Cyprus-Forum.com

[supporttheunderdog]

My earliest experience of computers was in the early 70-'s at school, when we had access to a PDP 8 and PDP10 at what was then Hatfield Poly, either by going to their site or later over a dial up link at school using an accoustic coupler.

I recall seeing the first Commodore Pet's coming out in the shops: my father used a slightly later Commodore machine attached to some technical kit to do some stats work, and he used either a Victor Sirius or an Apricot (same machine, different label) running CP/M-86, for other office work, before moving to an IBM PS/2 .

I thought about buying my own computer throuighout the 1980's, but most seemed dedicated to games, which had no interest, and it was otherwise geoing to be a solution looking for a problem. I am very cautious about buying technology unless I can see a genuine need for it.

The kick starter happened in late 1989: I worked for an international insurer, that used record keeping techniques dating back to the 1870's, pen and ink in big ledgers. We otherwise had manual Imperial tyepwriters, of dubious serviceability, and one IBM Golfball type. For comms we had two Telex machines. They ended up being just about the last telepinters in use in the North of England, and the GPO had major issues getting parts. The nearest concessions we had to modern technology were a fax machine, which the MD said would never catch on, and and a "memory typewriter" made by Olivetti, which could store some frequently used texts.

The Firm had looked at computerising, but senior management had about as much clue about that as there are F's in the letter clue (and we know there is no "F" in Clue) and wondered if one the Home computers of the time (Commodore 16 - MSX type) sold in the local department store would do the job... by then I knew it likely had to be an IBM type.

The memory typrewriter went wrong and it was going to cost a fortune to fix. At about that time IBM type Computers bagen comiong down in price, in particular those based on the then old 8086/8088 Family of chips, and we bought some MS-DOs PC's made by "Brother" along with a daisywheel printer and a switch box...then I had to tell the boss that we needed a word processing program, where I think we got Wordstar. They had twin 5.25 floppies, mono displays, and were running the V20/v40 clones of the 8086/8088 family.
These had the virus on the O/S systems disk

The single daiswheel printer was both loud and innefective when shared so we quickly moved over to small lasers.

At about that time we also went through a merger/takeover by another similar entity, which was a bit bigger and more up to date, as they were running IBM System 32/36 and AS400, and we had to acheive connectivity to that system, so we carded up some of the brothers to accept twin-core and connected to head office via a multiplexer and dial up. Soon after we got a dedicated leased line with Frame relay.

Doing the cabling under the floor of a rodent infested 18th century former house was not atall fun. The IT manager from London came up to do the physical installation (including the wiring) and I got the job of liaison, so had to do to the initial underfloor survey for cable access, then I got to help put the cable in. We also put in a Novell network, and began to run Groupwise email, though it was not that common to use email. Most stuff still went out over the fax, or by post or even telex..

I found I was considered the Office Guru on computers, for which I mean least ignorant and most willing to experiment, and I bought myself a slighly more expensive brother model with a 286 Chip and either CGA or VGA colour, and a 20 MB hard disk...I was running GEM or MS-DOS4.2. . I had to replace the Brother, as it got stolen in a burglary, so I got a 386 based machine. I moved over to DR-DOS 6 with Windows 3.

In the mid 90's we moved office, and I again was the liaison for IT and again got my hands dirty helping to cable up the office - all CAT5, no twin core. At this time the kit I was looking after was running a combination of DOS/Windows, NT 3.51, NT 4 and OS/2, and we had a Unix box. My day job was still insurance, rather than IT.

I also got told to "throw away"our old 486 based Novel 286 server, which had two 4 GB disks, as we moved to Novell 3 and needed something beefier, but it got delayed on the way home. I stripped out the cards I did not need, reformated the disks, and ran it at home.

I have also visited Australia, 4 days in Brisbane/Coolum Beach (working) and 6 days in Cairns (Vacation). Certainly a great place. I was meant to go to Sydney for work in December (for two nights) but that got binned.

[yialousa1971]

Blimey, you must be my age then… and we all had you down as 12!

I am guessing he is 46

I can see you are going to make a great apprentice.

[yialousa1971]

Blimey, you must be my age then… and we all had you down as 12!

I am guessing he is 46

How old is Archimedes?

Some age as Voltaire.

[kurupetos]

Blimey, you must be my age then… and we all had you down as 12!

I am guessing he is 46

How old is Archimedes?

Some age as Voltaire.

[Get Real!]

Blimey, you must be my age then… and we all had you down as 12!

I am guessing he is 46

How old is Archimedes?

Some age as Voltaire.

Funnily enough, they’re all the same age as Paphitis…

[kurupetos]

In koala years, chicken?

[Pyrpolizer]

So now we know why you were deported to Australia to join the other convicts!

Indeed… which begs the question… what has Paphitis done? He needs to come forward…

Who would have ever imagined that such a simple one liner would wind him up so much as to keep on writing pages upon pages of endless blaber blaber.
Isn't there a damn Australian forum for him to go get lost?