This is a brief story of my encounters with PC, with which the development of PC is parallel. Some specifications of the models may not be accurate. I scribbled this as I remembered what I'd learned around when.

Back in early 80's, FORTRAN IV was the first programming language I learned to do assignments for a scientific programming class. Terminals were not readily available to the freshman, so I had to use key-punch machine to type in source codes most of the time.

Being a mathematics major, ALGOL was recommended by one of my mathematics professors over FORTRAN. I read and programmed ALGOL all by myself keeping pace with FORTRAN IV class as I couldn't locate any places where ALGOL was taught around Los Angeles area.

While working as a student assistant in the General Industrial Electric Shop, I had a Tandy TRS 80 on my desk to do several tasks. I think, as it was so long ago to recall it, TRS 80 came with two 5 1/4" floppy drives. Problems and notes on electric circuits, basic physics & math and application programs were put into dozens of 5 1/4" 180 KB floppies as I worked on with TRS and electrical engineers. A friend of mine told me some time ago that TRS 80 had 360 KB floppies, but I used 180 KB floppies at that time.

One of TRS' models came with two LP-sized drives, with which each diskettes contain more than 360 KB, I think. It was so entertaining to program with Pascal with UCSanDiego Pascal many problmes in the textbooks of freshman and sophomore Calculus and Physics. I stored all those Pascal codes into several Dysan LP-sized diskettes. By the late 80's, I could hardly find the machine to run and copy files from LP-sized diskettes. Now I even misplaced those diskettes and can't enjoy recompiling old programs recalling younger and energetic days.

IBM introduced PC for the home computing to compete against the Apple computer, then PC XT with a hard disk. I didn't need to carry the whole set of programs to use, as some application programs could be installed in the hard disk. When RGB and CGA monitors and graphics cards were introduced, watching programs running in colors itself was a fun.

Apple Computer was a hot item in early 80's but I didn't even think about getting a home computer at that time. My visualization of a computer was the huge one which occupies the whole floor of the building, like IBM and Cray mainframes. Apple had a good collection of application softwares. But after Apple became Apple-McIntosh, the genealogy of Apple applicable softwares were discontinued, whereas a few DOS-based softwares have had longer life-span, and even survive in MS Windows era.

Wordstar gave me the joy of using computer. To change a single word, I just needed to use cursor and back space, and type in new one. With typewriter, you know how time-consuming it is. Wordstar program was stored in most IBM PC XT hard disks at school, so I could carry a single 360 KB floppy to have all my semester's papers.

VisiCalc and SuperCalc were the spreadsheets I used to collect and store data while working for the Applied Particle Physics Laboratory. Later I used Lotus 123 to store and transfer from VisiCalc/SuperCalc data, and Lotus Symphony and Surfer to plot the data and interpret graphically in the context of particle physics. I don't remember now much about mathematics and physics behind those but do remember producing graphically eye-teasing charts and graphs of the experiments. By this time I could distinguish the difference of the programming with the programming languages and the application softwares.

By mid 80's IBM PC AT came in with EGA monitor and 1.2 MB floppy drive and I felt at home with DOS 2.1+ and MS Window 1.0.

For the personal wordprocessor, I chose MS Word over Word Perfect for DOS. As there was also MS Word for Mac version, I thought it would have been easy for me to use MS Word formatted documents on both IBM and Mac version MS Word. It seemed like I'd made a perfect choice. Right? WRONG! as all of you know. I couldn't use Mac unless I learn Mac System OS and didn't want to learn new OS as I felt comfortable with DOS. I should have chosen Word Perfect over MS Word. I had converted Wordstar formatted documents to MS Word format already and didn't want to convert those again. I decided not to learn Mac System and still don't need to learn it, and am still sticking to MS Word. ( I've never said MS Word for DOS is better than Word Perfect or Mac MS Word or anything else.)

For the solving of Ordinary Differential Equations, I used mainly APL over FORTRAN, as I felt comfortable with FORTRAN and wanted to learn a new language. While working for the business strategic planning consultant, I used APL heavily only to realize that mathematics and the computer programming skills were used beautifuuly and powerfully in the context of real world tasks.

For the serious problems of mathematics and physics, one has to use mainframes or UNIX workstations. Still being an aspiring mathmatics and physics student , I read manuals in front of AT&T and Sun workstations. Compared to DOS, UNIX commands were like the punishments from the hell, but soon I was overwhelmed by the power of UNIX environments. There were different UNIX platforms and I learned the variations of whatever workstation was available to me starting from System III. One of AT&T PC model was loaded with UNIX OS (System V?) and that became my favorite one for over two years as no one else wanted to use it.

Lots of scientific softwares under DOS & UNIX were used to solve and plot mathematical problems; Matlab, IMSL Fortran Libraries, SAS and several more which became obsolete now.

While learning UNIX commands to work on physics problems, I chose AutoCAD to draw electric circuits board and for the modelling of stress analysis. I drew more with AutoCAD and some graphic softwares than with hands from this point on; from PCB boards to machine parts to architectural design & drafting to graphic designs to 3D modelling for engineers, architects, graphic designers, animators and myself. With the use of AutoCAD, I began to love PC environments and took seriously about it. Before that I'd learned and used it as I had to use computer to work on.

To delve into the world of recreational mathematics, UCILisp, Prolog, Snobol, Forth and Lego were used to write programs found in scientific magazines and books.

Thus my love for UNIX blossomed. I installed Xenix for my 286, SCO for 386 and Linux for 486, side by side with DOS/Windows. Ever since Linux was introduced in 1993, working on my PC have been enjoyable and rewarding thing. While attending U.C.Berkely, BSD and FreeBSD gave me the new outlook on PC environments along with Linux. By using occasionally Sun, HPUX, AIX at the schools' computer labs, I experienced many powerful aspects of UNIX workstations.

Now I'm heavily into Linux, X/Motif, AutoCAD/3D Studio and graphics softwares.(1-1-96)