History
On this page I'll write about history of computing. It's about my personal experiences and thoughts but also about events I find very important and/or interesting. I have had luck to take part in one stage of the history, but unfortunatelly (or fortunatelly, depends on how you look on it :)) I also missed a major part of it. Still, I participated enough to be, at moments, very nostalgic about those times.
And yes, I'm trying to reconstruct events from my memory, and I believe there will be some inconsistences. But, hey, it's not scientific work, so who cares! :)
How I got hooked
This section encompases period from around 1987 to 1992.
Beginnings
My first contact with computers was in elementary school, in 7th grade. It was somewhere around 1987. Back then, I had no computer at home, but in school we have had few computers named Orao. I didn't know that they existed until one day our teacher came and said that a TV crew will come to our school and he is searching for pupils to show that in our school we are actually doing something with those computers. So, everyone in my class that had computer at home was selected and they were excused from courses. Note that there were not many of them. Off course, what they did all the time was playing games. :) And yeah, they managed to do some program in BASIC that only showed name of the school on the screen. :)
Anyway, the first game I ever played on computer, was on ZX Spectrum at a school friend, Tomislav Koledić. I can't remember what it was, and probably there is no way to find it.
I also started to go into local computer club. But, it was not so good. There I met some people with whom I later went into high school.
My first computer
First computer I had, was Amstrad Schneider 1512 SD. You can see picture and data here, with small difference that my model had only one disk drive! It was expensive, and we had to wait for it. Today you can have computer in one day, and back then, computers were rear and they were not easy to buy. At that time, Yugoslavia was still existing, and cold war was just ending. Inspite of this, things were not much easier. I still have some flashes of how father and I were going to railway station to pick it. When we brought it home it was placed in living room.
I got hooked immediately. I remember getting early in the morning (before 7am), just to sit in front of it and to try to do something. The problem was I didn't knew anything, and to make things worse, manual was on German. I obtained some dictionary but it was not computer related and thus, translations were funny, to say at least. :) So, I spent hours just clicking around. I also accidently deleted one of the disks, but then I didn't know what happened so father sent disks in Zagreb claiming they were defective. After cuple of weeks, we got new diskette back.
There were four diskettes that came with this PC. Red one had MS DOS on it, there were also green, blue and yellow one. I think blue one had DR DOS, and yellow one had GEM on it. But, I'm not certain any more.
At that time, programs for PCs on black market were very expensive. So I could not afford to buy anything and I had to do with what I got.
When I finally managed to get some programs it turned out that many of them required at least two disk drives. The one I most wanted to run was Microsoft's C compiler. So, I've tried to emulate second drive by intercepting DOS calls made by compiler. It did work, but not entirely, since I didn't take care to properly handle reads from two files on two different diskettes.
At the same time I got first computer, I started to read computer magazines, and in one of them I saw news about IBM releasing PS/2 series. On picture there was model 30 (I think it was the smallest model) and I started to dream about that computer. Somehow I thought that it was better than the one I had. But now, I don't think so, the problem probably was that I didn't know
Other computers I had chance to use
First, there was some strange computer with 8 inch floppies in medical center in Virovitica as part of one of the school subjects. Actually, at the time I got chance to work on it, it was not used anymore. But, since they were not able (or willing) to give us to work on PCs we had to use that old computer.
We were there for about a week, and for 2 days we were doint nothing when finally forth day we were allowed to use that old computer. And, it turned out quite well! Namely, on one of the diskettes there we found some games which we played for a whole day. But, next day head of that department went somewhere and took keys of room where the computer was placed. Boy, what a tragedy!? :) Last day, we were allowed to work on one of the PCs thay had for about hour or two.
First contact with Unix
First contact with Unix was during high school. Somewhere around 3rd grade (that was around 1990, I think). As part of the education we had to go to work in firms and I went to Medical center in Virovitica that was rather dissapointing. So, I managed to go to local offices of HEP. There, they had PCs, terminals, and Unix servers. Unix server was based around Intel i386 and it was powerfull for the time. They were running accounting application written in 4GL and with Informix database in a background.
Back then, two gays that worked there were writing new accounting applications for local office and they wanted drop down menus. But, 4GL didn't have support for them. So, I wrote C program that implemented that feature and that was called from 4GL. I knew something about C before that, but this was first time I developed something in C.
Oh, and for the first time there I saw and worked a bit in Windows. It was version 1.0! :)
Second computer
Second computer I almost earned! :) It was around 1991. when I got a job to help develop accounting application on PC written in 4GL and using Informix database. As part of a deal I got noname PC AT computer with Intel 286 processor.
Programming
First language I started to learn was BASIC. It was during time I was expecting my first computer to come. And actually, by the time it came, after a while I managed to find some BASIC on it and started to write game. But I never finished it. And the code, of course, is lost...
Next language I learned was assembler. Actually, I was for a long time puzzled with strange characters I would get when I tried to load some binary program into text editor. I figured out somehow (from some magazine probably) that it must be machine language. So, by coincidence, at that time, one of the computer magazines - Svet kompjutera - started to publish series about assembler programming of PC compatibles.
I had no assembler available, so for writing programs I used DEBUG program available as standard part of MSDOS. In DEBUG I wrote program named "Dnevnik i imenik" which implemented part of functionality of books used to record class activities and pupil's grades. Unfortunatelly, I lost it, but with that program I was at republic contents in Poreč! It was in 1988, at the end of the elementary school. There finally I had chance to obtain more programs for the PC. I was so obssesed with that possibility that I didn't wan't to go anywhere around Poreč with my host. One more gay from the same school was with me, though not related to computers, and he did go. Later I was sorry, but, the chance was uniq!
Games
I played some games and I'm going to write about those that I remember on these pages. There are some games that I played, but can not remember their names.
I'll also try to give pointers and information on existing pages on the Itnernet that are related to these games. Some of them can still be played on native operating system, while others have to be run under emulator.
Digger
Sopwith
Tetris
Blockout
More about Computer Magazines
In that period of time, there was no Internet! The modems were very rair, unrailable and expensive. The fastest provided 1200 bit/s and later 9600 bit/s, while people worked with 300 bit/s modems. Not only were modems expensive, but rear people had telephone at the time and it was also very expensive.
So, the main source of information were computer magazines. In Yugoslavia there were three computer magazines, maybe four, and if you count those that covered and other topics as well there was much more of them. But those others I didn't read. I'll cover the three mentioned in order of decreasing preference or quality. Anyway, I still remember how hardly I waited for magazine to come to my hometown. I would even go to a center of a city during break of 15 minutes between two classes, just to find out that none came. And when they came, I would usually read them twice or even more because there was nothing else to read! Ok, here are my recolections of them.
Računari
This was, in my opinion, the best computer magazine in former Yugoslavia. It had articles oriented mainly towards programming, and also, they were the first to abolish marketing of pirated programs. Publisher of this magazine was in Belgrade, capital city of former Yugoslavia.
The gay I remember the most from this magazine was Dejan Ristanović.
Moj mikro
This magazine was published in Ljubljana, Slovenia on two languages. Slovenian, and, so called, Serbo-Croatian for the rest of former Yugoslavia. It was somewhere between Računari and Svet kompjutera. But anyway, nothing special.
Svet kompjutera
This was the least interesting magazine for me. It was mainly oriented towards games, and also, it was the one that marketed for longest pirated programs. Still, thanks to that magazine I learned how to program in assembler for 8086 microprocessor. This magazine was also published in Belgrade.
Trend
Trend was not actually computer magazine. It was primary oriented towards audio and video technology. But still, they had some articles about computers and also, my father, took that magazine.