Computers I Love Computers I Love
home contact no local find frame, full screen Google search web for topic jump to footer translate with Babelfish by Roedy Green ©1996-2008 Canadian Mind Products

Introduction

People often need to know the configuration of my machine, so I composed it in the form of a web page. This essay also contains nostalgic material about computers I have loved.

Current Machine

Roedy’s Green’s Current Personal Computer Configuration
Equipment Size/Speed Brand Model Description Comments
Computer mini tower Acer Aspire AST180-ED380A desk top PC Off-the shelf-Acer product. Previously I always built my own machines from components, and made my own custom cables. This one had a nice set of components at a great price $620.00 CAD . It includes video, 6 USB-2 ports, sound, speakers, Ethernet V.92 modem, 1 legacy parallel, 1 legacy 15-pin serial and a 9-in-1 card reader but no floppy. My partner bought an Acer laptop which has behaved well, and did not have a lot of quirks the way Compaqs and HPs do. Extremely quiet.
Magic booting keys:
  • Del : bios settings.
  • F12 : select boot drive.
  • F8 : maintenance mode.
  • F11 : Acer recovery mode.
Acer advertises that Vista is included. It is not. There are no CDs or DVDs and they won’t sell you any at nominal cost. All you get is a partial Vista image on disk. You can’t repair a damaged install or reinstall Vista without losing all your data files as well. If your disk is physically damaged, you cannot restore at all. I consider that deceptive advertising and fraud.
CPU 2 GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ socket 939 Dual core. Makes usage more smooth. The system is steadier in response than a single core machine. Other than that you would not notice. My machine is mainly disk limited. I picked this CPU because it let me experiment with dual CPUs at low cost. Further it uses a dual ported CPU cache which benchmarks showed really gave it some zip. I got only 512K cache. The bigger cache did not seem to make that much difference. The dual porting did. Windows rating 4.8.
DDR-2 RAM 2 GB Acer   2 gig (2 × 512Mb DDR-2 4200, 1 × 1Gb DDR-2 5300) Since Vista gobbles up so much of the RAM, Also the internal video card eats up about a 256 MB of system ram, since it does not have its own VRAM. Windows rating 4.2. With only 1 Gb, Vista is almost unusable. One of the 1 Gig RAM modules I bought from Compusmart in Victoria did not work. They advertise an immediate replacement warranty. I bought the RAM on 2007-03-05 but did not get a replacement until 2007-05-28, almost 3 months later. Compusmart also refused to supply the missing Vista disks, and charged me $50.00 CAD to tell me the RAM was indeed defective. I told them I would never buy anything from them ever again.
case 13.5" ATX tower Acer Aspire T180-ED380A 2 × 13.33 cm (5¼ in) 2 × 8.89 cm (3½ in) external bays ATX. It has very bright disk and power lights mounted on the top which makes them easy to see with the case sitting on the floor. The power button is recessed and lit making it easy to find and hard to hit by mistake. It does not appear to have a reset button. The OS has never hung so I never needed either. I power up and off with the mouse. The hibernate/resume functions work perfectly. 8 bays inside. Only 2 PCI slots, one occupied by the modem. One tiny PCI express slot. One AGP video slot. 4 RAM slots. Easy to open without a screwdriver. Bays have sliding green plastic locks instead of mounting screws. The trick is it has sliding lock than must be fully locked to insert the thumbscrews. The CPU and case fan are very quiet, and have varible speed controlled by the temperature. For such a small case, it is easy to service with lots of space to get your hands inside. It does not have a reset button. You have to hold down the power off button for a few seconds to force power off, then power on again.
integrated video 300 MHz NVIDIA Integrated NVIDIA GeForce 6100 and NVIDIA nForce 430A   Windows rating 2.0. When I first got the machine, several times a day, especially when I usd Windows Media Player or have heavy IntelliJ use running, the Video driver “restarts” going black for a few seconds then recovering, especially when running Windows Media player. Other than this, it worked fine. It seems to have stopped doing it. I presume a auto-update driver fixed it. I don’t do gaming, just fast scrolling.
hard disk 250 gig Hitachi HDT725025VLA 7200 RPM Partitioned using NTFS C: D: E: F: G:. Aka Deskstar T7K500. Vista identifies it as SCSI, but it is actually SATA-3. Buffer is 8 MB, possibly 16 MB. Average seek 8 ms. Max transfer rate 300 Mbytes per second. Windows rating 5.3. Fast but slightly noiser than average.
DVD/CD Reader/Writer ATAPI ATA-2 Lite-On SHW-160P65S caddy-less W: Reads and writes DVDs and CDs. Handles DVD+R / DVD+RW / DVD-R / DVD-RW / DVD+R9 / DVD-R9 / DVD-ROM / CD-R / CD-RW / CD-RO. i.e. handles plus and minus formats, double layer, but not Blu-Ray.
Flat Screen LCD monitor 20" Acer AL-2017 amb Power Saver Very nice. 1400 × 1050 pixels. The image is about 16.25" wide by 11.5" tall. The monitor has position but not size adjust. 8ms response time. Two quiet, tinny speakers built-in I do not use. 600:1 contrast. 150°u/° horizontal/vertical viewing angles which makes it easy for two people to look at he screen at once. 300 cd/m2 brightness, i.e. very bright, 8ms response time. It does not have that glossy look of the more expensive monitors. I prefer this flat look. The downsides: This is picture is too big and slops slightly over the edge of the screen. I have not figured out how to fix that. The controls are not labelled and hard to use. The main thing I don't like about it is when you look at it from an angle the colours are quite different, not just dimmer, but different hues.
DSK Keyboard Ergonomics Kinesis Classic QD Dvorak layout keyboard Unusual, very expensive DSK/QWERTY keyboard. Supports firmware keystroke macros and layout remapping without software. I have recently ordered a programmable foot pedal so that I can hit ctrl-v and ctrl-c with the foot pedal when my right hand is occupied with the mouse. With DSK you can’t hit those combinations left-handed. To key them left-handed you would need to hit ctrl-k and ctrl-j.
mouse 7-button with scroll wheel Logitech USB port mouse MX500 optical Wheelmouse bought 2004-04. Logitech has fast and cheap warranty and out of warranty repair. The feet soon fell of my first optical mouse, but this one is much studier. It is considerably smoother. I wish the bottom were slicker, especially when the mouse pad is slightly damp. It is sometimes hard to control because the of friction with the surface. Perhaps someday these things will float on a cushion of air. I found cleaning the mouse and the pad helps make it more slippery. Again the feet are worn down to the nubs. I have ordered new low-friction feet from SlickSurf. This mouse is hard to clean because it does not come apart. The left and right button have the usual meanings. The wheel also acts as a middle mouse button. Clicking it brings up a 2D scrolling mode similar to the hand mode of the Mac. The wheel does not wag side to side as some do horizontal scrolling. There are also two buttons that scroll up and down continuously, and two that navigate forward and back in web pages. There is yet another button that brings up a task switch so you can flip to another app without moving the mouse all the way down to the task bar.
Intel Ethernet 1 Gigabit Intel PRO 1000 GT Ethernet card for LAN I am using it at only 100 Mbit for my local, and 10 MBit to access the Internet.
Integrated Ethernet 1 Gigabit Marvel Yukon 88E8056 PCI-E integrated Ethernet for LAN Currently disabled. I am using it at only 100 Mbit for my local, and 10 MBit to access the Internet. Not supported by Ubuntu Linux, at least not without a fight.
Integrated Sound   Acer     The analog sound connectors on the back are colour coded, but have no labels or icons. You need to memorise the colour code.
Acer Sound Connectors
Colour Shade Purpose
grey   middle out
black   subwoofer middle out
orange   rear out
pink   microphone in
green   line out, front speakers
blue   line in, connect tape player etc. input.
The sound driver dies periodically. I must reboot to get my sound back. I presume this is a buggy driver. ITunes refuses to use it. It has been behaving better lately. Perhaps and automatic Vista update fixed the problem. When configuring the microphone, top refers to the internal jack, middle to the front pink jack and bottom to the rear pink jack. To configure a microphone, you must set one of the jacks to the default, the click configure to calibrate the volume.
USB Headset Logitech Digital Precision PC Gaming Headset USB Stereo headset and noise-canceling microphone. USB headset with earphones and noise-canceling microphone. It was not my first choice, just the best I could find at local retailers.
  • Nice crisp sound. No background hum or hiss. They were so quiet at first I thought they were not working.
  • Noise canceling microphone that works extremely well. When I record now, I hear dead silence whenever I am not speaking.
  • Comfortable behind-the-head grip.
  • Long 10 foot cord.
  • Nice cushiony grip on the ears with an open gap at the top for air circulation.
  • Does not need a driver. It uses the built-it Microsoft driver. You just plug in it and go. It was easier to get going than an analog headset.
  • Not truly digital. They are analog headphones with a separate digital USB adapter. The signal is analog for 10+ feet, then digital for the last 10 cm (4 in). This defeats the point of digital. I suppose a purist could insert a USB extension cord to get the analog part further away from the electrically noisy computer box.
  • You can't adjust the microphone directly in front of your mouth. It is always way off to the side.
  • There is no noise-cancelation in the earphones.
  • There is yet another volume control to fiddle with on the cord. I wish volume were controlled in one place only!
  • Not certified for use with Dragon Naturally Speaking.
  • The left and right sides are not labeled.
Microphone: 100 Hz — 16 kHz, filters out low frequencies. Earphones: 20 Hz — 20 kHz.
9-in-1 card reader         I have never used it. It came built-in. I gather it takes various types of thumbdrives. It does not read cards or diskettes.
Router 4 Port DLINK DI-604 rev E3
firmware 3.53		 acts as firewall, router, 4-port hub, Connects computers in a LAN and the LAN to the Internet via an ADSL modem with Ethernet port. Much faster than previous SMC router. Ports are clever and automatically compensate if you use the wrong sort of Ethernet cable, straight through or crossover.
iPod 0.5 GB Apple iPod    
colour ink-jet printer rated at 18 pages per minute (cough, only if you print blank pages) Canon i450 480x1200 dpi USB. Non-jam straight paper feed path. It is not mine, but I am using it. It was just bought in 2003-10. I like it because it was very inexpensive, the ink recharges are cheap, and you can replace the ink tanks and the print heads independently. It is very quick in black-only draft mode. The properties dialog to switch back and forth between colour and grayscale is very slow. It is the best ink-jet printer I have used so far. My only major complaint in the ink smudges easily right out the printer. It has only two control buttons, and one mysterious blue lever. It futzes about for what feels like hours, waiting for your maiden aunt to dither making tea, rattling about in the kitchen, every time it prints a page. I have no idea why it takes so long to get on with printing. Once it gets going, it is quite quick.
Operating System   Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition   I would not have chosen it. It came with the machine. It is a RAM pig. I will have to double my RAM. It is infuriating in that it keeps blocking me from accessing files and directories I have every right to access. It has not crashed yet, though of course apps do, much more frequently than under Windows 2000. Many of my favourite programs don’t work at all.

After three weeks the machine died with a corrupt registry. The registry is not really corrupt, since I can read and edit it just fine in service mode. It is merely missing an entry or has a wrong entry. In any case I can’t restore to a rollback.

This has turned the machine into a useless boat anchor. The machine does not come with a boot or repair disk. The vendor Compusmart wants me to spend $180.00 CAD to buy an additional upgrade copy of Windows Vista Home Premium edition so I can reinstall the OS from scratch. Phht! I own the ruddy OS already! I am furious with CompuSmart because they held my machine for 6 days without returning my calls. Finally they announced it has defective RAM, and this was the problem. The RAM was fine when I took it in. I ran hours of tests in service mode. Further, they contemptuously blamed me for damaging the RAM, when it seems to me they are the ones that damaged it. It is also possible there is nothing wrong with the RAM, just jostled on the trip to the repair shop. Even though the shop posts a 45 day return policy, they told me I would have to contact the RAM manufacturer and get an RMA and a month or so later get my replacement RAM. I was furious and stomped out vowing never to buy anything from them again. To mollify me, the clerk offered to do the RMA hassle himself, but I still don’t get my RAM for months! And to add insult to injury they charged me $50.00 CAD for damaging my RAM and holding my machine incommunicado six days. It is just sitting there useless. I feel like throwing it off a cliff.

Partitioning

After giving up on dual boot with Ubuntu, my machine is partitioned like this:
Partitioning on Roedy's Machine
Drive Size
Mbytes		 Use
- 6,997 Acer recovery
- 8 Boot-It NG
- 48,007 unallocated
C: 49,999 Vista system
D: 105,074 free work space, physically the last partition
E: 2,400 Data
F: 11,994 Programs
G: 13,994 Attic (downloads, sleeping projects, obsolete material)

Server Machine

Revenue from Google ads paid for this new server, located on Granville Street in Vancouver, BC Canada. I did not have any part in the hardware selection or corfiguration. You might wonder at the choice of Intel CPU and motherboard when I am boycotting Intel, not for any technical reason, but for its support of Israel’s wars.
Canadian Mind Products Web Server Configuration
Equipment Size/Speed Brand Model Description Comments
Motherboard Intel SE7230 1-A Motherboard Dual-channel memory with support for up to 8 GB of unbuffered ECC DDR2 400/533/667 SDRAM through 4 DIMM sockets. Has two Integrated Ethernet 1 Gig.
Disk Controller 3 gig/sec LSI Logic SAS 3041E-R SA-SCSI To get the 7 gig/sec model would cost $1000.00 CAD more. The loads don’t yet justify it. Connectors look like SATA. Handles disk RAID mirroring in hardware.
Disk 7 gig/sec SA-SCSI These are heavy duty disks designed for servers.
Operating System Unix BSD 4 Berkely Unix is mature and fast. We use the PF (Packet Filter) firewall which gives us the ability to shut out everything then let though precisely and only what we want. We are not using any virtualisation.
Connection 2 × 100 gigabit Intel Ethernet The server is connected to the upstream ISP via two 100 gigabit Ethernet links. From there they go a bank of 65+ peers and 10 Gbps ethernet connections to various backbones (some which are even faster than that).

Old Equipment

My company CMP built this PC from components back in 1985,22 years ago. Like George Washington’s fabled axe, this computer is ancient, but now has none of the original parts. It has evolved bit by bit over the years. I did a major upgrade in 2003-06, with new case, motherboard, hard disk and video card. It has stopped working entirely. I will give it another shot at getting it going, and if that fails donate it to a charity for parts.
Roedy’s Green’s Old Personal Computer Configuration
Equipment Size/Speed Brand Model Description Comments
CPU 1.692 GHz AMD Athlon XP 2000+ socket A/462 32-bit Pentium clone. Does not have a silicon CPUID serial number for privacy invasion. I had to learn new styles of work. Data flies by too fast on the screen to read it. I keep thinking things did not work because they happened so fast. It makes pigs like Acrobat into useful tools.
PCI motherboard 333 MHz FSB Asus A7V8X-X 5 PCI slots, 1 AGP, serial, parallel, ATA 133 (no SATA), 6 USB-2 ports, built-in Rhine Ethernet. 3x1 gig DIMM slots. Also has built-in audio. Very easy to use bios configuration with on-line help. Hit Delete to invoke BIOS. Alt-F2 to invoke flash BIOS. Long, short, short, short BIOS beep means video card is not seated properly.
contact treating
DDR RAM 1 GB     1 × 512 DDR 333 PC-2700, 1 × 512 DDR 400 PC-3200.  
case 17" ATX tower     4 × 13.33 cm (5¼ in) 2 × 8.89 cm (3½ in) external bays, 3 internal bays ATX. ATX is a great idea, improves reliability and makes machines much faster to assemble. Case is well designed to be easy to service. Has a deeply recessed reset button you can’t hit by mistake. Motherboard is firmly mounted with all nine screws.
power supply 350 watts Excellent (the name of the brand, not an evaluation) DR-B350ATX   Sometimes it goes into a snit and refuses to come on via the front low power switch. Turning in off then on again with back AC switch seems to clear its brain. I’m not sure if this is the power supply’s fault or the motherboard’s. I replaced the fan with a ultra quiet one in 2007-01.
AGP4x video controller 128 bit, 32 MB Microstar 3D AGPhantom NVIDIA Riva TNT2 model 64 chipset cheap. Runs 1280x1024 with fonts bumped to 120% or 1152x864 with fonts bumped to 110%, or 800x600 to test programs for compatibility with small screens. Tried many drivers from MSI, Microsoft and NVIDIA. Various drivers proved buggy, and now NVIDIA does not support the card. The most recent NVIDIA W2K driver that still supports the card is version 6.6.9.3. My old PCI Creative Labs Riva TNT video card did not work in the new machine. I suspect the video driver of causing problems with Opera rendering when I hit back. It does not happen with anyone else’s machine but mine. I get rendering squirrelies in other programs as well than others don’t see.
ATA-133 hard disk 40 gig Western Digital WD400 7200 RPM, ATA 133, not SATA. Very fast and quiet. 8 meg cache. Runs hot. Partitioned old-style using NTFS C: E: F: G:
CD-ROM Reader EIDE Samsung SC-140 caddy-less R: Master on secondary IDE port.
PCI SCSI-2 controller 8-bit Adaptec 2940B, ASPI 4.6, 4.00 drivers fast, not wide, single ended ID#7, External connector uses a delicate, expensive, 50 pin cable. I have damaged two cables.
3 ½ " floppy drive 1.44 MB Panasonic JU 257A 605P   reliable, cheap. I have to replace floppy drives every 5 years or so.
Ethernet card 100 Mbps MB Davicom 9102/A   Works ok ins Win2K, but manufacturer disowns ever making it.
colour monitor 15" Hewlett Packard Pavilion MX 70   Nothing special.
DSK Keyboard Ergonomics Kinesis Classic QD Dvorak layout keyboard moved to my new machine.
mouse 7-button with scroll wheel Logitech optical Wheelmouse USB port mouse MX500 moved to my new machine. Using an Acer mouse now.
SCSI colour scanner 600 DPI Hewlett Packard 3C HPC2520A flatbed Not working SCSI ID#2, The WordScan OCR software that comes bundled was worse than useless. The expensive upgrade was not much better. Get TextBridge if you want any success with OCR. With my new motherboard I have to run slow down the SCSI bus to 8MHz to make it work.
Digital Camera 1.3 megapixel Olympus Camedia D-360L serial port Does not work under Vista. The serial port is quite slow to download pictures. Like all digital cameras, it eats batteries. You need nickel anhydride rechargeables and a special nickel anhydride recharger. The software is not smart enough to avoid reuploading pictures it has previously uploaded. Deleting pictures is surprisingly slow. The camera is "too honest". Its images show every facial flaw in precise detail. The camera can be run in a fully automatic mode, or you can override nearly all of its decisions manually.
WebCam   Labtek basic USB Does not work under Vista. Cheap, low quality images. I bought it simply to test software I was writing. Made by Logitech.
colour ink-jet printer rated at 18 pages per minute (cough, only if you print blank pages) Canon i450 480x1200 dpi Moved to my new machine. USB. Non-jam straight paper feed path. It is not mine, but I am using it. It was just bought in 2003-10. I like it because it was very inexpensive, the ink recharges are cheap, and you can replace the ink tanks and the print heads independently. It is very quick in black-only draft mode. The properties dialog to switch back and forth between colour and grayscale is very slow. It is the best ink-jet printer I have used so far. My only major complaint in the ink smudges easily right out the printer. It has only two control buttons, and one mysterious blue lever. It futzes about for what feels like hours, waiting for your maiden aunt to dither making tea, rattling about in the kitchen, every time it prints a page. I have no idea why it takes so long to get on with printing. Once it gets going, it is quite quick.
Operating System   Microsoft Windows 2000   I like it better than Win98, but it is frustrating as hell to install. I had to start over from scratch half a dozen times. Each time my system would become unbootable and unrecoverable and all my apps had to be reinstalled and retuned since it lost all configuration data in that flipping idiocy the registry. On top of that it kept undoing my drive letter assignments, forgetting my environment sets, and forgetting my colour schemes and folder preferences.

Retired Equipment

Roedy’s Green’s Retired Computer Equipment
Equipment Size/Speed Brand Model Description Comments
colour monitor 17" Sony Multiscan 17se (GDM-17se1) Power Saver Excellent, sharp, unwavering picture. It took about 6 months to get it repaired. After a decade, the red gun stopped working properly.
SCSI-2 hard disk 4.55 gig, 9.4 ms Seagate Baracuda 4XL ST35572N 8-bit, fast, not wide, single ended ID#1. Seemed infinitely large just a year or so ago. Now I prune all the time to free up sufficient workspace. According to Sandra is 12 ms access and 9 MB/sec throughput. Retired for now.
EIDE hard disk 4.0 gig Fujitsu MPC3043AT   According to Sandra is 10 ms access and 2 MB/sec throughput. 8940 cyls, 15 heads, 63 sectors. Master on primary IDE port. Retired for now. Now Retired.
CD-ROM Burner 8x SCSI Hewlett Packard CDWRiter + 9200 caddy-less SCSI ID#5. X: Easy to use. Uses Roxio Easy CD Creator which is less than adequate. Comes with an image backup as well. Currently not working. I am hoping to revive it.
PCI sound card 32-bit Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live Platinum FM synthesis and wav file player, MP3 encoder Dead and now disconnected. I am making do with motherboard sound chips. It has more sturdy and better shielded jacks than the lower end models. Needs a bay for front panel jack mounting. Comes with a microphone and eight CDs of software including Cakewalk (MIDI composer) and IBM Viavoice (voice recognition). The MIDI synthesiser is a vast improvement on the old 16 bit version. This is an incredible toy. I was not expecting it to be nearly so much fun or to produce nearly such good synthesiser sounds. Remember to hook up power to the front panel. Connectors on back look like this:
SoundBlaster Live Platinum Connectors
Colour Shade Purpose
orange   digital out, 5-channel SPDIF
blue   line in, connect tape player etc. input.
pink   microphone
green   front speakers
black   back speakers
yellow   joystick
I suggest marking the connectors. You can never find the instruction book when you need it. No longer working. Use motherboard sound card.
SCSI backup DAT tape 10 MB/min Hewlett Packard HP 35470A internal a lemon! ID#5, HP claims 2 gig typical for a 90 M cassette. I get about 0.8 gig. The drive spent most of its first year in the HP repair shop. HP takes months to repair a drive. They never repaired it properly. It works somewhat better under NT than Windows, though the NT backup software is disgustingly primitive. Currently not working. Not recommended.
dot matrix printer 216 cps Alps Allegro 500 24 pin honourably retired. LPT2: Non-jam straight paper feed path. Emulates Epson LQ-2400, LQ-2500, LQ-2550. Solid printer, a bit noisy. No longer in active duty but was still working fine after a decade of heavy use.
laser printer 8 MB NEC Silentwriter 95 PostScript-2, 4 PPM retired. LPT1: Heavy rugged construction. Excellent dark print quality, that looks quite a bit better than its advertised 300 DPI. New toner cartridges are $300. The main thing wrong with it is it makes you open the cover, and wait for a warm up cycle every time there is a misfeed. It can’t tell it apart from a true paper jam. It is quite a trick to poke the paper just so into its slot to get a reliable manual feed. Unfortunately in as badly jammed from sticky labels and will require professional disassembly.
colour ink-jet printer 216 cps Epson Stylus Color 660 1140x720 dpi a piece of crap. LPT1: Non-jam straight paper feed path. Tends to dither and click a long time before getting on with printing. Any moisture, even long after they have dried, smudges the prints. Streaks badly since the jets clog. No way to clean the print head, other than by pressing a button which wipes it over a flimsy spring loaded dry sponge. It is useless. Tiny, expensive refills don’t include a new print head. If you don’t use it for a day, it clogs. It is a piece of junk that has never worked properly. Windex on the sponge seems to help. I bought a kit to clean it with a syringe. This helps a little. Print quality is terrible even when freshly cleaned and in high quality slow mode. The printer is now in storage for emergency use only.
colour ink-jet printer 5 ppm (my ass) HP HP 612C 600x300 dpi A temperamental beast that loved to print pages of gibberish with no button to stop it. It refused to turn on or off on command. It kept going off-line for no reason and pretending to have paper jams with no apparent cause. Eventually it just refused to be recognised as existing. Its print cartridges cost as much as a whole new printer. I hate that printer.
laser printer   HP Laserjet 4L ? turkey: Bought on eBay for $16.00 CAD . t is missing the C2085A paper tray. The vendor refused to return the incorrect toner cartridge shipped with it, it is a boat anchor.
Hewlett Packard used to make highest quality, most rock solid equipment. Now they have gone way down hill. I don’t think I will ever buy another HP product.

My First Personal Computer

lgp30

My first personal computer was given to me in 1972 by Hume & Rumble Electrical Contractors. It was a Royal McBee / LibraScope General Precision / Control Data LGP-30. It had no RAM, just a rotating magnetic drum, calculating at roughly 60Hz. It contained mainly tubes with a few transistors. Input was via 4 or 6 level paper tape prepared on a Friden FlexOWriter. It had a 32 bit accumulator, but data in storage had to have the low order bit set to 0. It featured hardware integer multiply and divide. Much of my time coding was spent placing operands at auspicious places on the drum so that I could do more than one operation per drum revolution. I created paper "prayer wheels" as an optimisation tool.

My First Computer

ibm 1620

In 1962, IBM decided to perform an experiment to see if they could teach children to program computers. I was among the children selected. They taught us to write simple FORTRAN programs on the IBM 1620 using punch cards. As you might expect children learn faster than adults. Starting that summer, the West Vancouver School Board and the University of BC hired me to write a computer program to work out high school student timetables and schedules. IBM told me I was the youngest computer programmer in the world at that time. Back then it was a bit like being a child astronaut, allowed into the holy inner sanctum computer room. The 1620 at the university had an experimental new storage device called a "random access disk". A short time later it was replaced with an IBM 7044. I rubbed shoulders with people like Vern Detwiler (later of MacDonald Detwiler) and Nelson Skalbania who later became a famous tycoon.

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