Email: ericgs@ericgs.com
http://www.ericgs.com
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My first experience with a computer was when I was about 15, at Radio Shack with the TRS-80 Model I. I was so thrilled when I could save my programs to cassette tape. In 1981 I wrote a program that allowed me to draw on the screen using the arrows and toggle between draw and erase mode. I saved the program to cassette and printed it out. Today it is, of course, obsolete.
In September 1981 I went to Cal. Poly. Pomona and took a class in Fortran IV. We used a mini computer and recorded our programs on both hard drive (huge by today's standards) and punch cards. I spent 8 to 12 hours a day messing around with the computer. I wrote my own email program and a random quote generator program. I still have the random quote generator on my micro computer in a GWBasic program. I got into trouble for writing the email program but the administration still gave me more disk space to fool around with. I saved my favorite programs to punch cards and printed out all my programs in batch on the page printer. I had a stack of the old (huge) paper and some punch cards for years. I threw it all away, being so out dated.
In 1990, while I was learning about the old XT, in ITT Technical Institute, I got an IBM XT clone. I put an 80 Meg hard drive on it and filled it up in a few years. I wrote a lot of Basic and Batch files. I still have some of them, but they don't work very well on my current computer. In 1993 I got another XT and converted it to an AT. Wow, I thought it was fast. I put a 40 Meg IDE hard drive in it and set it up as a public BBS (bulletin board service) for a while. I never charged for it, but I met some interesting people. It was fun for a few years, then both computers' hard drives failed. I was going to upgrade my computer to a 386 or 486.
I got a Pentium 120 Mhz with a 1.2 Gig hard drive in 1997. It came with the hard drive almost full with software. I deleted what I could and added some interesting software. I added a 6.4 Gig hard drive and my computer functioned better and had plenty of space. I added 24 MB more RAM to make 32. Eventually I upgraded to 64 MB RAM. I sold this computer.
I upgraded to a Pentium 4 1.6 Ghz computer with an 80Gig hard drive in June of 2002. It has a 56K modem, Windows XP, 256MB Ram, a DVD Rom, and a CD-RW drive. My printer, scanner, and keyboard are connected to USB ports. There is one more USB port for my digital camera. I am happy with this computer and can do whatever I need to do without any problems. The speed is lightning fast. I installed a 5 port USB 2.0 card. I upgraded to 768MB Ram. I installed a 160G hard drive to back everything up, by ghosting the drive from time to time. I ghost to a 750G USB hard drive, now, for back up. This has saved me from reformatting a few times! I got a 19" LCD wide screen monitor and downloaded the latest driver from Nvidia (graphics card) so I could set the resolution to 1440x900. I upgraded to 2GB RAM.
I got a Pentium 2 350 Mhz computer in 2005. I put 192M RAM in it. I installed a 6G HD, sound card, NIC card, 56K Modem, and networked it to my other computer. Internet connection sharing works. I made it dual boot DOS 6.22 and Win. 95b. Later I upgraded to Windows 98. To boot to DOS 6.22 I need a floppy disk. My niece currently has this computer. I got this computer back and just donated it Goodwill.
I got a Pentium 3 1.0 GHz computer, in 2008, and put 512M RAM and an 60G HD in it. I set it up to quad boot to DOS, Windows 98, Windows XP, and Ubuntu. I am having a lot of fun learning Ubuntu mostly, with this computer.
At the end of 2008 I got an AMD computer, with a 1.5 Ghz processor, a DVD Rom and a CD-RW drive. I put my old 256MB Ram, from my other computer, in it, a GeForce3 video card and an 80GB hard drive in it. I installed Ubuntu 8.10 and am currently working on it. I may have to wait for Ubuntu 9.04 to come out before I get it working correctly. This computer has some 3D effects and could probably run Windows Vista if I added another 256MB of Ram. This computer failed and I replaced it twice with the same almost exact computer. It is actually a Compaq Presario 6000 series with an AMD Athalon xp 1700+ (1.47 Ghz). The one I got in Feb., 09, had a bad floppy, bad, DVD Rom, a 10G and a 20G hard drive. I replaced the floppy and added a DVD-RW, GeForce3 video card, wireless network card and 512MB Ram. I may put in 1G. I installed Ubuntu 8.1 on the 20G hard drive and it is running fine. I have this computer running Windows 7 Beta on an 80G Hard drive. This computer is now dual boot with Ubuntu 9.04 now too.
In April of 2009 I got a dual core AMD computer, with a 2.3 Ghz processor, a DVD-RW, 3GB of Ram, a 250G Hard drive, and Windows Vista Home Premium. It is a Compaq Presario SR5710F. I am learning to use Windows Vista and loving it. Windows 7 seems to be very simular to Vista. I installed Windows 7 on this computer when it came out.
In February of 2012 I began playing with Server 2008 on a computer. In April of 2012 I started playing with Windows 8 and Server 2008 on another computer. I am not too fond of Microsoft's Start Screen. They are trying to compete more with Mac. It would be interesting to have a touch screen though, as it is designed for that.
In May of 2012 I got a Mac Mini with a 2.5GHz i5 processor and 4GB of RAM. I recently upgraded it to 8GB of RAM. I have migrated from my Windows 7 computer to the Mac. Programs that don't run on Mac run on Virtual Win7 or XP, using Oracle Virtualbox.
In February of 2015 I got a Lenovo with 3.6GHz i7 processor and 8GB of RAM, Windows 8. I recently upgraded it to Windows 10. I actually had the beta on it first so I have Pro. Also, I put an SSD in it so it is lightning fast!
In February of 2016 I migrated my web site from Server 2008 to Ubuntu 14.04 with LAMP for an experiment. I may keep it like that.
In March of 2016 I moved the web site to another server after installing Ubuntu 16.04 with LAMP. This server is a slight hardware upgrade as well. In March of 2019 I updated my Web Server to Ubuntu 18.04-2. In September 2020, I updated my Web Server to Ubuntu 20.04.01. In October 2020 I migrated the server to a Late 2012 Mac Mini with Ubuntu 20.04 with LAMP.
In July of 2016 I built a small form factor PC with Mini-ITX Gigabyte LGA1151 Intel H170 Motherboard, i7-6700 3.4GHz Quad Core 6th Generation CPU, 16GB of RAM, and an SSD. I installed dual boot Windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.04 on it. This PC is my TV streaming unit connected directly to it. In September 2020, I replaced this PC with an Intel NUC NUC10i7FNH Ultra Small Mini PC/HTPC - 10th Gen Intel 6-Core i7-10710U up to 4.70 GHz CPU, 32GB DDR4 RAM, 512GB SSD, Wi-Fi + Bluetooth, Intel UHD Graphics, Windows 10 Pro.
In January of 2018 I built a full size PC with a Gigabyte X299 UD4 (rev. 1.0) Motherboard, i7-7800X 3.5GHz 6 Core 7th Generation CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 1 TB HDD. In April 2019 I upgraded it with an NVME 1TB WD Blue SSD. This PC runs Windows 10.