JAGGIES!!!!1!!11!!!!111!

...using the lovely old 8-bit Zilog Z80 3.5 MHz Micro Processor, which I spent many happy hours in the 1980's programming my 48K Sinclair Spectrum (Timex), in Machine Code Language....and Sinclair BASIC...

...and still do!......!

Paul...with a house full of 8/16 bit Computers, and their software and hardware!... ...!

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/

My first computer was a Leading Edge Model D. It had two half-height 360Kb floppies, a 13-inch green monochrome monitor, 256Kb of RAM which I upgraded to 640Kb at great expense and a screamin' 4.77MHz 8088 chip. No speakers. No mouse. I had one software for it-- a 96Kb word-processor called EasyWriter II. I got the computer in late October of 1985 (22nd or 23rd, if I remember correctly) and used it all through college and all the way until mid-December of 1995. I used it for writing letters and reports, et cetera for my schoolwork. I never knew there was much more to do with a computer until I got the second one in 1995. That one had Windows 3.1 on it. I discovered computer games. I had US Navy Fighters and some other thing having to do with three sims sold as a boxed package, one of which was a Pitts S1 and had the scenery for a place not too far from where I lived. My second computer had a 486 DX4-100, a 636Mb hard-drive, a 14-inch color monitor, a 3.5-inch floppy, a 14Kb modem and 4Mb of RAM. I later upgraded that to 16Mb-- at great expense. After about six months of using it, I upgraded that 14Kb modem to a 28.8Kb-- again, at great expense. I remember the 28.8 cost $129 plus tax. What's a modem now-- about ten bucks? We have come so far so fast...

How many times bigger than 64Kb is 4Gb? Quite a bit. If we had to store all that on 3.5-inch floppies, we'd need several 53-foot semi-trailers to store FSX, a few sceneries and a few airplanes with VCs. The price of storage is so low compared to how much we can store, it's almost free. I see ads on newegg for 1Tb drives going for less than a hundred bucks. I see 500Gb drives going for fifty bucks. Back in 1986, I saw an ad for something called a HardCard. It was a 1Mb (might have been 1Gb, but I don't remember) hard-drive going for five hundred bucks. A 1Gb thumbdrive (1000X the 1Mb Hardcard) today is ten to twelve bucks at Walmart. That would make the thumbdrive $500,000 in 1986. You know, it just might have cost that much back then- if you could have even bought one for that much money. Probably only available to Uncle Sam. National security concerns, you know...