Nit-picking!

I use "PC" to mean any computer for personal use. Wikipedia agrees with my use. Unfortunately there is no recognised abbreviation for computers in general (puter? LOL!) and I am fond of abbrevs.

So I use "PC". It can be applied a Mac, Apple II, PDP11, Rair Black Box, ... , even a Cray if you just use it at home

Yes, I was there when "PC" used to be known as a an "IBM-compatible" but those days are long past. Now you can buy the same "box" and inhabit it with "IBM-compatible" Windows or Linux (of various flavours) or anything else (even a ZX81 simulation ). You are living in the past!

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

You are living in the past!

I'm well aware of that, but you might not be- to give you a clue I was born in 1943

The computers weren't really very powerful in my youthful days, but they were much more fun...

A challenge!

I was born 2 years before then

Trouble is Colossus had no Ethernet nor any connection to the rest of the computers in the world ... cuz there were no others! And then we took a sledge hammer to it and then there were none

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

A challenge!

I was born 2 years before then

Trouble is Colossus had no Ethernet

Ethernet was invented in 1973 and introduced commercially in 1980.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

I was born 2 years before then

Good grief, someone else who was around when the world was real- welcome brother

I know of Colossus but don't remember it... though I was at AERE Harwell when Atlas was built. A whole building devoted to a computer with less power than a modern mobile phone

I think that was the first one when it was really brought home that a limitation on computing power was the speed that electrical signals could travel down a wire... the velocity of light wasn't high enough!

Colossus was the machine designed by Tommy Flowers of GPO Research for Bletchley Park to break the Enigma code.

I programmed for Atlas at UMIST in about 1964. Atlas did introduce Virtual Memory and paging and stuff.

I never actually used Atlas, my work at the time was more involved with reactor experiments with DIDO. First time I really got exposed to computers was when I moved to AWE Aldermaston, with their IBM 360s accessed over a site WAN...

Via ASR33's at 110 baud.

Broadband, what's that?

And then we took a sledge hammer to it and then there were none Actually that's not true: they went to Cheltenham and were in use until the 60s (the "broken up" story was a cunning ruse to put the Ruskies off the scent).

In reply to a post by ian_c:

a cunning ruse to put the Ruskies off the scent

Africans, actually, to whom we sold re-conditioned Enigmas.

I don't like to see misinformation promulgated so dogmatically, relevant or not.