Computers I have used at home

  1. Apple II Plus, in use from 1981 to around 1987. This computer had a 6502 CPU and 48 KB of RAM. Peripheral devices were two 140-KB external floppy disk drives, a thermal-paper printer, a 300 b/s modem, and a low-power RF transmitter for using a TV as a monitor. I had a lot of fun with my Apple and got quite adept at writing 6502 assembly language. In the early nineties I gave this system to a friend who liked to tinker with old hardware.
  2. Victor 9000 (in Europe, ACT Sirius 1), in use from 1986 until 1996. The designer of the 6502, Chuck Peddle, also designed the Victor 9000, a machine that was technically superior to its contemporary, the original IBM PC. (See the review "Victor Victorious", Byte, November 1982, pp. 216–254. There is a very incomplete version (216 KB PDF) available on the web—only pp. 216–218.) Jane got a Victor in 1983. When Victor Technologies got out of the computer business in 1986, I got mine at a fire-sale price; it had an 8088 CPU, 384 KB of RAM, and two 1188-KB internal floppy disk drives, and ran either CPM/86 or MS-DOS. The monitor had an 800×400 monochrome screen, with rectangular pixels (a bit of a nuisance for graphics work). I last used mine in 2012 when we needed to retrieve files stored on Victor-format floppy disks. (No Y2k problem—no internal clock! But you do have to use four digits for the year when setting the date now.) Software for the Victor 9000 is is available on the net from the ACT Sirius 1 User Group.
  3. Magitronic PC, in use from 1996 to 2001. Upgrading to this box jumped over several generations of Intel processors; it had a Pentium CPU, running at 166 MHz and 64 MB of RAM. Permanent storage was on a 2 GB hard disk.  It came with Windows 95 already installed and taking up the whole disk. I immediately confined it to a 500 MB partition and installed Linux. While I had intentions of learning to use Windows, I never got around to it. The most use the Windows partition ever got was when David was demonstrating Blade Runner. We gave this machine to Jane's brother David.
  4. VA Linux 420 PC, in use from 2001 to 2008. Partly to avoid having to dump Windows and repartition, and partly to ensure that the hardware would be adequately supported, I ordered a machine from VA Linux with Red Hat Linux installed. I needn't have bothered; they screwed up and configured it as a server, with all manner of services I didn't want (web, news, etc.) running upon bootup, instead of as a workstation customized the way I had requested, and omitted various software packages I wanted. Fortunately the packages were on the accompanying CDs. This machine had a Pentium III processor running at 866 MHz, 256 MB of memory, and a 20 GB hard disk.
  5. Apple PowerBook G4, in use from 2003 to 2011. This laptop computer actually belonged to Enig Associates, not to me. The PowerBook had a 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processor, 768 MB of memory, and a 40 GB hard disk.
  6. Computer built to my specs by SW Technology, in use since May 2008. This 64-bit workstation has an Intel Core 2 Duo processor (with two 3 GHz CPUs), 4 GB of memory, and a 320 GB hard disk. SW Technology installed Debian GNU/Linux as the operating system. I find this system quite zippy.
  7. Apple MacBook Pro, in use since October 2011. Enig Associates sent me this machine (about two years old at the time) to replace the aging PowerBook G4. The MBP has a 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4 GB of memory, and a 500 GB hard disk.