It the late 1980s and this pilot fish is getting his first lessons in PCs and PC architecture.
In fact, the first desktop computer that his company buys is quite interesting.Not unusually for the time, it runs on a pair of floppy drives, but it upgradable: You can add a hard disk later.The employee using this PC spends about a year filling dozens of floppies withhis programs and data before getting the OK from his boss to purchase a harddisk.
Capacity: 10MG.
Cost: nearly $1,000.When the disk arrives, fish and friends open the PC case and follow the upgrade instructions to install it.The first step is to remove aperforated metal box that takes up the space where the disk will go.It about the size of five or six decks of playing cards, has lotsof holes for air circulation — and is plugged into the PC power supply.Inside the box is a large,heavy power resistor with gold-colored fins.
Its purpose is to use as much power as a hard disk would draw, apparently to keep thePC underdesigned power supply from getting unbalanced by too small aload when no hard disk is present.To read this article in full, please click here