[oldfriend]

Some of you younger folks might not relate to this.

However, being and old dude, I am constantly amazed at how fast data travels from one computer screen to another.

A picture is posted on a "Photo" board, given a image URL and then within seconds can be viewed anywhere in the world.

Think how many "zeros and ones" go into a 1 meg picture!

I can remember in my early programming days that my DOS System was limited to 144,000 characters. That was it.

Well, along came Windows and Windows 3.1 required 4 meg just to load.

My 1st computer was an 8086 with a 80 meg hard drive and required 2, 5 1/4" floppy disks to operate.

I really moved up in the world when I went to 486 computer, 500 meg hard drive, and 14,400 modem.

Then I purchased a 56K Modem. Wow, Was I cooking!

CDROM, DVD, USB, microchips, and Wireless anything did not exist.

My "cell phone" sat inside a briefcase and had a rotary dial.

We repaired computers by running a diagnostic program and the computer would print out a report telling us where the bad component was in Hexadecimal code.

My 1st computer program I wrote was in COBOL and we used punch cards and ran them through a collator.

On printing out the class roster, I had to specifically tell the printer to add one to the line counter and, "if line is greater than 25 go to new page

reset line counter to 0
print next item from roster list
add 1 to line counter
......"

You get the idea.

I wonder what is coming down the line for our future in computers?

Oldfriend

[jonjenkins]

Nice - I can relate to some of that. It also reminds me of the computer programming sessions I first had at school. We wrote our BASIC code on squared paper, and had it checked by the teacher before typing into a lineprinter terminal (no video screen!) attached via acoustic coupler to a phone line. The actual computer was a mainframe in the nearest town, about 10 miles away.

I think the first computer we actually had in the class was a Research Machines 380Z, with 64k of memory.

[IcyFirefly]

The only thing I had learned was HTML, and some Java Script in College. I could make a webpage from scratch using the College computer. But now, my brain has slow down and I don't remember much if I don't refresh it.

Nowadays, the processor speed is what amazing me the most. If you go from i3 to i5, it is like you blink and the page is here. I am hoping to get an i7 laptop in the future as the less time I am sitting and waiting online, the better it is for me to move around and not sitting all the time

[oldbuddy]

I remember when the 5 1/4 floppy disk came out to replace the 8 inch that only held 256K of data.

[ceci]

To me,i5 and i7 are deem expensive. However, I hope to get 4GB ram for faster speed.

[DreekLass]

I remember when the 5 1/4 floppy disk came out to replace the 8 inch that only held 256K of data.

And the only thing that you seemed to be able to store on them were office type files lol. I'm so glad those days are gone.

Personally, I think the next wave for computers is VR.

[Fergal]

[Moving topic to a more appropriate forum section!]

[thisnthat]

Well, you're in good company. I'm an old dude (dudette?) actually. Whatever the feminine gender term for dude is.

I remember computers being huge things way back when. It's hard to imagine that they fit on our desk, or even in our purses now. Crazy. The speed difference is night and day as well.

I was just mentioning internet speeds the other day too. I remember beaming over my bulky desktop with its dial up internet...

[germainebull]

Wow @oldfriend .
You have had such a far-reaching and rich experience with the computer world!
Kudos!
I guess we are moving into an era where mainstream computers will be able to discern our moods.