Trip Down 16K Memory Lane

Posted on July 17, 2007
Filed Under Interesting Stuff |

My computer has a 48K memory. Since each K represents 1,024 bytes of information—each byte representing one character or digit—the machine can manipulate more than 49,000 items of information at a time. In practice, after allowing for the space that The Electric Pencil’s programming instructions occupy in the computer’s memory, the machine can handle documents 6,500 to 7,500 words long, or a little longer than this article. I break anything longer into chunks or chapters and work with them one at a time.
Link via The Belmont Club

Hard to believe it’s been 25 years since this article first appeared. I got my first computer, a TRS-80 in 1980. 8" floppy disks that you had to notch in order to use the other side of, a modem that you stuck a phone in (and had precious few places to actually dial in to), and lower case character display was developed later… jeez it was pure joy. I never really got past the wonderment of the whole thing, only when I saved up some years later to buy a PS/2 with a 120mb hard drive did I realize how primitive that TRS-80 really was.

Comments

  • Feeds