COMPUTERS

Of course I love computers. Here are some of the computers i've owned over the years:

Commodore 64
The commodore was a truly wonderful machine. It was probably single-handedly responsible for a whole generation of kids getting interested in computers in the 80s. I never really had that much software for mine, since I didn't have a modem or anything.. But I really enjoyed the machine. I'll have to boot up GEOS on an emulator some time :) 		C=64
Franklin Ace 500

The Ace 500 is essentially an Apple //c or //e with 256K of RAM (which was really nice!). It looked pretty much like a black //c. By the time I got this machine, i'd been using Apples at school quite a bit, and had gotten into writing programs in Applesoft BASIC. This machine was a bit more powerful than the c64 (though not for games- the c64 definitely was better for graphics and sound), and I had better access to apple II software through school.

I learned a lot about programming from BASIC on the apple. It was really a great machine for a kid at that point. It was very possible to totally understand the machine, since there was no OS to speak of outside of BASIC itself.
Apple Macintosh SE

My Mac SE originally came in the 40/2/FDHD configuration (40 meg hard drive, 2 megs of RAM, and the 1.44MB floppy drive). I later added two more megs of ram to it. (don't even ask how much it cost!)

As any Mac user will tell you, the Mac user interface was really what made the platform so cool. They packed a lot of really excellent funcitonality into that 9 inch monochrome display :) The Mac was a joy to use.

With the Mac, I also got into more structured programming with HyperCard (a truly amazing program, by the way!) and a bit of Pascal.

Unfortunately I eventually started to outgrow this machine. I was using it with a modem to do a lot on local BBSes and was frustrated by the fact that all the BBSes in my area were PC-centric. The only real source for Mac shareware was AOL, which at the time was actually a nice service. But it was expensive ($5 an hour), so my use of it was limited.

Generic 8088
An XT-class machine with a 8 MHz NEC V20 CPU. This was our first real DOS machine. 		[no picture]
Generic 80386/40
Eventually we upgraded to a 386/40 processor. I got very into local BBSes (and even ran a few of my own). After I learned about UNIX, I first installed linux on this machine. By that point I had run out of things to do with DOS (and I didn't like windows 3.1, since IMHO it just did not compare with the Mac). Linux was a whole new world of things to figure out, and it got me very hooked.
Generic 80486/100
After my first year of college, I finally upgraded to a 486 (pentiums were already becoming popular at that point, but I like to stay one step behind so things are much less expensive). The 486 ran linux fairly exclusively. I still have it, actually, and it still works fine as a linux box. I might move this web site onto it at some point :)
Dual Pentium Pro 200

Eventually, I decided to upgrade the 486 to something a bit faster. Several friends had picked up these Equium 6200M machines from onsale.com, and I decided to do so as well.

I just found an article which indicates that this machine apparently originally listed for $4248. Wow :) I bought mine much later (once it was already discontinued) for about $800. It's a great linux box. See the link above for more information on this machine.

Josh Wilmes
Last modified: Sun Oct 24 02:22:51 PDT 1999