IBM XT
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…
February 20th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Ah… computing memories. How much I adore them. (QWERTY gets it’s name from the first 6 keys from the left on the top row of the American keyboard.)
February 20th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
My first computer was an Amstrad. It used a floppy disk that was a little larger than the standard PC floppy, but the floppy actually contained the operating system for the computer. It came with a monitor (green on black) and a small dox matrix printer. Did absolutely nothing other than text documents. But it had one feature that allowed the user to assign a word or a phrase to a particular key, so you programmed often used words or phrases to certain keys and that saved time … if you could remember which word / phrase was assigned to which key!
February 20th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Fun stuff, keep it coming every other day or so in under 200 words . . .
My first computer cost me $2500 (who knows how much more with interest) but it had dual floppy drives and a 10meg hard drive. 10 megs? I actually said, I’ll never fill this thing up!
February 21st, 2007 at 7:37 am
Brad: Computing memories are fun. In French-speaking Switzerland, the first six keys are QWERTZ, so I was just funnin’ ’bout the spelling thing.
Greg: I really, really coveted the Amstrad. It was by far the best word processor out there for the price. They were impossible to find in Switzerland, but my friend from Scotland actually checked on them there to send me one later if I wanted. I didn’t crack, but almost did.
Randy: The same thing happens to me with EVERY new computer. But now, it really is getting hard to fill up that hard drive with just sermons…
February 21st, 2007 at 8:52 pm
I remember when our computer lab was “equipped” with the latest Commodore Computers from Radio Shack.