[drblast]

Oh the manuals that came with the machines...they had schematics in them and explained every part of the machine and what it did. It was glorious.

It would also be difficult to do now as the machines are more complex. But if you imagine today that every new PC came with a full MSDN subscription and the Intel system programmer's manuals, that's about how it was.

Of course, it took many minutes to load a program from floppy disk, so there was a lot of not-so-glorious waiting.

[smellf]

Yeah I can understand romanticizing the parts of this guy's experience with computers, but it wasn't all gravy. Did you read the part where he marveled at his new "daisy wheel" printer only having broken down once in a year of use? Or the disk drive that took 10 minutes to write out a few kB?

And how about those prices? Sure, some were $400, but you'd need $3000+ for a machine that has non-volatile storage, can run arbitrary programs, and has an input and an output device. $2000+ dollars for a hard drive storing a few MB? Not to mention the horror of completely undecided OS and instruction set architecture wars.

It's cool to imagine the simplicity of this dude tinkering with his printer made from a converted typewriter and unplugging the entire thing when the thunderheads roll in, but we're definitely better off where we are today.

[mushly]

And those are 1982 prices too.

[agumonkey]

It gets you thinking, how much of our lifestyle is about dreaming.

[porsupah]

Indeed! When my first computer, a Nascom I (4MHz Z80A, 16K RAM on an expansion card, and an integer BASIC on eight 2708 EPROMs), died, I was able to have a stab at working out what might have gone wrong by going through the schematics. It proved to be beyond hope - the PSU had fried too much - but it was positively enlightening, going through the video system, and actually understanding, seeing, how the original clock was divided down to give the character generator clock. From there, down to the horizontal sync, and from there, the vertical. With all the logic involved being on just 74xx logic, it was all so readily evident just how this all worked.

As for program loading times, that's certainly true as well. One game I wrote, for another system, required two-pass assembly. So I'd edit the source, write it out (a few minutes), rewind, first pass, rewind, second pass, launch! So, about fifteen minutes from editing to seeing the results.

Much as a touch of nostalgia may be fun, I'm happier with my MBP and iPad Air. =:) (Still, the sense of wonder inspired by current devices is probably only enhanced by the sheer contrast in capabilities of ones from that time)