Advent of Computers: An Endearing Friendship - Part I [aboutcomputer99.blogspot.com]

Advent of Computers: An Endearing Friendship - Part I [aboutcomputer99.blogspot.com]

My old Advent 3418 Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz Hyper Threaded computer. Advent computers are a rebrand sold in the UK at PC World and other stores, though mainly PC world. This machine served me well until end of last year time. I've decided to replace it with the fujitsu Siemens Scaleo P system. So I will bag ths up and ertire it to my attic for now. System specs as of video. MSI TG865PEM2 -ILS 2Gb PC3200 DDR 1 C-Media onboard sound Nvidia Geforce 6 6600 AGP8x 128Mb 60Gb IDE Hard drive 3½" Floppy CD Writter (forget which) ColorsIT 500Watt PSU WindowsXP Pro Service Pack 3

aboutcomputer99.blogspot.com Advent 3418 Part 1

The setting - Late 80s... The place - India... The technology - Computers... A school kid is first introduced to a Computer. He gets his first hands on the machine that fascinates him to no end! He stares at its TV-like monitor, he feels its keyboard... Welcome to the world of Computers opening its doors to the inquisitive kid...

I consider myself extremely privileged to have been part of that wonderful and endearing era of the advent of Computers in India. As a school kid, it was the first meeting I had with this magic machine called a Computer which, as it would turn out, was to be the beginning of an endearing friendship that would last a lifetime

Computers at that time were extremely sensitive gadgets. We had a large Computer Room in our school housing some 50 odd computers. As it were so vociferously exemplified to all of us that the Computer should be protected from moisture and any spec of dust, our computer room proudly stood tall fitted with 6 Air Conditioners at a time when owning an AC was an out-n-out luxury in itself. We were all required to take off our shoes and place them outside in a neat row before entering this sacred room.

The two basic forms of Computers that we had at that time were - An IBM PC and a BBC Computer. The CPU of the computer used to be a horizontally based box (more like a VCR) than the tower type CPUs that we have today. There used to be two slots to feed in your floppy drives into it - drive A and drive B which were depicted as A: and B: on the monitor. At the start, the floppies we used were the big 5 3/4th inch disks and it was much later that the 3.25 inch disks came into existence many years later. It used to be such an exciting prospect just putting in your floppy and locking the notch and have your computer booted up.

Thus, as we took our places on our Computers sharing one PC between two students, our teacher started with her usual rounds carrying a "Bootable Disk" in her hand and booting our PCs for us one at a time. Computers at that time had no hard disks:shock: - hard to imagine today, but its true! Astonishing as it sounds, the PC did actually boot from a floppy disk and did showed all of its glorious power working purely on its RAM and carrying out what it was instructed to do:) What we refer to today casually an OS today, was in those days referred to as the Disk Operating System (DOS) and in most cases was almost certain to be found on your question paper to be expanded into its full form.

The floppy box used to be such a treasure for all of us with each of us being proud to hold one and show it off. Verbatim, Amkette - two of the most popular brands that existed in those times were a hot property much sought after at the stationer's shops! You just wonder where those brands got lost in today's world:( With no technological advancements like today, that was a time much quieter and laid back, and hence, this new little tech thin g came as a cool soothing shower to a deprived race of tech thirsty generation:) Costing anywhere between 30 to 40 Rupees, it was an addiction to collect floppies at that age. No wonder, we used to be proud of our floppy boxes as we are today of our mobiles! I remember once in those times when a magazine had brought in a free floppy disk in one of its issues, there was such a mad rush to grab copies of that mag amongst the school kids! I confess to have indulged in the same procuring at least 10 copies of that useless magazine. What times they were!

Ok, so back to my computer class of the 80s, the PC booted and all set to go, the next step was for the teacher to load BASIC Language to the computer from another one of her's "master floppies" - as we called them. Bingo! And we were ready to get on:D My friend was there waiting for me to play with it, to study with it and to talk to it. I was equally keen to do the same with my new found friend, and as is a prerequisite, I first need to learn its language:)

Well, do join me on my journey with computers in our subsequent issues of this series of "The Lost Technology". I hope you would have liked the experience with our first edition of the weekly series. So do wait for the next edition - same time, same place - and we promise the journey to be endearing and worth remembering!

Recommend Advent of Computers: An Endearing Friendship - Part I Articles

Question by Spooky1: What did you do of an evening before the advent of computers? Best answer for What did you do of an evening before the advent of computers?:

Answer by Barly C
I got a computer in 1993, when I was eleven. So really I just hung out.

Answer by Mrs. S
Hung out, watched tv, played the radio/stereo, read....

Answer by jnoele
Same kind of stuff I do now. Make dinner, read, watch tv, play games, I just add in some computer time now.

Answer by Becks
Wasted time in front of the tv, or I was outside playing or TP'ing a house, I don't remember lol

Answer by Julian of N.
I only signed onto computer world @ home about 2 yrs ago. Before that I would watch some TV, study, and read. I would also attend concerts, particularly classical music. In addition to the above I would talk with friends. I prefer to e-mail many friends now (because it is hard to connect by phone during evening hours).

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