My computing history
From WFFwiki
I was given my first computer in 1981, by my mother and father, on my 7th birthday; a Sinclair ZX81 (at the time the best selling computer in the world) and it cost £69. This was to begin my love-affair with computing. I started to learn BASIC programming and soon out-grew the capabilities of the four chip 1Kbyte machine.
Next (1982-83) I had a Acorn BBC Model A, this was a computer designed by Acorn for the BBC as part of an educational package for schools and television. At the princely sum of £299 I was very lucky indeed to have one (something I still thank my father for even today).
The BBC was the start of my real interest in computing, as well as basic programming, I did 6502 assembly language and built my own interfaces (with a lot of help from my father). Over the next couple of years I also had (and programmed) a 48K ZX Spectrum (remember those blue rubber keys?) and a Commodore 64.
The next really big step was in 1987 when my father and I traveled to the midlands of the UK (a couple of hours driving) to buy the brand new Amiga 500 complete with a monitor (I think it cost around £400-500). This was the first 'true 16-bit' machine to be released and revolutionised the computer game industry of the time. The downside of the Amiga was that it was never very 'programmer friendly', but because of its 4 channel CD-quality sound and a wonderful music package called 'SoundTracker' I discovered my love of computer-aided music (actually you can still get OctaMed for the PC which has its history in .MOD music modules developed from the Amiga software).
The next big leap was when in 1990, as a surprise. my father brought me the latest machine from Acorn, an Archimedes A440/1, my first 32-bit RISC machine with a hard drive! This machine with its RISC OS GUI environment (windows to you and me), 4Mbytes of RAM, 40Mbytes of hard drive and a 25Mhz ARM 3 processor, was a powerhouse of performance. It was so fast it could simulate a BBC Model B computer in software twice as fast as the original. I continued programming with this machine and learnt all about ARM assembly (much different to 6502 as it was a RISC processor not a CISC). This is how, in 1990, I met my best mate Richard Stagg, who was a fellow Archimedes enthusiast at the time.
Next up was the advent of the PC, initially running DOS and then Windows 3.11 (actually the difference was hard to spot back then). In 1995, while studying for a BSc degree in Information Systems (at the same university as Richard), I was on my way to visit my girlfriend (now my wife!) and passed by a specialist technical bookshop in London. In the shop they had the first release of a book entitled 'Linux Unleashed' including a copy of the Linux Slackware distribution 2 CD with the Linux 1.1.11 kernel. After a while of discussion I finally convinced Richard to let me partition the harddrive of his Apricot 486-DX66 and install linux (on 10Mbytes of the 40Mbyte drive). Shortly afterwards we were both hooked and DOS was removed to make way for Linux. At the time we were studying C++, COBOL, ADA and SQL, so Linux was the perfect answer to our problems with its array of freely available compilers.
In May 1996 Richard and I installed a second phone line and starting hosting our own Linux based BBS (remember those?), there is a copy of my original post on the comp.os.linux.announce news group available from here announcing TiggerBBS. This was the first time we connected to 'the Internet', in fact the BBS had a dial up based email exchange so we could give our BBS users email accounts which was quite unusual at the time as most BBS used the (now obsolete) FidoNet system. Ricky and I had been using email for a while at this point over JANET (the Joint Academic NETwork; now known as the .ac.uk domain) via university but having it at home was a real LAT factor (Look At This!).
After I finished university I continued to work with Unix, I joined Racal Communications Systems Ltd in 1996 working with Radio Network Management Systems running on Sun Solaris (on a SPARC station 5) and Informix i4GL databases. It was due to my knowledge of data communications and Unix that I joined Teligent in 1997 to work on X.25 communication components. Quickly I discovered a great interest in telephony communication and so began my life in Telecoms (and I am still working for Teligent today).
These days I primarily work selling and designing telephony systems, but in my spare time I still like to program and do electronics.
To complete this history of my computing hobby (or should that be my life?!) I would like to say that my wife and I are still married despite all my computers cluttering up the house. Furthermore, Richard and I are still the best of friends, he went off to become a computer security expert and was last seen somewhere between Hong-Kong and Paris mumbling something about Wadsworth 6X and a laptop.
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