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First Computers
theodp writes "You never forget your first love. Or your first computer. Good Morning Silicon Valley readers share fond memories of their first computers, including SuperELFs with 256 bytes of RAM, $99 Timex Sinclairs, 26-pound 'portable' Osbornes, 'high-speed' 300 baud modems, Apple IIs running COBOL, and even a Mattel Aquarius (complete with Microsoft Aquarius-BASIC 1.0!)."
My first was an original Pentium! Only had 16 megs of RAM and a 40 meg harddrive! Ah, the memories of cranking out assembler on that puppy to squeeze out the last bit of performance...
Had SVGA though.
Yup, I remember it fondly. Xmas in the 80's and a Commodore 64 under the tree. A big old floppy drive, keyboard, monitor and a couple of games. Popeye and some drawing game. Those were the days.... The monitor still works great, wish I still had the other gear.
(Sponsored by cheeseSource for President 2012)
By BILL GATES
c.1996 Bloomberg Business News
[...]
QUESTION: I read in a newspaper that in 1981 you said, ``640K of memory should be enough for anybody.'' What did you mean when you said this?
ANSWER: I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time.
The need for memory increases as computers get more potent and software gets more powerful. In fact, every couple of years the amount of memory address space needed to run whatever software is mainstream at the time just about doubles. This is well-known.
When IBM introduced its PC in 1981, many people attacked Microsoft for its role. These critics said that 8-bit computers, which had 64K of address space, would last forever. They said we were wastefully throwing out great 8-bit programming by moving the world toward 16-bit computers.
We at Microsoft disagreed. We knew that even 16-bit computers, which had 640K of available address space, would be adequate for only four or five years. (The IBM PC had 1 megabyte of logical address space. But 384K of this was assigned to special purposes, leaving 640K of memory available. That's where the now-infamous ``640K barrier'' came from.)
A few years later, Microsoft was a big fan of Intel's 386 microprocessor chip, which gave computers a 32-bit address space.
Modern operating systems can now take advantage of that seemingly vast potential memory. But even 32 bits of address space won't prove adequate as time goes on.
Meanwhile, I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Best PC I ever owned
286 20Mhz(!)
1024k RAM (but most things only used 640k so the extra was usless unless the game supported extended/expanded memory)
13"(?) SVGA monitor
2400 baud modem (got it a bit later)
20-something(?) MB HD
3.5" and 5.25" floppy drives
3 button wheel mouse that never really worked well
ahh... the best PC I ever had
Fondest memories:
I think my computer is my first love, like women are for some men, or cars are for others. My life is totally fucked up now but thinking of the 286 brings back good memories
I guess that pretty much confirms that I'm a geek
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
It really isn't that likely he would have said that.
I agree, but then I also doubt that Microsoft was the driving force behind IBM choosing to make their PC 16 bit as he seems to be claiming in that interview, so I guess it all balances out.