Pet Peeve #7 - The Dark Ages
I was just sitting here a little while ago, waiting for my computer to restart so that I could delete some of the directories (yes, "Directories", not "Folders"!) that Microsoft Internet Degrader created even though I didn't want them.  Once this 900 mHz thing eventually rebooted itself, I planned to load one of the programs from my 40gb hard disk into part of my 384mb of memory that is running a year old operating system so that I could get rid of the trash.  This all came about after I had to use Internet Degrader to connect to Microsoft's site on the internet, through my cable modem, to see if there were any updates to my OS.  The only way to check for them is to connect to their site, over the internet (boy, wouldn't they love to be able to call it "Their" internet!), using their web browser, and this is the ONLY time I'll use that worthless browser.
Anyway, there I was, waiting the interminable 30 seconds for my computer to restart when I started thinking about the way things used to be.  As slow as these things boot today I had plenty of time to reminisce.  Computers with multiple giga-Hertz processors, single disk drives with storage capacities in excess of 100 gigabytes and disk arrays with capacities into the terabyte range, main memory configurations measured in gigabytes with flat memory models of virtually unlimited capacities.  Multi-tasking operating systems with high resolution 32-bit color displays, stereo sound, motion video, "Human Interface Devices" such as mice and joysticks.  Processing time that is measured in nanoseconds, and real-time processing capabilities for virtually any computing problem.  Internet connections with throughput measured in megabits per second.  Not only did these things not exist back when I started using computers, most of the concepts did not even exist.

It must be hard for the new computer users today to imagine what things were like back then; how we did things, the equipment we had, and how we used computers.  So, sit on old Obi Wan's knee and I'll tell you a tale.  A tale about what it was like long, long ago, ages ago, before the dark time, before the Empire.

I'm not going into a detailed history of the personal computer.  I did that once, and even I got bored with it.  I haven't been around computers from the beginning, but I have been around them on a daily basis for over 20 years.  When I got started with computers the days of punchcards were already gone.  Computers that filled buildings with vacuum tube diodes for memory "Bits" and power supplies the size of small cars were long gone.  The guys who could sit there and read binary code in blinking lights had already moved on to other things.  I've seen a lot of the changes, but certainly not all of them.  Some people will realize that this document picks up well past the "Early Days", but that's where I started so that's where this starts.  To those people I offer my thanks because without them and their efforts we wouldn't be anywhere today.

20 years ago people who used "Computers" were weird.  You couldn't really "Do" anything with them, and other "Normal" people didn't understand our fixation with them.  In all honesty I don't think we really understood our fixation with them either.  We would sit there for hours on end, typing endless, meaningless symbols and stuff, and then laugh with glee when a little sprite bounced around on the screen.  We were on a quest to create something from nothing, to write code that would make a computer "Do Something" because at that time they didn't really do anything at all.  Computers were considered toys because all we could really do was play with them.  If we wanted our computer to do something, we basically had to sit down and write a program to make it do it.  Stores that had rack upon rack of commercial "Software" were still years in the future.

Computer speed meant nothing to us then because we didn't have anything to compare them to.  No matter how slow they were, the new capabilities and possibilities that they opened up for us were simply amazing.  To give you an idea of how fast they were (I have no idea of the actual speed of the processor), the old TRS-80 Color Computer that I had displayed text on a screen that was 64 characters wide by 16 lines high.  You could see each character as it was displayed; the computer didn't just suddenly display a screen of data, you saw each character as it was drawn.  Faster processors came along, wait times went down, we got more done in less time.  All of a sudden instead of seeing each character get displayed, the whole screen just "Popped Up"!  What could POSSIBLY be faster than this?

When a computer "Booted" back then, you didn't see the familiar "Starting Windows" message, what you saw was a BASIC prompt.  BASIC was a programming language, and the forerunner of today's popular Visual BASIC.  That was ALL you saw when you started your computer.  If you wanted it to do ANYTHING you had to either write a program, or if you were lucky enough to have some sort of storage device, load a program.  There was no "DOS" since DOS stands for Disk Operating System and most of us didn't even have disk drives.  When you started your computer, there was nothing but a blank screen with a BASIC prompt that read something like "ROM BASIC READY".

There was no operating system of choice, every manufacturer had their own and they were all completely different.  You did not get new versions of your operating system, or change to another one, they were built into the computer on ROM chips.  The only way to upgrade your operating system was to sell the computer you had and get another one.

There was no such thing as compatibility among manufacturers.  If you wrote a program for an Apple-II it was not going to run on a Commodore 64 or a TRS-80 Color Computer or anything else.  Some of the stuff that we wrote in BASIC could be run on other machines if we were careful.  BASIC was pretty standard in and of itself, and the commands and functions were relatively compatible from one vendor's BASIC to another's, however each implementation had some machine-specific functions that took advantage of the "Features" of a specific machine.  This gave us a limited amount of cross-platform compatibility unless we used the machine-specific enhancements.

If, however, you wanted to try a program on another computer, you ran into the problem of actually getting it there.  We normally used cassette tapes for data storage (some computers had those newfangled "Floppy Disk Drives" on them, but these were normally the "High-End" machines that weren't found in homes).  The tapes were horribly unreliable, and took minutes (yes, MINUTES!) to load even the smallest of programs.  You could store many programs on a single tape, but the farther down the tape the program was, the longer it took to load it.  Put one near the end of a 30 minute tape and you could come back in a half hour or so to see if your program loaded or if you got an error.  The format of the tapes varied among vendors so a tape for an Apple or a Commodore or a TRS-80 could not be read on anything else.  If you wanted to try your program on another computer, this frequently meant sitting down and typing it in again.

Retyping a program wasn't really as daunting a task as it might seem though.  Computer memory was measured in kilobytes, not megabytes, and a big chunk of that was taken up by the operating system and the BASIC interpreter.  8kb (that is 8,192 bytes) of memory was pretty much standard.  When 16kb (and then 32kb and then 64kb) machines came around we were in heaven!  How would we EVER need that much memory?

We found out why we would need so much memory when we started doing a lot of things that used graphics.  We have had multi-color graphics from day one though; black and white.  Most vendors began to develop true multi-color graphics pretty quickly though.  We usually had a choice of graphics modes;  It seems like we could use 320x240 resolution with 16 colors, 4-something by 2-something resolution with 8 colors, or 640x480 resolution with 2 colors (black and white!).

These multi-color graphics really looked great!  Assuming, of course, that you were willing to watch them on your television.  Color monitors weren't around yet, so most computers used a TV interface.  This frequently resulted in the most amazing presentation of interference and wavy lines that you ever saw.  When we got to the point that we could use "True" computer monitors (even though they were normally only green and white) that was a step up.  Once the CGA, EGA, VGA, and then SVGA monitors and video adapters came about the graphics revolution was on its way, and this paved the way for the graphic-based operating systems of today.

And once we got all this great software, where did we put it?  As mentioned earlier, cassette tapes were the media of choice by many of us because of their low cost.  Disk drives, and by that I mean floppy disk drives, were still quite expensive.  A single 5 1/4" floppy disk drive that held 180 kb of data cost several hundred dollars if your computer would even support one.  180kb of data was a lot, but when they managed to double that to 360kb (by using both sides of the diskette!) and then 1.2mb we were in heaven once again.  How would we EVER need that much storage space?

Hard disks eventually came about, and no longer were we dependent on those floppy disks.  Booting from a floppy disk took FOREVER, and they were not very reliable.  When hard disks became a viable alternative it was great.  They were fast and the storage was HUGE.  We could store 15 floppy disks on a single 5mb (yes, five megabyte) hard disk!  But the 5mb disks didn't last long.  Before we knew what happened, they grew to 10mb and then 20mb!  20 megabytes!  We would NEVER fill that up!  How would we EVER need that much storage space?

Windows solved most of our concerns about what we were going to do with all that storage space.  It started out big and has never slowed down.  The cost in disk space was well worth the capabilities it gave us though.  Before Windows, personal computers were mostly single-task machines.  You could do a few things with "Memory Resident" programs or "TSR's", but not a lot.  Windows opened up a whole new world because all of a sudden we could do more than one thing at the same time.  Here is a simple example:  Imagine you are typing away in your word processor and then realize that you need to get a number out of a spreadsheet.  What do you do?  Simple; minimize the word processor, open the spreadsheet, cut the number that you need, go back to the word processor and paste it in.  Before Windows, we did this:  Make DAMN sure you have everything you need before you start the word processor, start the word processor, realize you need another number from the spreadsheet, call yourself a few choice names, exit the word processor, open the spreadsheet, find the number you need, write it down, close the spreadsheet, restart the word processor, find where you were in the word processing document, find where you wrote the number down, and type it in.  Another simple example:  listen to music on your computer while you do something else!  There was no such thing as "Multi Tasking", personal computer operating systems ran one program at a time and that was pretty much it.  As mentioned, there were some exceptions but they were pretty rudimentary.  Normally we did one thing at a time and hoped we didn't have to exit something that took a long time to restart.

"Communications" was another arena that had a long way to go to get to where it is today.  Early computer communications meant using a 300 baud modem to communicate with your buddy across town.  The internet did not exist in any form resembling what it has become today.  There were a few computer "Bulletin Boards" around, and you could call into them and download a few programs (if you could find any for your specific computer) or leave a message for a friend (the early form of email) or browse through message boards (the early form of newsgroups).

CompuServe came along and gave us something new and exciting to play with.  The idea was spawned because of the way large computers were being used at that time.  Large companies, who owned large computers, were normally only using them during business hours and allowing them to sit idle at night.  This was a huge loss to many of them because the computers were exorbitantly expensive and used massive amounts of energy to run.  CompuServe came up with the idea of allowing other people to connect to them during off-hours for a fee, and using them as expanded "Bulletin Boards".  They made arrangements with different concerns to place information such as news and current events, shopping areas, and other features "Online".  This was long before AOL or Prodigy or the internet, and as far as I know was the original form of "E-Commerce" as it has come to be known today.

The modems of the day transmitted at 300 baud, and this was FAST!  Why we could download the contents of a whole page of text in only a few minutes!  They frequently consisted of what was called an "Acoustic Coupler" and some associated electronics.  Acoustic Coupler was another name for a big box that you stuffed the telephone into once you had a connection made.  They had some foam that insulated the telephone from outside noise to prevent errors on the line, but you still had to be careful not to play your stereo too loud!

Modems finally came out that did away with the Acoustic Coupler and allowed plugging directly into the telephone line, and these were a step in the right direction.  Hayes then came out with the 1200 baud modems (4 times faster!) and the now-famous "AT" Command Set that gave modems some intelligence at last.  Instead of manually dialing the telephone and then switching over to the modem (or stuffing the telephone into the Acoustic Coupler) the modem would actually dial for us and handle the connection!  This was GREAT!  1200 baud and the modem does everything for us!  How could it POSSIBLY get better than this?

The internet, sadly or thankfully depending on your point of view, barely existed.  It started out as ARPANET back in the 70's and was controlled by the US military.  When the military got tired of playing with it and released it to the public there were a few people who ventured forth on it to pass messages back and forth to each other.  Then they wrote software so that they could pass entire programs to each other.  Then they wrote software so that they could "Visit" each other.  Then people in other countries started doing the same.  In the blink of a historic eye there were millions and millions of sites and people using the internet.  Software was written to "Crawl The Web" and find interesting sites and create databases so that other people knew where to find what they were looking for.  Software was written to display graphics and images so people could actually see pictures over the internet.  Then they could talk to one another and sell things and accept credit cards and throw up annoying banners and advertisements and useless graphics.  Then they started requiring "Cookies" and "Java" and "Java Script" and "Style Sheets".  Sites that once downloaded quickly at 1200 baud suddenly began to choke at 28,800 baud and then 56,000 baud.  The internet that was once a vacant desert populated only by nomadic computer geeks is suddenly downtown Manhattan on Saturday night.   But that's OK because this is new and exciting and it is GREAT!

So, here I sit waiting for my 900 mHz, 384mb, 40gb, Windows ME machine to boot so I can clean it up after my 10mb connection to the internet to automatically download upgrades for my operating system.  Have we really come so far over the years?  You damn well better believe it!  I wouldn't want to go back to what we had years ago for anything.  Comparing what computers can do today to what they could do even a few years ago is like comparing a pond to an ocean.  The advances we have seen in computers over the past 20 years or so are nothing short of astounding.  Everyday tasks that we take for granted today we could only dream of back then.  I like being able to do several things at once and being able to switch between tasks.  I like having a lot of things on my disk drives at the same time and being able to choose what I want to run at the click of a mouse (another thing we didn't have years ago!).  I like being able to get email from people all over the world in seconds and being able to get on the internet and find anything I could possibly imagine.  I like it and I'm not going to change the way I do things.

And who do we have to thank for all of this?  Over several decades of technological advances, thousands of people and companies.  But boil them all down to their purest essence and I come up with three names:

I'm a Microsoft basher, and I admit it.  My analogy between them and the evil Empire of Star Wars fame at the beginning of this document was not accidental because I feel that they both share the same iron-fisted philosophy toward ruling their domains and attempting to engulf or destroy anyone who stands in their way.  I do not like what Microsoft has become, nor do I appreciate their attempts to dominate the marketplace at the expense of the users.  I do, however, admire and respect what they have done for the technology as a whole over the years.  Without their advances in software and operating systems, the computers that we use today would not be capable of the things that we take for granted every time that we use them.

So, where is the peeve?  I have no idea.  I just felt compelled to write this and since it's my web site I can get away with doing that!

Scott Craig - January, 2002

Next Time ..... Tennessee State Government
Last Time ..... The Degradation Of Windows

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