I remember doing punch cards in college, as mine was one of the early unis to have an actual on-campus "computing center". Learning Fortran and watfor, what a hoot. 5 years or so later, I was using BASIC at work and wrote one of the early quality control cusum charting programs applications on some kind of HP machine, with RPN, of course. We bought an Apple IIc for home use, although I can't remember why.
My first IBM really was an IBM - IBM DX2. As I recall it cost nearly as much as my first new car ~$4K . 15 Megahertz, with a push button "turbo" to run at about 25 MHz!! About as much memory as a cheap cell phone.
In the early 1980's I got hooked up at work - which utilized a mainframe and a field of IBM dumb terminals. My job required access from home, so I had a 70 pound dumb terminal (372 ??) on my bedroom floor. Acoustic phone coupler at 300 baud. I could literally watch each letter or number form on the screen.
Now I complain because my work system takes 30 seconds to boot up, and I have a 1 Tbyte HD at home.
My first IBM really was an IBM - IBM DX2. As I recall it cost nearly as much as my first new car ~$4K . 15 Megahertz, with a push button "turbo" to run at about 25 MHz!! About as much memory as a cheap cell phone.
In the early 1980's I got hooked up at work - which utilized a mainframe and a field of IBM dumb terminals. My job required access from home, so I had a 70 pound dumb terminal (372 ??) on my bedroom floor. Acoustic phone coupler at 300 baud. I could literally watch each letter or number form on the screen.
Now I complain because my work system takes 30 seconds to boot up, and I have a 1 Tbyte HD at home.
I guess I've dated myself clearly enough......