All this old timer talk about computers. The only thing older than these
machines is me. My THIRD computer was an original IBM, with two floppies
and 128 k memory. On floppy for the software and another for storage. It
was all the rage at the time.

My SECOND computer was an Epson! Yep, the printer people had a CPM system
out for awhile.

Mt first was a....., I can't remember the name of it. It looked like a
metal suitcase and had a giant 9 inch monitor built into it. It was also a
cpm machine. Was that an Osbourne?

And I had an IBM selectric typewriter at the time. So I got a big, awkward
thing, full of solenoids to sit on the keyboard. I hooked it up to the
computer and it "typed" the copy. Later, they came out with an electronic
interface that was much smaller and cheaper. It sounded like a small
hailstorm when it "typed" out some copy.

I was doing some writing at the time and used a Kroy, manual type machine.
I would type out the copy on the typewriter and manually past it up with the
Kroy type. I would them take it the printer. I actually made my living
with that arrangement for awhile. With the font balls for the selectric, it
was cutting edge graphic arts at the time. I subbed out any illustrations I
needed at the local community college. I was known for cheap and fast
graphic arts at the time.

Actually, my first involvement with computers was back in 1964 - 65, when I
was in 8th grade. I helped the class prodigy to build a computer. I was
the grunt, helper, gofer. I didn't have any idea what was going on. But I
held things in place, walked across town to get parts and did some
soldering. It was a big monstrosity that had at least 75 to 80 vacuum tubes
in it. And when we fired it up, in that little room in back of the science
department, it got HOT! We would be dripping with sweat after 10 minutes.

It did not last long. We ran it a few times and it caught on fire. We put
it out with the fire extinguisher. We had to talk to the fire department
and the principal. Who then banned any more "mad scientist" experiments at
his school. Oh well. I used to kid the principal after that. Always
pretending to be working on some kinda mad scientist experiment. It was all
in good fun though, we got along great.

Damn, I feel like some kinda prehistoric techy fossil.