Technologist, Technician, or Technophobe?
Having been involved in the technology field for quite some time, I considered what my next topic would be and it occurred to me that, with self-driving cars, perhaps I should discuss technology; where it was, where it is, and where it may be taking us.
I mentioned that I had been involved in the technology field for quite some time. To quantify that a bit more clearly, I replaced my first power supply in an IBM desktop - I don't recall the model, but I believe it had a 40 megabyte hard drive - around 1989.
Feeling as if I could tackle any issue related to a PC, I agreed to put a bigger hard drive than the current one and add more random access memory to his recently-obtained Texas Instruments TRS-80 (and there was a reason that model was often called the 'Trash-80').
Anyone remember those? It took me about an hour to figure out a couple of things because I had to research them. Doesn't sound like a big deal nowadays, but when you understand that this was in the days when it took upwards of 15 minutes to download some fonts it becomes a bit clearer.
Of course he bought the device, but those books in there must have just been for packaging or something. All them there words 'n' stuff ain't real important. So all the manuals went out in the trash with all his packaging. At that time, I didn't even know TI made computers. Further, I had absolutely NO idea that the 'hard drive,' as it were, was a permanently fixed component on the motherboard.
OK, fine. He's hosed as far as the bigger hard drive goes, so now let's get busy on the RAM. Oh, wait! Before the story, the 'hard drive' actually had the O/S and any applications permanently programmed to it. Running other programs or saving items such as documents, etc. required some type of additional, removable storage. At that time external hard drives, flash drives, memory cards, etc. did not exist.
Back to the RAM. Everyone know you can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much RAM. This Trash-80 came with a generous 3 megabytes. Yes, three megabytes. Not only was it a small amount - not ridiculously low for those days, but low-ish, none-the-less. Anyone with experience from that era knows that RAM had to be installed in pairs, and ALWAYS an even number. 2MB, 4MB, 8MB, 16MB, and so on.
No sir. Not the TI Trash-80. It came with three and that's all you'd ever have in it without divine intervention or something of the like. Now that I think of it, I'm not sure the HD was as big as the 40MB I mentioned earlier, but since I don't clearly remember and I'm too lazy to look it up, we'll go with that for now.
Curious about this hard drive replacement issue, I thought I'd take on the computer that Don Fairfield and Jack Johnson sold me at an incredibly low price at that time. I opened it up and went looking for the hard drive and couldn't find it. Oh come on now! Surely THIS can't be programmed on the motherboard too!
Well, there WAS this thing that looked kinda like a hard drive, but it was on an expansion card in one of the few ISA slots on the motherboard. Another hour or so of research and I discovered that I DID NOT have an 80 megabyte hard drive in my brand new old PC. Nope. I had an 80 megabyte hard card. Maybe this computer stuff isn't for me, after all.
I wanted to talk about technology NOW, though. I didn't want to talk about technology THEN. Well, actually I did. I just didn't want to spend as much time talking about OLD technology as I wound up spending. But see? You've made it THIS far. You HAVE to see how things turn out, right?
Maybe next time!
I mentioned that I had been involved in the technology field for quite some time. To quantify that a bit more clearly, I replaced my first power supply in an IBM desktop - I don't recall the model, but I believe it had a 40 megabyte hard drive - around 1989.
Feeling as if I could tackle any issue related to a PC, I agreed to put a bigger hard drive than the current one and add more random access memory to his recently-obtained Texas Instruments TRS-80 (and there was a reason that model was often called the 'Trash-80').
Anyone remember those? It took me about an hour to figure out a couple of things because I had to research them. Doesn't sound like a big deal nowadays, but when you understand that this was in the days when it took upwards of 15 minutes to download some fonts it becomes a bit clearer.
Of course he bought the device, but those books in there must have just been for packaging or something. All them there words 'n' stuff ain't real important. So all the manuals went out in the trash with all his packaging. At that time, I didn't even know TI made computers. Further, I had absolutely NO idea that the 'hard drive,' as it were, was a permanently fixed component on the motherboard.
OK, fine. He's hosed as far as the bigger hard drive goes, so now let's get busy on the RAM. Oh, wait! Before the story, the 'hard drive' actually had the O/S and any applications permanently programmed to it. Running other programs or saving items such as documents, etc. required some type of additional, removable storage. At that time external hard drives, flash drives, memory cards, etc. did not exist.
Back to the RAM. Everyone know you can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much RAM. This Trash-80 came with a generous 3 megabytes. Yes, three megabytes. Not only was it a small amount - not ridiculously low for those days, but low-ish, none-the-less. Anyone with experience from that era knows that RAM had to be installed in pairs, and ALWAYS an even number. 2MB, 4MB, 8MB, 16MB, and so on.
No sir. Not the TI Trash-80. It came with three and that's all you'd ever have in it without divine intervention or something of the like. Now that I think of it, I'm not sure the HD was as big as the 40MB I mentioned earlier, but since I don't clearly remember and I'm too lazy to look it up, we'll go with that for now.
Curious about this hard drive replacement issue, I thought I'd take on the computer that Don Fairfield and Jack Johnson sold me at an incredibly low price at that time. I opened it up and went looking for the hard drive and couldn't find it. Oh come on now! Surely THIS can't be programmed on the motherboard too!
Well, there WAS this thing that looked kinda like a hard drive, but it was on an expansion card in one of the few ISA slots on the motherboard. Another hour or so of research and I discovered that I DID NOT have an 80 megabyte hard drive in my brand new old PC. Nope. I had an 80 megabyte hard card. Maybe this computer stuff isn't for me, after all.
I wanted to talk about technology NOW, though. I didn't want to talk about technology THEN. Well, actually I did. I just didn't want to spend as much time talking about OLD technology as I wound up spending. But see? You've made it THIS far. You HAVE to see how things turn out, right?
Maybe next time!
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