I was born in 1976 so I got to experience the rise and fall of inexpensive
mainstream 8-bit and 16/32-bit microcomputers during my school years.
Perhaps more significantly, I also got to experience “home computing” as a
hobby, rather than as daily necessity. Also, I belong to one of the generations
which were – already before entering school – significantly more knowledgeable
about computers than their parents. I suspect this is a condition which may no
longer necessarily hold true with the more recent generations...
I entered the first grade of elementary school in September 1983. I also got my
first computer, the Commodore 64, for the Christmas of that same year. It was
not my first experience of personal computers, however: during the previous
year, I had already got my feet wet on my friend’s VIC-20. (My friend was an
enthusiastic home computer hobbyist and he had taught me some BASIC programming, so I
knew a little bit about that, too – even before entering the school.)
As far as my school was concerned, computers didn’t really exist. They where nowhere to be seen in
the lower grades (1–6). They just didn’t belong to the curriculum for the
smaller kids. Most adults – including school teachers – were only trying to come
to terms with the rather frightening prospect they will yet need to learn about
these devil’s machines before retiring... The kids of my generation, though,
were eager to get a home computer for themselves during those years, which was
in no small part because they filled roughly the same spot as game consoles
today. But home computers were also favored by hobbyists and tinkerers, of
course, and I had the hobbyist/tinkerer mindset about it. Games were only of
secondary interest.
After a few years, my C64 setup had grown to include the Commodore 1541
diskette drive (I started out with the Datasette), the MPS-801 dot matrix
printer, and a copy of the GEOS graphical desktop environment – even a Commodore
1351 mouse, which was a rather rarely seen peripheral for the C64. Beginning
from the 3rd grade, I was actually using geoWrite (the standard word processor
which came with GEOS) for some of my school work. The teachers were a bit
baffled at receiving dot-matrix printouts on fan-fold paper from a 3rd grader
but generally their response was pretty good. On occasion, though, I was not
allowed to use the computer because the teacher insisted typing would not serve
the secondary purpose of the writing assignments: honing ones skills in cursive
handwriting. This was somewhat irritating considering I was rather more inclined
to write in block letters, anyway (and continue to do so to this date...)
Our class was assigned a class magazine project both during the 5th and the
6th grade. I brought my entire Commodore 64 setup in school to make it possible
to design the layout of the pages (partially) on a computer. My Finnish teacher
– who has now sadly passed away – was so excited about getting this primitive
form of computer-based desktop publishing in her class she called the local
paper and they made a story about it, with a picture and all. The second year I
did this I also brought in an Osborne I and another dot matrix printer which my
dad had salvaged from getting binned at his workplace. I let another kid type in
articles using WordStar on this other computer.
By the time I entered the 7th grade (1989), I found out the upper level
elementary school had two computer labs for teaching “automatic data
processing”. These were the only classrooms with computers in them in the whole
of school. (Later on, the music class and the art class received a computer each
as well.) The older one of the two computer labs was already considered obsolete
as it was only equipped with Apple IIs. The current focus of the computer
classes was on MS-DOS and IBM-compatible PCs. The typing class, however, used
the Apples for typing exercises. Otherwise they just sat there unused. (The
problem was, how do you gracefully get rid of a couple of dozen of old computers
which were bought with taxpayers’ money? It was a bit delicate question – even
politically loaded – so the Apples remained there for the time being.)
The primary computer lab was equipped with Amstrad PC1640s. There was even a
LAN built on LANtastic and Artisoft’s custom network adapters. It was all
moderately OK for a basic MS-DOS teaching environment but these PC/XT clones
were also quickly becoming obsolete, and they were nothing to write home about.
Especially as by that time I had purchased an Amiga 500 which run rings around
the computers in school in just about all respects (it had a better OS, better
graphics, actual sound instead of beeps, multitasking, 3.5" microfloppies
instead of 5¼" floppies, etc.)
Continuing the trend set in the lower grades I brought the Amiga to the
school for a few weeks to display its graphics and sound capabilities. The
teacher was impressed – especially about the sound and music.
So what was taught to us in these elementary school computer classes? The
course started out with the teacher explaining the basic theory pertaining to
the operation of the computer. This was basically done in a fairly traditional
way, utilizing a block diagram and arrows which explained the roles of the
processor, memory, instructions, input, output, storage, etc. After this
introduction, we moved on to practical use of computers, which was... MS-DOS
commands. There was a bit of programming, too (I guess it was in QBASIC), but
only a bit – it was already deemed quite unnecessary for an ordinary computer
user. Quite a lot of time was assigned to learning the basics of the spreadsheet
and the word processing components of Microsoft Works (this was the text-mode
MS-DOS version.)
The MS-DOS versions of Deluxe Paint and Deluxe Paint Animation (originally an
Amiga paint program) were also available and used in these classes. Because me
and my friend already knew pretty much everything taught in the course and could
easily figure out the parts we didn’t, we actually spent most of our time
designing animations in Deluxe Paint. So those classes were sort of useless for
us. But it was fun times anyway since otherwise we would have had to sit in some
other class... and of course there were some new things I picked up about
IBM-compatible PCs in general, as I was an Amiga user at that time and didn’t
have much hands-on experience on them.
The teacher also run weekly computer club nights for those interested in
computers. Many attended, yours truly included. One of the highlights of these
club meetings was when the teacher made us carry one of the PCs to the school
library. We were then instructed to make a phone call from one of the computers
in the lab to the computer in the library, using modems and terminal emulators.
This was the first time I was chatting away in real time using mere text, with
another person typing on a different computer at the other end. That other
person happened to be someone who owned a modem himself. After a quick
text-based chat we discussed some more face to face, and he introduced me to the
world of BBSes. I was soon a modem-owner myself, which was perhaps the most
useful thing which came out of those club nights and the computer classes in
general.
The primary computer lab had a separate walled office for the teacher. There
was a curious thing sitting in that small room, taking up lots of space. It was
a large machine the size of a refrigerator. And there was this larger machine
behind it which resembled an overly tall chest freezer. And to top it all, there
were these strange displays and keyboards scattered around the tables the back
of the class room, gathering dust in there. They were definitely not PCs but we
were never told to switch them on during the classes. So what was that all
about?
Turned out it was an IBM System/34,
with a refrigerator-sized line printer and half a dozen IBM 5251 display
terminals. The teacher explained to me the school had received this setup as a
donation from the local asphalt company. This was some time in the beginning of
the 1980s. Then he pointed at the wall. There was this picture hanging on there
– a yellowed cutout from a local paper documenting the happy event. In the
picture, the manager of the said company was shaking hands with the school
officials, smiling. So... the local company got good PR and a place where they
could dump their obsolete hardware (for free). The school got a truckload of
(old, obsolete, difficult to manage) computer equipment. What could be a better
deal? ;)
Needless to say, the System/34 was a rather demanding environment to operate
for an elementary school teacher. Even booting it up (from an 8" floppy, no
less) took some 15 minutes. And the skills ordinary school kids could learn on
those terminals, using with the left-over software originally used by the
asphalt company, probably weren’t easily transferable to the modern PCs. So,
rather unfortunately (but understandably), there was not too much love for it in
the school... it was just sitting there, taking up space.
Which raises the question... why was it still there? The same reason
why there was that other computer lab full of Apple IIs! Back in those days it
was not politically easy to get rid of once-expensive, still impressive looking
computer equipment without rubbing some people the wrong way. Especially as the
system was originally given to the school as a generous donation. (The teacher
finally managed to make the system disappear some years into the 1990s... a bit
of a shame really. I only saw it running once – during one of those computer
club nights when I specifically asked the teacher to boot it up, just to see how
it works. But once we got to see some life on the terminals, the teacher
couldn’t find the folder where he had written down the login password... so we
never got to see anything more than the login prompt. For the better or worse,
that was my one and only experience of the System/34...)
Once I graduated from the elementary school, I started the upper secondary
school (grades 10 to 12, which prepare students for university.) This school
shared some of the resources and facilities with the local elementary school and
used the same computer lab and even the same teacher – despite being located in
another building a couple of kilometers away.
The computer labs were now upgraded a bit – the old Amstrad PC1640s were
being replaced with generic 386 PCs with SVGA cards and the Apples were gone,
being replaced by the PC1640s. During this time I was an active user of dial-up
BBS systems. One thing led to another, and soon I was also one of these three
guys running the school’s semi-official dial-up BBS... which we founded once we
got a permission and some funds from the principal.
We based the system on an advanced messaging board software called
BBBS. It was also accessible from the
school-wide LAN (the school now had computers in the lobby and in the library).
It soon attained a handful of active users – among them also girls who were a
couple of years younger than my age. This was a somewhat surprising development
for the time. Or then again, not so surprising – it was the discussions and the
social side of it all, not so much technology and tinkering, as it was for the
guys. These were the first generations of girls naturally drawn to online
discussion boards right at the school age.
The computer lab classes were not compulsory in the upper secondary school,
either but I took them to fill the schedule. This time, we were actually made to
program in the class – even using a “proper” compiled language: Borland Turbo
Pascal. But with some negotiation I managed to change this to C for my part and
did my project in that language, instead, just because I thought it was a more
interesting and capable language. Another one of our assignments was simply
about figuring out a project which would somehow involve using the computer and
writing a detailed report about it – which had to be done on the computer as
well, of course.
During my last couple of years in the school (1993–1995), the younger school
kids had been granted access to the Internet during their computer classes using
a dial-up modem connection. As it turned out, this was the beginning of the end
for the dial-up BBS online world and the hobbyist computing which were both to
be replaced by the Internet and a generic mainstream interest in computers as
communication tools.
