In the first part of this series I discussed my introduction to the world of computers and computer programming. In this section, I continue with my college days and my early days developing business software.
With the proliferation of the personal computer in the early 1980's, and on the recommendation of a friend, I purchased my first personal computer, the Commodore 64. The built-in language was Commodore Basic, and as a Computer Science major at Bridgewater State College we were told that "BASIC" was not a real programming language, so I kept my new purchase to myself.
In no time I was writing and saving programs. One of my first projects was a program that tracked team statistics for my softball team. Coincidentally, I lead the team in RBI that season! (hmmm). My friend (and current business partner) was also cranking out programs on the Commodore. To his credit, he had a checkbook manager before Intuit hit the market with Quicken. His claim to fame was a program to select the winning dog at the dog track. Suffice it to say, the coin flip was just as effective.
With the purchase of a rinky-dink modem, I was connecting to the Bridgewater State College computer network from the friendly confounds of my bedroom. This was a huge benefit as computer time in the lab was limited and the hours of operation were fairly restricted. This gave me unlimited access and the ability to complete assignments when the lab was closed.
As my senior year was winding down, it was time to start thinking about getting a real job programming computers. Fortunately, my long-time friend's brother was starting a new computer company (Genesis Business Systems) and he needed programmers. I did my Senior Intern with his company developing business software on the Qantel Minicomputer using (guess what) the BASIC programming language. Qantel was a California-based company that had it's own version of BASIC called QIC-Basic (QIC standing for Qantel Interactive Code). The software we developed was for the long-term care industry.
One of my additional duties during my Internship was volunteering for backup duties. The Qantel system was backed up each night on magnetic real-to-real tapes. The tape machine was about the size of a dishwasher and the write-speed was incredibly slow. The backup of the entire system spanned a little more than 2 tapes and took about 3 hours. Needless to say, I had plenty of time to complete school assignments while waiting for each tape to reach its end.
After graduation I stayed on at Genesis and slowly climbed the corporate ladder. The software wasn't very flashy but we could control screen positioning which meant we could layout screens and incorporate software standards. The users had plenty of choices too. They could choose either a green screen or an amber screen!
In early 1987, I purchased my first IBM-compatible computer (nobody actually bought in IBM PC did they?). It was from a startup computer maker from Texas called PC's Limited (shortly after they would change their name to simply Dell Computer). It had 8MB of memory and a whopping 20MB hard drive. The processor was an 80286 processor running at 8/12mHz. Let me tell you, it was a screamer!
I started writing small applications in C and even created a small device driver that allowed personal computers to be used as terminals on Qantel Systems. (Thinking back, had I marketed that I may have made hundreds of dollars!). One of the nice features of this early Dell computer was that at any given time it could freeze-up at the drop of a hat. It was also very noisy, especially when writing to the fixed disk. The slurring sound of the 5-1/4" disk drive was soothing though!
The following year, Dell started shipping more powerful computers and I convinced my company to become one of the first Value Added Resellers (VAR) for Dell Computer. Some of the key players from Dell came out to our offices to give us the run-down on the Dell VAR program and invited us to visit their headquarters and to meet Michael Dell (who was still a virtual unknown). Along with some of the first 80386 computers we received was a software application from Microsoft called Windows. After a cursory glance at the box, I came to the conclusion that it was insignificant and tossed it onto a shelf where it continued to collect dust. (To my defense, Windows never became a really useful tool until version 3.0 and even at that, it was an MS-DOS shell).
Around that same time, Genesis got involved in the retail automation business. I started working with a handheld data collection device that used an acoustic modem to transmit data to a Qantel system. In order to transmit the data, the device had to be strapped to the mouthpiece of a standard phone. Then, the number was dialed and the transmission went through. Unfortunately, the phones in our own office did not work with the modem in the device so in order to do my testing, I had to drive to the nearest strip-mall and use a pay-phone to send a data transmission. My first test each time was usually interrupted by the receptionist answering the data line ("Good Morning, Genesis Business Systems") at which point I'd have to shout over the acoustic coupler "Hang up and don't answer next time").
I would be remiss if I didn't mention the fun we had with the wide-carriage impact printers of the 1980's. The printers were slow and noisy and they required great precision to get the paper aligned so that it would feed properly through the carriage. My favorite office printer was a Manessman-Tally printer that was very fast for it's day. It was also liked to eat and shred green-bar paper. When the printer was at full-speed it did a sort of horizontal dance similar to an out-of-control washing machine.
To make things really interesting, we had the pleasure of dealing with multi-part forms. I remember one such occasion printing W2 forms for a client. It took 2 of us to complete the job for this client (with over 100 employees). One had to watch the forms to make sure they didn't come off-line from the pins and the other had to be ready to toggle the "on-line" button so the printer would stop. Then we'd have to adjust the forms back in place to the precise location where it went out of align and hit the on-line button to resume the printing. This occurred about once every 10 forms.
After a little over 2 years with Genesis, I started to get itchy feet. I needed a change and so I wrote my first-ever letter of resignation. I had learned a lot in those years with Genesis but in retrospect I still had a lot more to learn.
In the next article I discuss my introduction to the Clipper programming language and my first attempts at Windows Applications.
