IBM XT
Tuesday, February 20th, 2007
Wife’s dad (F-I-L) loved technology. In 1984, Mother-in-law already had one of those daisy wheel typewriters that could remember a one-page letter. It would even pause so you could type in a name for a personalized letter. We used that machine to write our first mission newsletters. Amazing. Plus, F-I-L had two IBM Selectrics, one with a Cyrillic “golf ball”.
In 1987 I bought a used IBM XT and a dot matrix printer for about $2000.00. My sermons got better right away. The printer was terrible and would print an “@” for an accented “à” and “&” for the “é”. But I used them (and sold them 3 years later for $500.00).
Wife’s dad bought a MacPlus (circa 1986) and a LaserWriter printer. He wouldn’t let me touch his tools (toys) at first, but when I showed him how MacPaint worked and actually printed something out for him, we both stood amazed at our creation: A checkered, striped, gray-scaled EPI (his first name) with a happy-face background. And we did it all with three key strokes and a thing called a mouse.
He could write his radio scripts in Ukrainian with a QWERTZ keyboard (I think that’s how you spell it…) and run off printable Ukrainian text in PageMaker, type-set and ready for eager readers. Now that really was amazing.
To be continued…
In 1987 I bought a used IBM XT and a dot matrix printer for about $2000.00. My sermons got better right away. The printer was terrible and would print an “@” for an accented “à” and “&” for the “é”. But I used them (and sold them 3 years later for $500.00).
Wife’s dad bought a MacPlus (circa 1986) and a LaserWriter printer. He wouldn’t let me touch his tools (toys) at first, but when I showed him how MacPaint worked and actually printed something out for him, we both stood amazed at our creation: A checkered, striped, gray-scaled EPI (his first name) with a happy-face background. And we did it all with three key strokes and a thing called a mouse.
He could write his radio scripts in Ukrainian with a QWERTZ keyboard (I think that’s how you spell it…) and run off printable Ukrainian text in PageMaker, type-set and ready for eager readers. Now that really was amazing.
To be continued…
