Newly digital

I started using computers back in 1985. The PC’s I used were old dinosaurs, running at the blazing speeds of 2 MHz, with 640KB of RAM, no hard drive and 5" 1/4 floppy drives. I could turn the machine on and go to flirt with girls on the halls of my college while it was booting. Sometimes I even had time to make out!

Programing was done with Quick Basic or Turbo Basic, and floppies had to be swaped at times, in endless search of the “command.com”. I had a whole collection of floppies, all carefully protected on a cardboard box I made and that I carried with me almost all the time. They were, after all, my most valuable posession.

I never had a PC of my own, not until 1992. I always used my school’s machines, so I was famous for always being on the labs or sleeping on the local Computer Club. I would always reserve machine time at nights, since most of the people would use them during the daylight and nights were mostly open. I have to point out that the labs on my school and the Computer Club were open 24/7/365.

I first connected to the Internet in January 1992. I send my first email using a Radio Packet BBS that had Internet connection. I beta tested Mosaic and needless is to say I saw the raise and downfall of Netscape. I paid $7.00 an hour for an Internet connection with Holonet, after I got tired of my local Freenet. Life was good.

Had had several computers ever since, including Macs and IBM Risc based. My life has revolved around computers and still does. Perhaps there isn’t a heaven, but your data packets get routed to a faster pipeline…