppies that would let me store a whopping 360 >> KB on a double sided disk. >> > My first personal computer was an Apple II Plus (II+? 2+? -- just > remember how to say it, not to spell it!) in 1978, 16 years after the > start of my mainframe experience in college. At that time, IBM was > quite firmly denying that there would ever be any reason for them to > develop any such creature, so I didn't wait to get one from the > employee purchase plan. Anyway, there weren't any floppies (of any > size) -- it used a cassette recorder for I/O, and it was really fun > trying to balance the channels. >
There were floppies available back then, but they were *EXPENSIVE*. A pair of them & controller would have doubled the cost of my first computer. I also used cassettes, but since I used a mono recorder, I didn't have to worry about balance. -- Use OpenOffice.org <http://www.openoffice.org> --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
