• You know that IBM did not invent the desktop computer
• You remember names like Osborne, Sol, AIM, Pet, Sinclair, Altair, Elf.
• You remember numbers like 8008, 8080, 1802, 6502, 6800.
• You remember when a cassette tape system was an upgrade.
• You remember when a floppy drive was a major upgrade, and two was HEAVEN.
• You remember when a 250k 8" floppy seemed like SO MUCH STORAGE SPACE!!
• You remember operating systems other than MS-DOS and Macintosh.
• You once had calluses on your finger tips from flipping toggle switches.
• You remember when a mouse was the creature that built a nest in your OLD computer.
• You remember when an operating system, a word processor and a document all fit in 48K of RAM.
• You remember trying to figure out what you would do with 64K of RAM.
• You remember coveting your neighbors 1200 baud modem.
• You know that PIP is more than a printing shop.
• You remember when Meg was a woman's name and had little to do with computers.
• You remember when Gig was something that a band did, and any connection with computers was inconceivable.
• You paid over $3000 for a machine with just floppy drives and 256k or less of RAM.
• You invested over $5000 in the above machine before it was retired.
• You have to fight the urge to smack someone who complains that $1500 is a lot of money to spend for a machine with 128M of RAM and a 16G hard disk and a 64 bit processor.
• You recall paper tape. (bonus: have USED paper tape!)
• You once calculated how much paper tape it would take to back up the new, cutting edge, 10M hard disks (hint: 10 bytes per inch) and laughed about how far we had come.
• You remember the videotape backup system.
• You laugh at those that call 5.25" disks "The BIG disks".
• You have seen a computer boot an OS completely off floppy disk in 4 seconds -- computers that today are called "slow".
• You have seen a useful application that fit in 2K of RAM.
• You have programmed a computer with less than 4K of RAM
• You consider a soldering iron a program development tool.
• You recall what CP/M is.
• You recall when an operating system took up a trivial part of a hard disk's storage.
• You recall when data took up more space than programs.
• You recall when commercial programs didn't just crash for no apparent reason.
• You know hex is not just a curse.
• You know split octal is not bifocals.
• You know the difference between Hard Sector and Soft Sector floppies.
• You consider assembler a High Level Language.

(C)opyright 1996-2000, Nick Holland

Back to Computer Page
Back Home