Computer Stuff I Didn't Know

[SARGE]

Day off from work, cold in Texas, wifey wrapping presents, boys studying hexadecimals, and I'm reading an old book, "INSIDE THE IBM PC" by Peter Norton, published in 1986. It's been collecting dust for years and forget where I got it.

Boy, it has some good stuff. Some of you older guys are probably familiar with it, but it gives good details about DOS, FAT, FDISK, various drives and an overview of how the pc works. Yeah, it's dated but relevant.

Some tidbits I picked up (again probably familiar with some):

The pc almost became an 8-bit computer by IBM. A guy named Bill Gates came along and talked them into a more powerful 16-bit.

Seems Compaq has been here from day one. Made the first pc clone for portables.

The word "WORD" means a pair of bytes (16 bits of data).

The first hard drive was called Winchester. Interesting.

** I'm off to impress the boys on how it takes 80 bits to write out the bits that represent the word, "hexadecimal".

[archie]

I'm off to impress the boys on how it takes 80 bits to write out the bits that represent the word, "hexadecimal"

If they can't deal with the big #, tell em it's 10 bytes.

[reboot]

{quote]The first hard drive was called Winchester. Interesting.{/quote]
It was made by seagate, model # 3030, hence winchester.