Hodges' Model: Welcome to the QUAD: Personal PC timeline - What's Your Footprint?

Hodges' model is a conceptual framework to support reflection and critical thinking. Situated, the model can help integrate all disciplines (academic and professional). Amid news items, are posts that illustrate the scope and application of the model. A bibliography and A4 template are provided in the sidebar. Welcome to the QUAD ...

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Personal PC timeline - What's Your Footprint?

Like many IT enthusiasts my interest goes back a long way. Trying to pin this down though is quite difficult. Back in the late 1970s I bought every copy of a magazine - OMNI - that mixed technology, science and science fiction. At school some of my friends did computing, visiting the nearby technical college. I missed the boat on that occasion.

Then in OMNI they started to advertise the Sinclair ZX80 and in Nursing Times there was a computers in nursing supplement, it was called CINNEWS I think. There were no doubt other influences, but I decided to wait for the ZX81 before jumping on-board.

After the ZX81 3.25 MHz 1K of RAM (added 16K RAM pack) it goes as follows:

  • BBC micro MODEL 'B' BBC Micro
  • Elonex 286 12Mhz
  • Elonex 486 33Mhz
  • Dell Pentium II 266Mhz
  • Evesham Pentium 4 2.66Ghz

The Evesham PC was 6 years old last November. It's still going strong, though would benefit from a major sort out and its days are numbered as the main machine.

The latest purchase is an Asus Eee PC. Although we are still getting acquainted, I really like this little piece of kit. It seems I've done a Palin and gone full-circle.

I hope so - because back in 1981 BASIC and programming really took hold for a couple of years at least before the family came along and now the youngest is 14 - how time and technology flies....