27 min
My Third Computer Conversations with Kerry
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- Tempo libero
Episode Notes
In this episode I discuss my 486Dx/33 the first computer I owned and my first modem.
Transcription:
Welcome to conversations with Kerry, a series of audio interactions with people and things in my world that I find interesting. If you have any comments, queries, questions or feedback, you can find me as at h on Twitter or email me kerry@gotss.net thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy the podcast.
Hello everybody, and welcome to this episode of the podcast called my third computer. Now don't panic. We're not going to do an episode of the podcast on every computer I have ever purchased over the past 30 years or so. That would be a podcast series in its own right, and probably extremely boring and uninteresting to the listeners. However, the third computer that I considered my computer was a machine that was purchased for me in 1993.
Now, there were some interesting circumstances that surrounded the purchasing of this computer. My first computer, as we remember, was the Keynote XL, which was obtained for me in 1987 and that was purchased for me by the Lions Club of WeWar and Narabra. The second computer that I used throughout my high school years, the keynote PC Plus. I got my hands on that in 1990, and that served me through until the time I got my actual first personal computer and I was doing my first year of year twelve. I'd split my year twelve over two years and was doing it using the pathway scheme, which allowed me to do year twelve in two years rather than one. And we were contacted by the Lions Club to say that the trust fund that had been established for me was supposed to be disbanded when I turned 18, or at least the trust fund had to be emptied of the money by a certain date. And they asked if there was a specific purchase that would do me the maximum amount of good and make a fundamental difference to my quality of life in February 1993.
And the answer was my first personal computer. And I contacted a couple of friends of mine who knew far more about computers than I did. And this was the days before the World Wide Web and before the days that the Internet was as popular it is today. And we were searching with things like Archie and we were looking on FTP sites and trawling through Usenet archives. And I spoke to two friends, Tim and Shane, who suggested that I go through a computer shop in Sydney and purchase a computer from them. We had gone around and looked at local computer stores. We'd looked at Marnie Computers in Tamworth, and we'd looked at Osborne when Osborne was still selling computers before it went belly up as far as its computer business was concerned. And we looked at another one of the CPS computers, but nobody really had a lot of computers in stock. They were expensive. The shops didn't sort of keep a lot of them on shelves at that time. Sort of predated the big department store, like Harvey Norman and stuff, getting into electronics and stuff. So we spoke to a computer store, and for the princely sum of $2,995, I'm sure they just put 2995 to make it look nicer from a marketing perspective than charging a flat 3000 for it.
I got the following computer hardware. A full tower case. Now, for those of you who know your old 80's style case specifications, this predated ATX that had space for four. No, it had space for six, five and a quarter inch half height drives, or three full height drives. It had space for two, three and a half inch externally accessible drive bays, and it had support for two internally accessible hard disk bays. The processor in this beastie was a 486 DX 33. That's right, 33 MHz. And the 486 DX 33 was suggested to me because it contained a floating point unit. Now, prior to this, when we looked at processors prior to the 486, so the 386 and all the way down, if you wanted a floating point unit, you would have to add in a 387 coprocessor. And you may validly ask yourself, why would a floating point unit be useful in a modern computer?
And some software cou
Episode Notes
In this episode I discuss my 486Dx/33 the first computer I owned and my first modem.
Transcription:
Welcome to conversations with Kerry, a series of audio interactions with people and things in my world that I find interesting. If you have any comments, queries, questions or feedback, you can find me as at h on Twitter or email me kerry@gotss.net thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy the podcast.
Hello everybody, and welcome to this episode of the podcast called my third computer. Now don't panic. We're not going to do an episode of the podcast on every computer I have ever purchased over the past 30 years or so. That would be a podcast series in its own right, and probably extremely boring and uninteresting to the listeners. However, the third computer that I considered my computer was a machine that was purchased for me in 1993.
Now, there were some interesting circumstances that surrounded the purchasing of this computer. My first computer, as we remember, was the Keynote XL, which was obtained for me in 1987 and that was purchased for me by the Lions Club of WeWar and Narabra. The second computer that I used throughout my high school years, the keynote PC Plus. I got my hands on that in 1990, and that served me through until the time I got my actual first personal computer and I was doing my first year of year twelve. I'd split my year twelve over two years and was doing it using the pathway scheme, which allowed me to do year twelve in two years rather than one. And we were contacted by the Lions Club to say that the trust fund that had been established for me was supposed to be disbanded when I turned 18, or at least the trust fund had to be emptied of the money by a certain date. And they asked if there was a specific purchase that would do me the maximum amount of good and make a fundamental difference to my quality of life in February 1993.
And the answer was my first personal computer. And I contacted a couple of friends of mine who knew far more about computers than I did. And this was the days before the World Wide Web and before the days that the Internet was as popular it is today. And we were searching with things like Archie and we were looking on FTP sites and trawling through Usenet archives. And I spoke to two friends, Tim and Shane, who suggested that I go through a computer shop in Sydney and purchase a computer from them. We had gone around and looked at local computer stores. We'd looked at Marnie Computers in Tamworth, and we'd looked at Osborne when Osborne was still selling computers before it went belly up as far as its computer business was concerned. And we looked at another one of the CPS computers, but nobody really had a lot of computers in stock. They were expensive. The shops didn't sort of keep a lot of them on shelves at that time. Sort of predated the big department store, like Harvey Norman and stuff, getting into electronics and stuff. So we spoke to a computer store, and for the princely sum of $2,995, I'm sure they just put 2995 to make it look nicer from a marketing perspective than charging a flat 3000 for it.
I got the following computer hardware. A full tower case. Now, for those of you who know your old 80's style case specifications, this predated ATX that had space for four. No, it had space for six, five and a quarter inch half height drives, or three full height drives. It had space for two, three and a half inch externally accessible drive bays, and it had support for two internally accessible hard disk bays. The processor in this beastie was a 486 DX 33. That's right, 33 MHz. And the 486 DX 33 was suggested to me because it contained a floating point unit. Now, prior to this, when we looked at processors prior to the 486, so the 386 and all the way down, if you wanted a floating point unit, you would have to add in a 387 coprocessor. And you may validly ask yourself, why would a floating point unit be useful in a modern computer?
And some software cou
27 min