Computers

I still have my first computer, an old Tandy Corporation TRS80, from 1979, with its stunning 16k of RAM memory!!!!!!!. It still worked in 1997, when last tested, but I had long since forgotten how to write simple routines in machine code and even Basic needed recourse to the half-shredded remains of the manual.

There are still the functioning relics too, of an Amstrad PCW9512 which despite a full frontal lobotomy, seemed to be a rather splendid little workhorse word-processor. For a while it was wired into my fax machine which I used as a scanner. The original printer shook itself to pieces and was replaced by a Star inkjet before I decided to retire the whole kit and move over to a PC. From an Oki LED printer and Epson 600 to a 760 I tried to improve the output, bit by bit. These days, I use a Hewlett Packard 5150.

My first PC still ran until a couple of years ago. It was a Gateway P5 60mhz Pentium. I scrabbled about in its brains for several years, which seemed just retribution for its limitations but even it could only do so much. So it was replaced by, a Gateway G7 450mhz Pentium, at the end of a brace of network cards, a scanner and a web-camera. Now that has been junked. 

Next came a 1.2Ghz Compaq which came with the NAIDC project, so is just the same as everyone elses of the island....  Another web cam came with the machine and like most folk, I haven't a clue what to do with it, except use it for video conferencing,,, which is about as strange as it gets. If you are intrigued about what is going on.... have a look at Richard Warwick's site www.2000friends.co.uk which is really the official help forum for the project. 

The Pennyghael.net site

That's our community development site, which is now maintained by Roger Blackwell, whilst I hold the domain and deal with the links. 

Oh! There are two laptops. An IBM T20 which I bought second hand and works quite well, plus a n Acer 5535 which is probably going to end up doing most of the donkey work. Life is just getting sadder....

Most of the work has been prepared using Microsoft Front Page, which I find a very intuitive program to use and stops all the heartache of writing my own source code. Don't ask, I've done it. And now with Java, Java Scripting, DHTML and whatever, I no longer understand what is going on. I don't need my life to get too complicated.