Magic Computers

There was a time when computers seemed like pure magic. That is why I became so fascinated by them back in the early 1980s. The mystery surrounding how they worked was simply incredible and made me think anything was possible within their intangible boundaries.

I will never forget a day when my mother took me to a small computer shop in our small town and the proprietor sat me down in front of an Apple ][ running a game called Zork. I had no idea what it was or what I was supposed to do, but I typed something and it responded. To this day I can remember the angst I felt at having to get up and leave after what must have been half an hour of exploring.

I remember countless all nighters spent trying to get assembly language programs working on my 8088 "portable" computer. Writing data directly into the CGA video card or sending commands directly to the hard drive controller to move the read/write head made me feel as if I was exploring the moon.

I really miss those days, there is still much that I don't know, more than ever really. But sadly the combination of 1) a good understanding of how a computer works, 2) incredibly complex operating systems that have taken away the low level control we had with DOS and 3) the loss of youth have combined to robbed me of the sense of magic that computers came with in the 1980s.