MOTM

I bought a computer to do CAD work, I think it was in 1984 or 1985.  
It was an IBM PC running 4.77 Mhz.  I had plug in coprocessor card 
which had both an 8086 and 8087, 640K of RAM on the motherboard, 
another plug-in card with 2M of RAM usable only as a disk emulator, 
a 10M Maynard Hard Disk, and a Tecmar Video Adapter that could do 
640x480 at 16 colors.  I also had a Houston Instruments plotter 24" 
wide and a dot matric printer.  The total cost was around $20K !!!  
I ran the very first version of Autocad on this system along with 
some CAD programs of my own design.  I made up all my own blocks for 
doing schematics and PCB layout.  I was doing pretty good working as 
a consultant at the time, but I think the computer was close to half 
my income.  (I was single then.)  It about killed me when I threw 
the whole thing in the trash a few years ago.

On the UPS subject.  Nowdays among other things I run a 
manufacturing business.  We sometimes ship 100 or more cartons a day 
by UPS.  They actually are better than anyone else we use.  We have 
had more damage done by FEDEX on average, and the big LTL carriers 
like Roadway have sometimes mashed (and once left out in the rain 
for a week) entire skids of 50 or more cartons.  Now thats a serious 
damage claim.  In my opinion, having used practically everybody, the 
worst is the US Postal Service.

This talk of old computers makes me remember the $1,000 upgrade we
did on a Mac 512. The upgrade gave us an extra 512 k, and a scsi port 
so that we could hook up a hard drive. The hard drive was extra, and 
was 20mb! Woo-hoo, we thought we were cool!

While I'm not too nostalgiac about old computers, I do remember
having a great time with a Commodore 128 MIDI sequencer called Dr.
T's keyboard controlled sequencer. It had several features that I 
haven't seen duplicated on more modern sequencers.

It was very easy with Dr. T to do weird things, like sequences that 
were different lengths. For example, you could have a sequence in 4/4 
running at the same tempo as a sequence in 7/8, so they phased in and 
out of sync. You could also incorporate probability into your 
sequenced phrases, so certain notes might only play 60% of the time. 
It was very handy for generating interesting variety from a limited 
set of material.

One of these days, I'm going to hook up the 128 to the TV and see
what it can do with the modular....