Windows Rant

[Douglas Pollard]

On 07/11/2010 03:27 PM, A. Jorge Garcia wrote:
>> Please don't tell me it was for Lotus 1-2-3 or Wordperfect.
>>      
> Believe it or not, we did do a lot with BASIC, Lotus, WordStar and
> DBase in those days....  Well, before we had PCs, we had GIMIX (like an
> early Linux that ran UNIX apps on a mini computer) and dumb
> terminals....
>
> I remember getting Windows 2.0 on multiple floppy disks (the real
> floppy 5.25" disks with cardboard covers) for free at PC Expo in
> Manhattan in 1989?
>
> Anyone remember PCs before Windows and the Web??
>
> Anyone remember SneakerNet and PCs without hard drives or graphics???
>
> Regards,
> A. Jorge Garcia
> http://shadowfaxrant.blogspot.com
> http://www.youtube.com/calcpage2009
>
> Teacher&  Professor
> Applied Mathematics, Physics&  Computer Science
> Baldwin Senior High School&  Nassau Community College
>
>
>
>    

My first contact with a computer was one I built about 1965 when working 
as a machinist for Phillip Morris. I did not design it.  They were 
making tobacco paper out of tobacco dust.   The computer used water 
instead of electricity. The water ran through Y valves that had holes in 
the sides that went to the mixing tanks through hoses and when the tank 
was full the fluid in it shut off the air hose and the water moved to 
that side of the valve buy the venturi effect which directed it to 
another tank. The computer was programed with a keyboard that consisted 
of a series of valves that controlled how much air could go through the 
vents and thus control how much water or other liquid went through the 
the device and where it went and how it was mixed with other liquids. It 
made it's own decision by a certain kind of logic. Can you top this?? :-)

I bought a Texas Instrument TI 30 I think it was about the mid 1970's. 
It set on a table with tape drives setting everyplace.   I ran a machine 
shop and wanted to use it to estimate future man hours on each machine 
and keep track of work in progress. There were not any programs as I 
remember so I hired some part time programmers that worked in  a local 
bank to write some.  I don't think it had a hard drive.  It was replaced 
by and IBM machine that cost a bundle and It must have had a disk 
drive.  The drive was pretty small and most data still had to be kept on 
tape 
drives.                                                                                                      
Doug