It’s been 38 years !!

It’s been a long journey. I was introduced to the word ‘PC’ way back in the early 80’s but hadn’t seen it till the mid 80’s when I chanced a peek into my father’s server room at his office in London.

Thirty eight years earlier, IBM launched the IBM 5150, sold at $1565 and running a 4.77 MHz processor with 64KB of memory. Called a Microcomputer then, it was the breakthrough at what is today the Personal Computer.

The first computing machine I touched was the good ole’ Commodore 64. After spending days trying to figure out what the thing was all about, I started with typing out programs for games. I spend the next few months trying to tame the bucking bronco. Then came my IBM 360, and I was back to square one. Didn’t know what to do with it. But hey, I am good and I cracked it too.

I had the taste of the PC when Dos and WordStar was the ‘in’ applications. “Abort, retry, ignore?” was inevitable, specially when you are a novice. But life goes on. I became more and more into the “geek” mode. It was then that I upgraded to an IBM AST with 4 MB hard drive space and 16 KB RAM. I became the hero in my school for being the first guy to double the capacity of my hard drive. I was invited (with red carpet) to my computer lab to do the same with all the PCs there. That’s when they learned that the magic wasn’t me, but this software used to double hard disk space.

I had the taste of the PC when Dos and WordStar was the ‘in’ applications. “Abort, retry, ignore?” was inevitable, specially when you are a novice.

Then came the age of viruses. We were petrified of the Stone virus and the Michael Angelo and Jerusalem and Raindrop virus. I remember having covered my PC with five layers of clothes to protect it on Friday the 13th, the day Jerusalem virus strikes. I laugh at myself now!!

I remember having covered my PC with five layers of clothes to protect it on Friday the 13th, the day Jerusalem virus strikes. I laugh at myself now!!

Well, there were the good old days of CUI. Then the doors closed and the world with Windows opened. It wasn’t a strange animal to me though, having played around enough with the Dos-companion Windows 3.11 during my AST days. But it changed my world.

Microsoft gained strength in the software space, once the IBM-based PC became the Windows-based PC. Today the playground is full of players in all shapes and sizes. Once the epitome of computing, the PC today is no more than a mere desktop, a bare essential; found in every corner of the smallest of companies.

Here is a tribute to the start of a worldwide revolution, the PC!