Mars Mumbles: Episode 2 - The Road: Part 2

We're back with Part 2 of The Road - a personal look at the road of technology as I've seen it over the last 30 years of being around computers.

This week takes a look at my experience in the military and my very first personal computer.

While today's military is far more current technology wise, back when I was in, the computer explosion hadn't quite begun and the military was a little behind.

Here is an IBM 360/30 (NASA used these to put man on the moon). You can see a couple of disk drives on the right with some tape units behind them. The main computer is the large box to the left with a teletype sitting in front.

Below is another picture of the main computer.

I couldn't find any pictures of the Honeywell H16 that I used in the Air National Guard, but it was a single box that looks similar to the IBM pictured here.

Below are pictures of a collator, sorter and a keypunch machine that initially makes the punch cards.

Take my word for it: Be glad we are done with the punch card days!

Here's what got everything started: The Tandy Radio Shack Model I (and II, III, and IV).

And the star of the show: The TRS-80 Color Computer Model I

Here a Floppy Drive and the Controller Pack along with an RS-232 Serial Interface Pack.

Here are some other pictures of Color Computer and some of the accessories available including the original CoCo 1 package with game packs, 1200 baud modem, the multi-pack expansion, a CoCo Mouse, a speech pack, and a CoCo 3 system which had a number of improvements such as 128k expandable to 512k, composite monitor out - 80 char capability and more.