Re: When Did You First.....
Originally Posted by
Bruce
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My first computer was based on the Z80 Chip which I bought in 1980 it was followed by a Commodore C64 which I had for many years and which I first bought a modem for. It was a 300baud baud modem made in Perth - I thought it was magic - 300baud was about the same speed as you could read text.
By 1990 I had a 386 IBM type machine and ran a Dos based Bulletin Board Service (BBS) for 10 years. It had a 64Mb HDD and when I went to the local dealer to buy another 64Mb HDD he said, "What on earth do you need that much space for?"
Not the internet still it just used the phone network. Over the years the modem speeds increased dramatically, I ended up with a US Robotics High Speed modem, I forget its maximum speed but it seemed blindingly fast at the time, my BBS had two phone lines and It finished in 2000 when the millennium bug and the internet finally killed it.
I used the Internet for some years before that using DOS programs such as Netscape to explore with. I ran DESQview on the computer to make a true multitasking computer divided into several 640Kb computers - remember that limitation?
That sounds so cool, Bruce! Yes I remember the storage space being so vast in the early days! Kb, gosh its a blip nowadays! When I transferred music to a music player the first time, it could hold about 100 songs and I was
amazed! (Having previously hauled around a CD player with accompanying array of CD's). Then I read a scifi short story where the character had this weird contraption on which she could read a screen like a book, and flick the screen as if she was turning the pages. I was horrified at such an idea and hoped it would never be invented....ah well....!