The Late ’60s and ’70s

While a teenager in Junior High and High School, Da Guy got the computing bug in his Boy Scout and Order of the Arrow (OA) days, using a set of applications written by “Steven J”, a Caltech graduate student and friend. Da Guy was OA Lodge and Section Secretary for several years while maintaining the membership records, producing mailing labels for the newsletter, and reports using “Steven J’s” programs and documentation on a time-shared multi-million dollar IBM System 360/50 mainframe at the local University. Da Guy made use of that mammoth and it’s water-cooled successors running behind glass walls for several years, while he honed his data entry and typing skills using an IBM 029 keypunch, poking the decks through a wall to have the output magically returned a few hours later.

…and yes, if you’re wonderin’, Da Guy did wear a pocket protector at least for a few months somewhere in his High School days when that was in-vogue with some of the gang, along with one of the first TI scientific calculators he had saved for months for, attached to his belt. (That was well before HP introduced their calculators with RPN that Da Guy still prefers to this day.) No, he didn’t exclusively wear white socks back then. …ah, we digress. Let’s move on.

When college rolled around, Da Guy took a couple of electives to find out more how this computer he’d been using read all those cards he’d punched over the years and produced the output he’d been receiving. He signed up for Intro to Computer Science the first semester, FORTRAN the next, then COBOL, and the guy was hooked. Some of the mystery was at last revealed. In addition to his part-time draftsman job at a bank he’d had since high school, Da Guy took another part-time job as “lab attendant” assisting other students with their programming assignments, helping them punch their decks and submitting them off for remote processing. In his second year of college, Da Guy switched majors from engineering to “Comp Sci”. Da Guy starting writing his own programs against the Scouting membership records and eventually redesigned the system “Steven J” had started. Through a series of events, and thanks to Mr. Guinn, one of his professors, Da Guy ended up getting into the biz professionally as a programmer and then mainframe systems programmer at a well-known Southern California University and Medical Center at a time there was a glut of them on the market.

In that same mid-70′s timeframe, the IMSAI 8080 and MITS Altair 8800 were introduced. A few stores selling these kits to enthusiasts started to appear. Da Guy had built several Heathkits (an early digital LED alarm clock, stereo, and even a TV) but he just couldn’t flip the bills for one of those computers himself, even when he could store data on an existing reel-to-reel tape recorder he already had. It was definitely Geek-Heaven, as Da Guy looks back on it now. Fortunately, the mainframe scene he was involved with through Scouts, college, and then professionally, consumed nearly every waking hour, so this idea of owning what would some day be called a “Personal Computer” was pushed to the way-side.

1981

In January, Da Guy joined Big Blue. Coincidentally, in August of that same year, IBM introduced the original IBM Personal Computer into the marketplace. IBM arguably set a new global standard, as well as the stage for personal computing most of us take for granted today.

1982

Out on his own now, Da Guy bought his first IBM Personal Computer under a “once in a lifetime” (that’s what it said) Employee Purchase program for nearly $12K running IBM PC-DOS with 192KB memory, two 180KB floppy drives for storage (no cassette tape storage for him!), a green monochrome display for its clarity and a color monitor, an IBM logo’d OEM dot matrix continuous forms printer, along with a copy of BASICA and VisiCalc (the original spreadsheet and killer application of its day). Don’t laugh, that was months of salary to be paid off through payroll deductions, but a steal compared to commercial pricing and very leading-edge for the day!

That was a long time ago. Da Guy actually had to go to an IBM Product Center (yes, an IBM store) to pick up the system. Given he was working in downtown Los Angeles when the closest place was in Beverly Hills, a street or two over from Rodeo Drive of all places. Parking was too expensive as he remembers it, and is the only time to this day, Da Guy has ever been out of his car in this upper class section of town. The best part of the experience was having a slow-walking, elderly, Fred Astaire walk past him on the street in exactly what you would have expected to see — a dashing, finely pressed suit for such a classy gentleman. Perfect. A moment, and side benefit of purchasing his first IBM PC, Da Guy will never forget.

Since Those days of long ago…

Da Guy has had more than a dozen systems with an innumerable amount of peripherals and software applications, moving through DOS, IBM TopView and OS2 (does anyone remember them?), and every version of Windows that Microsoft has ever produced through Windows 7. Some people collect books, art, or cars. Perhaps some collect PC hardware and/or software. Others collect them all if they can!

Fall 2010

A new era for Da Guy and his personal home system began. After 29 years with Wintel Personal Computing solutions based on that original IBM PC back in 1981, Da Guy migrated to an Apple iMac. Oh my!  …and when he retired in June 2011, the last of the PCs left his home… perhaps forever.