I'm an old man (84).
My whole working life I worked in electronics.
My computer is connected to the internet via DSL.
The connection runs over a pair of copper telephone wires.
The highest frequencies you could transfer over it in the past was ~4 kHZ.
But nowadays they reach 20 MHZ over the same lines.
For years I worked in radio communication,later switched to process automation.
All that was analog.
Later I changed jobs and was confronted with digital technology.
I was 49 or 50 then.Had a very hard time grasping it but then one day I suddenly understood how it worked.
At work we had Apple II computers and applications were written in Basic.
One of these was connected to a laboratory apparatus that printed results of analyzis to a matrix printer.
The lab people couldn't work with the printed results.
A Basic program was written to print it nicely with columns etc.
But Basic proved to be to slow to accept the output and there was no way to slow the output down.
The solution was to write a small assembly code program to quickly store the data in RAM and then have the Basic program print it at it's own pace.
I didn't have the money to buy a computer for home use.
After retirement I bought me a Pentium II computer with Win 95.
I didn't like it at all.
So one day I switched to Slackware Linux version 3.2 I think.
Never got it working well though.
Then Red Hat which was a big improvement.
The reason I am writing all this is Skype.
My eldest grandson is a student at Delft uni studying applied physics.
He is now in India with two colleagues doing research on the possibility to supply rural areas with solar electricity.
Of course his parents would like to keep in contact with him.
So they installed Skype and so did I.
Unfortunately he doesn't not always have internet available.
But this is what amazes me,someone so far away and being able to talk to relatives so easy.
Gerard.

I agree, Gerard. When I got my first computer and was on a bulletin board, I talked to someone from England. That was my first international contact but I was dumbfounded. Now I think nothing of contacting people from all over the world.

Dually noted!

Although I'm not 80, 45 to be exact. And I've been in IT since I was about 23. And I've seen things change drastically.

My first computer was a Commodore 64 and I later get a 128 with a dual 5.25 inch floppy drive along with a cassette recorder data storage. Yes, we used to store data on regular old audio cassettes! Oh yeah and a blinding 300 baud modem!

The first medium sized mainframe I worked on was a Burroughs B1955. It had a pretty good foot print in a room. The more disk you added the more space you needed. Removable 14" disk pack. Where I worked had six on each system. And once you start adding all the required hardware around it the space started to vanish! And of course tape and main course of medium for backup. All together 4 6250bpi GCR tape drives. Dinosaurs in today's world! The mainframe(s) I work on today can vary in size from a file server up to a foot print of 2.5ft x 2.5ft.

I remember being introduced to DOS and Novell and then shortly after that came Windows for workgroups 3.1

And during this time the internet was in its infancy. I remember having a trial of compuserve and I loaded and view my very first website which was Web Crawler if I remember right. That was state of the art back then. I believe it was one of maybe three search tools for the WWW.

After that .. you couldn't keep up with everything. I remember getting my 33.6 buad modem, I thought I was IT! But then here comes the 56K modem. After this it's always been a game of catch up.

They use the skin effect to do this Gerard. Still, it's cool technology. I remember in EMag talking about this phenomena way before we ever had DSL. Hated EMag by the way; I'm (well was) a tron guy.

And I continue to be amazed by technology and science. People are able to use their own body movements in games (Kinect, etc.), videoconferencing via a smartphone, and the list goes on...

Thanks for sharing, Gerard!

I used to manage a computing center in the mid-80s with an IBM 4381mainframe (8MIPS), a wholesome 8GB of disk, all this for IIRC about 12M$, 50KW of electricity, and 2000 square feet of machine room.. If you forget the price, the power drain, and the real estate, this is about the same as an MP3 player.

At least your system used ICs Ofnuts. When I was a kid, my parents had friends (the Airforce guy married a Korean lady) who worked in the computer department on the base and he showed me a module and gave me a spent one. Only later on that I knew the module consisted of all resistors, diodes and a few transistors. lol

He did say they had a huge refrigeration room where they kept the computer system and that he was on call 24/7 to make sure all stays within regulation. Those must have been the days with card readers and all. lol

So your system was relatively high end modern compared to that.

It had tape units (IBM3420 IIRC) that were still using modules...