My first exposure to computers where I got any hands on experience was when
I was just near the end of my junior year of high school (in the USA this is
11th of 12 grades) in 1973. The other 40 weeks of the year I had been in an
advanced math class with seniors (a grade ahead of me) and they had just graduated.
Rather than having me sit idle for a week until school let out for juniors,
my math teacher Mr. Rose offered me the opportunity to spend that time accessing
a GE timesharing mainframe computer. He ran the school's computer program, obviously.
I thought it sounded interesting, and thus he showed me the ASR-33 teletype
machine/terminal; it used a dial-in telephone line with an acoustic coupler
located in a small closetlike room at the school. The terminal only printed
on teletype paper (uppercase only), punched on paper tape, or read paper tape,
and ran at the incredible speed of 37.5 baud (no K's or M's, it was slow).
I was instantly fascinated by the concepts of multiuser computers and programming
languages, and remember playing the primitive versions of games available as
well as writing some of my own in a version of BASIC. My interest continued
strong through my senior year as I spent a lot of time learning at that keyboard.
I was hardly interested in the the rest of school but I was in the "computer
room" at every possible opportunity.
After graduating there were no good career opportunities in the area, so out
of a need to escape certain economic realities I joined the Navy in 1975. In
the Navy I was trained in electronics and computer science, and began to understand
the hardware in addition to the software understanding I already possessed.
I learned about voice and data communications, secure communications, navigation,
radar, audio analysis, as well as aviation specific technologies. The training
given was about equivalent to an BSEE degree and focused to a great deal on
specific technology implementations in the S-3A "Viking" aircraft
(manufactured by Lockheed), which featured a Sperry Univac 32 bit central computer
controlling an extensive "weapons system" of slave devices via 6Mhz
serial interfaces. The S-3A's mission is to hunt submarines and kill them, as
well as carrier based delivery of supplies (when the weapons system is removed).
Over the next three years of duty I repaired nearly all of the weapons systems
in that aircraft. Part of the time I worked on a flight line swapping boxes
to fix system failures; later I worked at a more sophisticated level of maintenance
where I actually fixed circuit boards by swapping components like transistors,
integrated circuits and so forth, doing my sea duty tour in 1978 deployed on
the aircraft carrier Enterprise. In my last Navy assignment from 1979
through 1981 at a land-based ASW Operations Center in San Diego I supported
various levels of maintenance on more conventional (although still Univac) land-based
computer systems which included civilian magnetic tape drives, line printers,
and computer terminals among many other kinds of gear.
While in the service I first met someone who owned a real personal computer!
It was Northstar DOS running on an IMSAI chassis, the 8080 chip. I was able
to use it a lot as it was colocated with me on Enterprise for nine months
and it was really a cool machine, particularly it’s hard sectored 5.25”
floppy disks and LED front panel. Big improvement over paper tape and they stored
an incredible 90K bytes per disk, wow. (Yes, that was sarcasm, because today
this is totally inadequate.) Later in my tenure in the Navy I dreamed of designing
my own computer using S100 technology but couldn’t afford to actually buy
the parts.
Computers used in satellite communications systems were a continuing interest
when I left the service to become Field Engineer at Satellite Business Systems.
I remember the starting salary was $18.5K per year and part of the appeal of
the job was that a lot of training was done at the front end, in Northern Virginia
outside DC. SBS trained me in first and second level repair of IBM distributed
processing CPUs used in their national telecommunications infrastructure of
customer-based satellite terminals, and also gave me a deep understanding of
telco facilities and circuits. SBS systems also included a lot of microwave
technology operating in the 12/14 Ghz range, plus extensive IBM network computer
systems. I also was finally getting paid enough that I could spend a little
at a time on computer technology purchases, eventually getting an S100 Z80 4Mhz
48K RAM "boat anchor" with 8” floppy disk. I had to ask my father
for part of the money and he did help me out. I remember one of the earliest
programs I saw in the CP/M operating system was the now-familiar name of Microsoft
BASIC, long before PCDOS or Windows were even thought of.
The networking side of the telecommunications business was growing. The Internet
was there but most people don’t know about it. I learned extensively about
telephone network design and engineering, including T1 circuits and eventually
was stationed at the Wells Fargo Bank data center in El Monte California. I
built SBS’ Network Access Center there and supported several other ones
in the Los Angeles area. I also spent time learning about telephone fraud and
“phreaking”. I became a regional specialist for resolution of system
problems and was often called out in the middle of the night to go fix things.
In 1983 I accepted an offer from General DataComm to work as an engineer in
a sales office supporting nontechnical salespersons. GDC made a wide assortment
of telecomm products, many intended for in-house telephone company deployment.
At that time T1 networking was just getting started as a publicly tariffed service
and the market leader at the time was the GDC Megamux, although the technology
was terribly limited in performance by modern standards. I also worked extensively
with modems and network management systems, installing more than one customer’s
network such as Crown Zellerbach's in San Francisco.
In my spare time I had been indulging in something called BBSing (computerized
Bulletin Board Systems), which was remote computing of an early form, and got
involved in a garage software startup which specialized in operating systems
for the Z80 microprocessor. Initially I ran their BBS for them, but this turned
into a full time job in 1986. At the software company I learned extensively
about assembly language code development, operating systems, software marketing,
and contracts/licensing. We were able to bring several new products to market,
but we were on the trailing edge of popular technology as the “new”
IBM 8088 PC had hit the market and changed everything to that standard. About
this time in 1987 I bought my first Macintosh, a Mac Plus with 1MB RAM and a
40Mbyte external SCSI hard drive, for about $2500.
At Varian I started as a Data Network Analyst and contributed substantially
to their networking infrastructure for the six years I was there. I engineered
and installed their first transcontinental T1 network and their first TCP/IP
networks. I learned routers, WANs, SNA networking, Banyan VINES, chargeback
systems. I engineered a departmental network based information system which
used integrated distributed databases and remote access among many significant
projects. I pioneered the use of Macintosh PC systems within Varian to accomplish
this but also learned a great deal about IBM mainframes too.
In 1994 I found a good opportunity with a startup network consulting company
called International Network Services. INS gave me a great variety of assignments
and roles, and unique training. I consulted for dozens of customers as project
leader, designer, implementor, and troubleshooter with many technologies and
industries. Technology had gotten so humongous it was impossible to keep up
with. This created the opportunity in the marketplace for INS to exist. My exposure
to the Internet blossomed with extensive experience in all kinds of Unix systems,
routers, switches, information security, and design.
As I bring this up to the current day (April 2000) I am a professional consultant specializing in network management, project management, and Internet security. My home computer has evolved substantially since the days of CP/M as have the software packages I run. The ever-increasing pace of technological innovation here in Silicon Valley has brought forth legions of obsolete hardware and software and I have transitioned through them all, but it wasn't easy or cheap along the way.
I run the following hardware:
I also run the following major software applications:
Computer gaming is one of my favorite recreations when I'm not working my business. In the play zone I have a lot of Maxis produced games such as SimCity (all versions) and at least a dozen other Maxis related titles but the only one I run much lately is SimCity 3000. I have also run Myth II (multiplayer realtime RPG) from Bungie a lot and eagerly await HALO, the new title from the same team of programmers. I also enjoy pinball simulation software such as the classic Crystal Caliburn for MacOS, and have been known to spend huge amounts of time playing Windows Minesweeper and Solitare even though they don't run on my primary machine! (smile) I have historical computer games of all sorts and types, old CP/M adventure games (including some I wrote myself) like Colossal Cave, Sony Playstation games (Love Spyro, Blasto, and Crash Bandicoot), and 1980-era Atari 400 computer games like Donkey Kong, Centipede, Missle Command, Joust, Star Raider, and MULE (one of my all time favorite games but waaaay out of print!).
My old Z80 computer is out in the garage... I wonder if it can hear what I'm doing in here...it must be jealous! (smile)
copyright 2000 David M. McCord All Rights Reserved