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Ian Fieggen's Site |
Ian's Computing History |
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How my early interest in all things technical, mechanical and electronic
naturally led me into the newly emerging field of Personal Computers.
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Technical Stuff |
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I grew up with an insatiable curiosity about all things mechanical, optical, magnetic
and electrical, from my first mechanical wristwatch (which I totally dismantled and
reassembled) to a myriad of mechanical, electrical and electronic devices. I guess this
was influenced by my father, whom I regularly joined out in the shed as he worked on the
family cars and various other toys and appliances that needed attention from time to
time. The shed was full of interesting tools and bits and pieces, including old ex-army
radios and other leftovers from an earlier era of valve electronics that pre-dated the
transistors and integrated circuits that I grew up with.
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Electronics |
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As a teenager growing up in the early 1970's, I was regularly constructing electronic
projects, both from commercial kits and from my own designs. My schoolmates found my
talents came in handy for repairing broken calculators which, in those days, were
expensive to replace. I can remember countless train trips to the city after school to
visit my favourite electronic component stores like Dick Smith's, Radio Parts and
Ellistronics. On one occasion I was lucky enough to get some technical advice from Dick
Smith himself; not quite in the same league as having Tiger Woods give me some tips on
my golf swing (*smile*), but a nice memory nonetheless.
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Computers |
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In the late 1970's, my interest in electronic projects naturally drew me to the newly
developing field of personal computers. Whilst still at school, I built my first hobby
computer from a design in an electronics magazine. On a limited budget, I couldn't simply
buy a kit, so I made everything I could myself, often from scrounged bits & pieces. I
etched and drilled my own circuit board. I made a case from some nice smoked-grey perspex
so I could see the circuitry within. I bought an old TAB terminal from a disposals store
because it had some nice keys from which I could build a keyboard. I even bought an old
$20 TV set from a local opportunity shop and converted it into a monitor. The result was
my first working computer, and I must say, I was quite proud of it. I wish I still had it
today so I could take a photo and show it off!
My next computer was a TRS-80, one of the first affordable ready-built computers produced
for the mass market. This is where I really got into some serious programming, both in
its native BASIC language and in its Z80 machine code, which was absolutely essential if
you wanted your programs to really perform within the limited resources available. By way
of comparison:
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TRS-80 |
Current PC |
Latest PCs |
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Processor |
Z-80 |
Pentium II |
Pentium 4 |
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Speed |
1.77 MHz |
400 MHz |
3,000 MHz + |
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Memory |
0.05 Mb (48 Kb) |
128 Mb |
512 Mb + |
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Storage |
Approx. 0.0005 Gb
Cassette tape |
8 Gb
Hard drive |
80 Gb +
Hard drive |
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Graphics |
128 x 48 dots
monochrome |
1280 x 1024 dots
16 million colors |
1600 x 1200 dots +
16 million colors |
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Still on a limited budget, I often built what I could not afford to buy. For example,
the TRS-80's cassette tape storage was very slow, taking up to 5 minutes to load a large
program, but a floppy disk drive was out of my price range. So I designed and built an
interface for a high speed tape drive that I salvaged from an old NCR cash register,
even writing my own driver software. Now I could load a large program in less than a
minute!
Even back then, I realized what a huge impact the personal computer was going to have.
The world was accustomed to serious, room-sized computers which were the domain of large
corporations, and considered those that hobbyists like myself played with as little more
than "toy" computers. Most people placed personal computers in the same category as
building and flying balsa-wood model airplanes (which, by the way, was another of my
hobbies). In fact, the term "personal computer" was, in itself, quite a new addition to
the language.
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Copyright © 2004 by
Ian W. Fieggen. All rights reserved.
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