More on what would we do without computers?

The computer world has really changed since I got my first computer back in the mid-1980s. The makers even back then were constantly coming out with something new. I remember seeing one cartoon which had a fellow buying a new computer outfit. A friend was telling him that it would soon be obsolete. He argued back, but then found a statement in his documentation that indicated that the unit was largely 1981 technology.

So, as the friend implied, it was “obsolete” even before he bought it.

Of course, I never quite accepted the idea that one had to always have the latest and the greatest. I was more concerned with how to make something up-datable and how to make it last for as long as possible.

That seems not to be the way the makers were thinking, and probably still are thinking. The marketing efforts were always to spark the drive to obtain the latest and most advanced technology and the most innovative features, so as not to “fall behind.” “Falling behind,” becoming obsolete, was an awful fate to contemplate.

Of course I have basically become computer obsolete about five or six times since 1984. I had worked pretty hard on my original computer, the old Commodore 64, and had become pretty expert in managing the operating system, programming applications using the Commodore BASIC programming language which was built-in to the unit, and also programming at the machine level. The Commodore 64 was hugely successful in the beginning, economical to buy, good features for the price (even more than more expensive brands offered), and widely supported by Commodore Computer clubs, school lab applications, and widespread support publications, books and magazines. But as Apple Computers and the IBM-compatible world became more competitive, the Commodore world began fading. Commodore came out with the Commodore 128, and later with the Commodore Amiga. I bought a 128, but discovered that it could be run as a 64 and would do everything I was trying to do that way, so I never found much advantage in the larger memory. The Commodore Amiga was a great graphics machine, and was mostly in demand by people doing computer animation. The world of computer animation has grown tremendously since those days, with very popular movies and TV shows making great use of the motion color graphics capabilities.

One of the major areas of change in the world of computers has been the operating systems. In the early days of home, school, and small business computers, the makers usually came up with their own operating system. Most of the systems were proprietary, and could not be used by other makes. This meant that compatibility between makes was just not there. Files produced by one computer brand could not be easily moved over to a machine of another brand. Interestingly, for those of us who had an interest in doing some of our own software programming, most of the brands of computers were supplied with some form of programming language, usually some version of BASIC. For the Commodore 64, the programming language was built-in as part of the operating system.

There were similarities, but not compatibility between makes. This began to change when IBM worked out an arrangement with Bill Gates of the Microsoft Corp to supply the DOS operating system for IBM Computers and for the compatibles that they would authorize. This turned out to be a huge deal for Microsoft, with all the IBM-compatible makes required to come with the MS-DOS operating system. Of course it also resulted in more compatibility between the makes of computers.

After several years of working with my Commodore 64, I moved over to the IBM-compatibles and MS-DOS. I became obsolete as a Commodore guy, and kind of started over with MS-DOS. About that time Apple Computers came out with the Macintosh, with it’s graphical user interface, or GUI as it was called. This brought on the point-and-click method of handling the computer, providing lots of snazzy designs on the screen, making possible things like making a family picture your screen background.

So, the mouse became part of using a computer. Pretty soon, Microsoft answered with the WINDOWS operating system. WINDOWS 3.1 became hugely popular, and IBMcompatible computers with the WINDOWS operating system became very competitive in the market. For many years, WINDOWS users would wait breathlessly for the next version to come out from Microsoft (of course the company liked that). Early versions of WINDOWS ran on top of MS-DOS. So, old MSDOS users like me could switch out windows and run on the underlying system if we wanted to. That changed with WINDOWS 95. MS-DOS became unnecessary, though still kind of available in a hidden way. At the same time, the microprocessors were becoming faster and faster, disk drives were becoming bigger and bigger, and technically the makers of processors were going from the simpler 8-bit processors to 16-bit, then 64-bit. The registers in the older processors had worked with digital numbers from 0-255. Working with bigger numbers involved handling several numbers in succession (that is, several bytes one after another). By the way, there are eight bits in a byte, 1024 bytes in a megabyte. Also, although it has become common to equate the symbol K with 1000, 5K as an example is not actually 5000; rather, strictly speaking, 5K is 5120, 5 times 1024.

Anyway, the later versions of WINDOWS have made old MS-DOS people (like myself) obsolete again. We seem to learn, even to expert levels, and then the things we know are not of much use any more, and we have to learn all over again. We old people don’t like to be obsolete, but to avoid being obsolete, we seem to be starting over every ten years to learn how to handle the new stuff. Some of us just wish we could still do our stuff like we were accustomed to, and that we didn’t have to be always starting over.

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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, and a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by email at joe369@centurytel.net, or call 621-1621.