Thursday 29 November 2007

Welcome to WebWitter

I have always been interested in technology and I wanted somewhere to post my odd thoughts and views on tech and other topics, like movies, tv etc., somewhere outside of TheWargameShed, my gaming blog. So here it is. I suspect the frequency of entries may well be somewhat unpredictable as the mood takes me.

So what's my tech background? My first computer was a Compukit UK101 which had a 6502 processor and the expanded 8Kb of RAM! It didn't even come with a case just a bare PCB with the keyboard soldered straight on to it. It ran BASIC and you loaded and saved programs to cassette tape and used a standard TV as the display. At least the keyboard had some travel unlike the Sinclair ZX80 and ZX81 machines (plus the RAM didn't fall off the back if you were a little overzealous with the typing!).

I graduated to a BBC Micro (the Model B) which had colour, graphics capabilities and you could even have a floppy disk drive (and they were floppy in those days!). The BBC Micro introduced me to some great games like Elite and Chukkie Egg - which though not great graphically by today's standards really had the basics right with the gameplay experience.

Eventually I moved on to a PC (an Amstrad PC1512) initially with only 2 floppy drives but ultimately adding a 32Mb hard disk card. With that setup I actually ran a BBS called PsychoBabble Opus for a couple of years on FidoNet but eventually my PC packed up and I had to call it a day.

The Amstrad was replaced by a PCAT clone which I had until a few years ago despite superseding it with a Pentium based PC. I even managed to run the original Windows on the AT but the limitations of the 286 were made pretty apparent. At that stage I was running a small Novell network for my office which was fun but as I moved to larger firms they had their own IT departments and the computer side fell back into a hobby.

As to my current set up - I'm sure that'll be the subject of future posts!

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