My personal computer history

or, how it all got started …

It was an evening in 1981 when my late father brought the first computer into our house. He told us, that “if you don’t learn about computers, you might not have a job in the future” - and in hindsight, it seems, he was very right with that.

The small machine was a Sinclair ZX-81 with an “enormous” capacity of 1 KiloByte RAM, a 3.25 MHz Z80 CPU and no permanent storage aside from a self-supplied cassette recorder. The ZX-81 manual was quite good, and learning BASIC was somehow easy for me. So I fiddled around and even wrote my first small computer game. But after about a year and a half, the ZX-81 was just too small, and especially the pressure sensitive membrane keyboard was a real PITA.

So in 1983 it was decided to “upgrade” the family computer. The home computer market boomed at that point, and there were all sorts of computers available. After some months of research (without the Internet back then) the list was reduced to two machines: the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and the Commodore 64. In the end, the C64 was choosen - first and formost because it had a propper keyboard, whereas the Spectrum had a that rubber thingy that nobody really could take serious.

I was already quite fluent in BASIC - but a bit disapointed, because the Commodore BASIC V2 was not really advanced. So I tried arround with different languages. Simons’ BASIC, Logo, COMAL and finally Assembly language - better Machine Code, because I really started with manually translating Mnemonic instructions to hex-decimal machine code and POKE‘d it directly into memory.

The C64 was not only used for coding. Joysticks were the most popular peripheral back then, and we gamed a lot. We swapped 5.25” floppy disks at the school yard and even learned how to deactivate copy protections of games, we really liked. That was, when learning machine language came really handy.

When it was time to replace the C64 the short-list included the Atari ST and the Commodore Amiga. The choice fell on the Amiga - because of the superior graphics capabilities. From the programming part, I stalled a bit on the Amiga - Amiga Basic was OK, but I never really got “warm” with it.

Around that time the company of my parents needed their first computer. And this was the first time, when I touched an IBM midrange machine: an IBM System /36 Model 5362. Until then I only knew home coputers - single user machines - and now seeing a computer where multiple users could work at the same time, was really cool. I still remember some of games, that were installed on the machine - especially “Excalibur” (some kind of text adventure).

I learned Pascal in technical college (called “Fachoberschule” in German). The school was (somewhat strangly) equipped with Commodore Amigas which were all extended with the 1060 Sidecar extension. That made it possible to run MS-DOS and Turbo Pascal on them.

Sadly at home, I didn’t have a Sidecar - so after some time, I decided to leave the Amiga behind, and buy my first IBM AT compatible 286-clone. The games on the Amiga were much better, but now I was able to program Turbo Pascal at home.

Becoming a professional software developer

After completing secondary school (“Realschule” in German) in 1986, I’ve was a car mechanic trainee in my parents company. When I had finished the training, I went back to technical college to get my diploma (“Fachabitur” in German). And following that I decided to make my computer hobby a profession, and switched to vocational school (“Berufsfachschule” in German).

The school teached me computer hardware, software developement techniques, C, COBOL, Mainframe Assembly language, database systems and design, SQL and finally RPG.

The school also introduced me to the IBM AS/400. It was the successor of IBM’s System /36 and System /38. And it was technically revolutionary back then.

Throughout my career I used and programmed a lot of computer systems, but I always came back to IBM’s midrange system. Whether it was called IBM AS/400, IBM iSeries, IBM System/i or now IBM i on Power.