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Desktop Calculator-- 1987
Aug. 2nd, 2011 10:11 pm
The IBM PC was beneath "Greg." The mapping software would only work properly on a serious machine, like the DEC minicumputer or the Sparc Stations. Still, we had to try to get part of the software to run on the wretched PC because the customers, the users, kept asking for it.
Greg didn't have much use for users. That included me, the sole survivor of the original branch of the company, the one that had used our software to make maps for the industry rather than trying to sell the software itself. Still, I was useful enough. I could try some damfool user move like crashing the system by using a contour interval of 0.00001. ("It was a triple integral of the vertical component of the magnetic field, and the whole data range was only plus or minus 0.003! How could I know it was gonna crash the system?") Annoying, but better that I do it than that one of the paying customers did.
I rose a bit in his estimation, though, when one of the PCs-- one of the GOOD ones, the PC-AT, with the faster processor and the big hard disc-- ate itself. It needed a new hard drive. I told Greg I thought I could replace it for less than the $600 that IBM was going to charge us. Not only that, I pulled it off.
And not only THAT, but by paying $300 for a new drive and a RLL controller card to operate it (IDE, with the drive electronics on the disc drive itself, was still years away) gave us a hard drive of 40 MB, twice the original capacity. We had no idea what we were going to do with all that space. I was a hero. I actually knew something about computers.
Then, two days later, I shot myself down again.
I was rummaging around for a calculator. "You know, they ought to build calculators into these desktop computers."
"What, build a calculator into the keyboard?" Which was not such a bad idea, actually. A year or so later those showed up on the market, and you could buy them for several years. Maybe you still can.
"No, as software. With a calculator display right on the monitor. I'm sitting here looking for a calculator and I've got an IBM PC-AT that can do twelve thousand arithmetic calculations per second, and I can't get it to divide three by seventeen. It's frustrating. They should have a calculator program that just pops up when you need it. Multitasking on the desktop computer, or something like that."
Greg snorted. "Do you have any idea how hard that would be to do? And for what? To use a five thousand dollar computer to take the place of a fifty buck calculator."
"I don't care. They should do it."
"No, they shouldn't, and they never will. That's just a silly idea." And Greg walked away, shaking his head and chuckling about how naive I was.
Greg didn't have much use for users. That included me, the sole survivor of the original branch of the company, the one that had used our software to make maps for the industry rather than trying to sell the software itself. Still, I was useful enough. I could try some damfool user move like crashing the system by using a contour interval of 0.00001. ("It was a triple integral of the vertical component of the magnetic field, and the whole data range was only plus or minus 0.003! How could I know it was gonna crash the system?") Annoying, but better that I do it than that one of the paying customers did.
I rose a bit in his estimation, though, when one of the PCs-- one of the GOOD ones, the PC-AT, with the faster processor and the big hard disc-- ate itself. It needed a new hard drive. I told Greg I thought I could replace it for less than the $600 that IBM was going to charge us. Not only that, I pulled it off.
And not only THAT, but by paying $300 for a new drive and a RLL controller card to operate it (IDE, with the drive electronics on the disc drive itself, was still years away) gave us a hard drive of 40 MB, twice the original capacity. We had no idea what we were going to do with all that space. I was a hero. I actually knew something about computers.
Then, two days later, I shot myself down again.
I was rummaging around for a calculator. "You know, they ought to build calculators into these desktop computers."
"What, build a calculator into the keyboard?" Which was not such a bad idea, actually. A year or so later those showed up on the market, and you could buy them for several years. Maybe you still can.
"No, as software. With a calculator display right on the monitor. I'm sitting here looking for a calculator and I've got an IBM PC-AT that can do twelve thousand arithmetic calculations per second, and I can't get it to divide three by seventeen. It's frustrating. They should have a calculator program that just pops up when you need it. Multitasking on the desktop computer, or something like that."
Greg snorted. "Do you have any idea how hard that would be to do? And for what? To use a five thousand dollar computer to take the place of a fifty buck calculator."
"I don't care. They should do it."
"No, they shouldn't, and they never will. That's just a silly idea." And Greg walked away, shaking his head and chuckling about how naive I was.
