Good evening, Ed... shadow wrote:
> I was pretty sure the original IBM PC came with no hard drive, and maybe > 64k of RAM. Wasn't sure about the XT. The original IBM True Blue PC, if I remember correctly, came with 64k of RAM and as many floppy drives as you could convince to run. The later models of the PC actually offered *two* floppy ports, which using the reverse twisted cables equated to a whopping *four* floppy drives. At that time, it was considered the nearest thing to a breakthrough, beat out only by Radio Shack and their strange TRS-80 computers with external floppy drive bays. It actually worked well for many years for some. The XT was the first PC you actually could have 256K worth of memory, which could be boosted in its second year to a whopping 640k under DOS 2.1 and later on, even EMS (Extended memory). Then it got really kinky when people started building add-on memory RAM boards, using the MS Extended Memory standard that wasn't even standardized, yet. There were various memory boards making the rounds that extended the 640k barrier as much as 4-6 Meg of memory, which in those days was pretty outrageous. I ran the Fidonet BBS in memory for nearly a year, once. > Today there are people who believe that IBM *invented* the desktop > computer. Smokey the Bear invented the transistor, didn't he? > s>> Remember Rodger from the CDC in Atlanta? What a character! As was > John s>> King. > FR> Yes. And THAT is very interesting. Roger seemed to vanish > FR> suddenly. Dave later told me he had medical problems. Roger came > FR> back about a year later to disappear again, and I haven't heard > FR> from him since.... > > Last I remember, Roger was on the verge of retiring, or was asked to > retire. I never knew this other Roger, as far as I recall. I *did* have an intimate friendship with Roger Erdman, who was a fuel tax auditor in Spokane, and was murdered two years ago. However, this other Roger, short of a last name, is an unknown to me. > All that JK and I agreed upon was the necessity of rich cigars and fine > jazz, and that was more than enough for me. His tales of pub-crawling from > jazz club to jazz club left me green with envy. John was also one hell of a good journalist in his prime, something that naturally bound he and I together inexorably. He was a practicing Humanist, and a life-long subscriber to The Humanist Magazine, from which he was often fond of quoting outrageous snippets when it suited him. Oh, but that used to irritate Frank! As many times as I disagreed with John, I feel very honored to have walked through life with him, and I stayed close to his side, right to the very end when he died a protracted and painful death. He was unquestionably a wonderful student of the universe and a gentleman. > FR> I'll never forget one of my first visits at John's home. He > FR> introduced me to the 'room where it all happened', the > FR> conversations in cyber space in those early years. Yes, the same > FR> XT machine with dual floppy 360 megs of storage space apiece,... > > I'm sure you meant 360 kilobytes on those floppies, the big 5 1/4" dudes, > right? Oh, yes. His wife still has that machine in her possession, unquestionably one of her fondest mementos of John's life. I've never had the nerve to ask her if she still possesses those floppy disks that contained John's last book. > When my co-op bought its first computer, (a North Star, formerly Kentucky > Fried Computers) they took my advice to use the CPM operating system and > sprung for the 5 meg hard drive. That puppy sat inside a case the size of > a portable typewriter, but it held as much data as 50+ of the old floppies > that held 90k each. That was high flyin' in them days. CP/M is still quite an operating system, even today, for us old die-hards. When I am feeling bored, I wander downstairs and fire up either an old Wenden-DOS (anybody remember Wenden-DOS?) machine, my original DOS 6.2 BBS machine or an antiquated CP/M machine that I have studiously kept running, because I still have a client who incredibly runs MP/M (a CP/M clone on a highly-refined 80286 with an 80 MEG hard disk. S'true. He's too cheap to buy a Windows box so long as I'll support his MP/M machine. 8-) Anyone need a copy of dBase 1.2 in mint condition? 8-) 8-) > If only our bodies improved over time like our toys do..... <sigh> We know the end is near when our joy toy turns into a garden hose. 8-) Dave -- Dave Laird ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) The Used Kharma Lot Web Page: http://www.kharma.net updated 11/24/2004 Usenet news server : news://news.kharma.net Fortune Random Thought For the Minute The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the `social sciences' is: some do, some don't. -- Ernest Rutherford _______________________________________________ Libnw mailing list Libnw@immosys.com List info and subscriber options: http://immosys.com/mailman/listinfo/libnw Archives: http://immosys.com/mailman//pipermail/libnw
