Newsletter Archives

• How the IBM PC changed my life

  Posted on November 25, 2024 at 02:45 CST by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 21.48 • 2024-11-25

  COMMENTARY

  

  By Will Fastie

  In my computing career, two seminal events stand out.

  A few months ago, I gave a presentation at my local computer museum titled “How the NCR 500 changed my life.” That NCR model was originally announced in 1965. I encountered it first during my service in Viet Nam and then in 1970 when I became an instructor in its use during the last year of my hitch.

  I’ll spare you my hour-long talk, but let me give you a sense of the thing. In the field, the computer and its associated peripherals occupied two air-conditioned trailers, each about the size of a 20-foot cargo container. In my classroom at Fort Lee, Virginia, it required two cubicles 10 feet square.

  The Army version of the NCR had a whopping 800 words (4,800 bytes) of memory. Storage? Punch cards.

  That machine propelled me into computer science.

  A decade later, in August 1981, IBM announced the IBM PC. I would not be at the helm of this newsletter today, much less writing this article, had it not been for that personal computer.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.48.0, 2024-11-25).

  Commentary Creative Computing, IBM, IBM PC, IBM Personal Computer, Newsletters

• The IBM Personal Computer

  Posted on November 25, 2024 at 02:44 CST by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  HARDWARE

  
  Creative Computing Magazine, December 1981

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.48.0, 2024-11-25).

  Hardware Basic, EasyWriter, Epson, IBM, IBM Model 5150, IBM PC, IBM Personal Computer, IBM-DOS, MS-DOS, Newsletters, Pascal, Peach Tree