{"id":992,"date":"2013-05-24T00:52:43","date_gmt":"2013-05-23T22:52:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lazlo.de\/?page_id=992"},"modified":"2017-06-15T10:28:01","modified_gmt":"2017-06-15T08:28:01","slug":"history","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/lazlo.de\/blog\/about\/history\/","title":{"rendered":"Personal Computer History"},"content":{"rendered":"

Personal Computer History<\/strong><\/h1>\n

1990 and onwards<\/h2>\n

\"declogo_large\"<\/p>\n

In 19xx, I first saw a\u00a0VT220<\/a>\u00a0terminal\u00a0at my mothers office at\u00a0DIGITAL Equipment Corp<\/a>\u00a0(DEC)<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"ms-dos-prompt-logo-primary\"<\/p>\n

In about 1994, \u00a0my mom\u00a0brought\u00a0home our first personal computer, which was a\u00a0DECstation 300<\/a>\u00a0machine with an Intel 80386SX processor running at 16 MHz. It ran\u00a0MS-DOS<\/a><\/strong>\u00a06.22 and I had somehow discovered the existence of\u00a0QBasic<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"241px-Windows_3_logo_simplified.svg\"<\/p>\n

Later used\u00a0Windows<\/strong>\u00a03.11 and 95.\u00a0I also couldn’t resist to look inside the machine, add or replace hardware with parts that had been abandoned from my moms office (like hard disks, memory and especially network interface cards).<\/p>\n

1995<\/h3>\n

\"dunix_logo\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Browsed the\u00a0WWW<\/strong>\u00a0with the\u00a0Netscape Navigator<\/a>\u00a0browser using search engines like\u00a0AltaVista<\/a>\u00a0and HotBot, on\u00a0Digital UNIX<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0machine with the\u00a0Common Desktop Environment<\/a>\u00a0(CDE) at my moms office. Started some\u00a0E-Mail<\/strong>\u00a0conversation with some poor guy who’s mail address I had discovered on his site and had my mom send the mails for me. Later on at my dads place (on his Pentium Pro machine with an US Robotics 28k modem connected to\u00a0UUNet<\/a>, later\u00a0CompuServe<\/a>), I started to use\u00a0Usenet<\/strong>\u00a0(NNTP) (with the Outlook Express as my client) and the\u00a0Internet Relay Chat<\/em>\u00a0(IRC<\/strong>) using\u00a0Microsoft Comic Chat<\/a>. Started to learn\u00a0HTML<\/strong>\u00a0and to build a page for my fathers company.<\/p>\n

1998<\/h3>\n

\"visual-basic\"With a new machine at home, which had a CD-ROM drive and Microsoft\u00a0Window 98<\/strong>\u00a0(I think) on it, I started to use\u00a0Visual Basic 6<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0to build applications like auto-start menus you would put on a CD-ROM. Also discovered\u00a0VRML<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0Had my first notebook, a DEC NiNote which I used to carry really everywhere!<\/p>\n

\"ethernet_connector_symbol_ethernet_connector-1979px\"<\/p>\n

Registered this domain (see\u00a0Archive.org<\/a>\u00a0for a history of lazlo.de). Had created a homepage for a gaming clan I used to play ego-shooter games like Counter Strike but also the classics from ID Software like\u00a0DOOM II<\/a>. This was also the place I could apply my\u00a0computer networking<\/strong>\u00a0knowledge on how to connect machines using ISA\u00a010Base2<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>network interface adapters, a couple of 10Base2 to\u00a010BaseT<\/strong>\u00a0Ethernet<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0converter equipment from Allied Telesis and the\u00a0TCP\/IP<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0networking protocol. By that time I was able to setup a network with static addresses.<\/p>\n

1999<\/h3>\n

\"Perl-camel-small\"While having my first experiences with HTML, I leared how to run\u00a0HTTP<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0servers on\u00a0Windows NT 4.0<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Windows 2000<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(both with\u00a0IIS<\/strong>). I started to learn programming\u00a0in\u00a0Perl<\/a><\/strong>, in order to write\u00a0CGI<\/a><\/strong>-scripts,\u00a0on windows using a Perl interpreter packaged by ActiveState.<\/p>\n

\"ford_logo_icon_by_slamiticon-d5z6zsk\"<\/a>Internship at the IT department of the German subsidiary of the\u00a0Ford Motor Company<\/em>. For the first time I saw a vast computer network, with multiple times 100 machines, ranging from desktop machines and servers to embedded systems on the assembly lines.<\/p>\n

2000<\/h2>\n

\"logo_ge_compunet\"<\/a>Internship at\u00a0GE CompuNet<\/em>, in a department where server hardware was mounted into racks, configured and installed for different customers. Saw loads of machines during that time, but in the end I knew working with software is much more fun than simply mounting hardware and installing operating systems.<\/p>\n

\"Compaq_logo\"Internship at\u00a0C<\/em>ompaq<\/em>\u00a0(formerly DEC) in the “Telecommunications Industry Solutions” (TIS) division.<\/p>\n

\"debian-logo\"Had my first\u00a0Debian GNU\/Linux<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0successfully installed (which was a major issue before with SUSE and RedHat) and \u00a0running. The hint to use Debian came from the first people with a hacker mindset I have encountered (one of them<\/a>). These guys worked as sub-contractors at Compaq and while I was working there at an internship, they introduced my to many things, like what Network-Address Translation (NAT) is, and on many more things. Was introduced to the concepts of the X window system<\/a> and\u00a0X11<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0display server, window managers<\/a> and widget toolkits<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"apache_feather\"<\/p>\n

Got introduced to the\u00a0Apache HTTPD<\/a><\/strong>, which I also ran on my windows machine, until I decided to abandon using Windows on “server” machines and only use Linux from now on.\u00a0Started to learn about the common network services<\/strong> and daemons (FTP<\/strong>,\u00a0telnet<\/strong>, SSH<\/strong>, sendmail<\/strong>, NFS<\/strong>, samba<\/strong>, ISC DHCP<\/strong> and BIND<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

\"300px-X11.svg\"Started working part time student work at\u00a0Compaq<\/em>. Did deployment of parts of the software for network operator workstations. Installed X11 servers on Windows NT 4.0 in order to have them open TeMIP applications (today\u00a0HP OpenView<\/a>) locally, that were actually running on some remote server.<\/p>\n

2001<\/h3>\n

\"linux\"\"linux\"Had my first symmetric multi-processor (SMP) machine that was based on the famous ABIT BP6<\/a>\u00a0mainboard. This board allowed one to use two Intel Celeron processors in SMP mode. Wikipedia<\/a>\u00a0says: “The BP6 has been credited as the product that made SMP (a technology previously reserved for high-end workstations or servers) affordable.<\/em>“. At that time you had to re-build the 2.4\u00a0Linux Kernel<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0(which took like half a day) to have SMP enabled.\u00a0Discovered distcc<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0to speed up compilations.<\/p>\n

\"mysql_100\"\"php\"Started\u00a0apprenticeship<\/strong> as an “IT specialist for software development<\/strong>” at a company that was doing web applications.\u00a0PHP<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>4 and 5 later on. Used libraries from the\u00a0PEAR<\/strong>\u00a0repository. Start to learn about JavaScript<\/strong>. Delved into the world of relational database management systems (RDBMS<\/strong>), specifically MySQL<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>and the SQL\u00a0<\/strong>in general.<\/p>\n

Started listening to “Does humor belong in technology<\/a>” (DHBiT), an internet radio show, one would call it a podcast today.<\/p>\n

\"200px-Postgresql_elephant.svg\"2002<\/h3>\n

Wrote applications that interact with database systems\u00a0like MySQL\u00a0or PostgreSQL<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>on the back-end side. Employed HTML,\u00a0JavaScript<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0CSS<\/strong>\u00a0on the front-end side. Used various standard and some not so standard protocols<\/strong> such as\u00a0XML-RPC<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0SOAP<\/strong>. Employed object relational mapper (ORM<\/strong> – database abstraction layer) PHPDBDataObject. Used templating libraries such as phemplate, Smarty and XT.<\/p>\n

Experimented with a Linux distribution called\u00a0openMosix<\/a><\/strong>, that allowed building a single system image\u00a0cluster<\/strong>\u00a0using multiple standard PC machines.<\/p>\n

\"subversion_ai\"<\/p>\n

Started to use central source control management<\/strong>\u00a0(SCM) with\u00a0Subversion<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Had my first\u00a0DEC AlphaStation<\/a>\u00a0(266MHz) machine and\u00a0a new notebook, a Compaq Armada M700. Both ran Debian : )<\/p>\n

Did the\u00a0network administration<\/strong>\u00a0for that company, internally (about 25 machines) and for customers externally. Almost\u00a0exclusively\u00a0 heterogeneous networks, with various versions of Windows (98, ME, NT 4 and 2000), MacOS 9, and from time to time some Linux machines.<\/p>\n

2003<\/h3>\n

\"uml_logo\"<\/p>\n

Adapted using\u00a0UML\u00a0<\/strong>for modelling software systems and\u00a0encourage\u00a0others to learn it.<\/p>\n

\"200px-Eclipse_Logo.svg\"\"Java_Logo.svg\"<\/p>\n

Started learning web development using\u00a0JSP<\/strong>\u00a0(JavaServer Pages) and the Apache Tomcat<\/strong> server . Worked with the\u00a0Eclipse<\/strong>\u00a0IDE and libraries such as\u00a0JDBC<\/strong>. Wrote Applets<\/strong> and standard\u00a0Java<\/strong>\u00a0desktop applications that used\u00a0Swing<\/strong>. Also the first time I heard about eXtreme programming and test-driven development, but didn’t follow that path for quiet some time.<\/p>\n

2004<\/h3>\n

Finished my apprenticeship\u00a0successfully.\u00a0Got an\u00a0Apple\u00a0iPod. Had to work on some lousy Sony vaio notebook.<\/p>\n

2005<\/h3>\n

\"Free_X_for_Mac_OS_logo\"Got my first Macintosh computer, a\u00a0PowerBook G4 with\u00a0MacOS X <\/strong>and moved to Berlin.<\/p>\n

2006<\/h3>\n

Had my PowerBook stolen for me. First time such a thing\u00a0happened\u00a0to me.<\/p>\n

\"logo-ubuntu_su-orange-hex\"<\/p>\n

Switched from Debian to using\u00a0Ubuntu<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>with the release of \u00a0Dapper Drake\u00a0(6.0.6 LTS).<\/p>\n

\"se-radio-logo-oopsla\"<\/p>\n

Discovered\u00a0Software Engineering Radio<\/a><\/p>\n

2007<\/h3>\n

\"chaosknoten\"<\/p>\n

Discovered\u00a0Chaos Radio Express<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0the Chaos Computer Club in Berlin (CCCB) which helped me look beyond “normal” in \u00a0the world\u00a0of computer systems and life in general.<\/p>\n

Learned about loads of new things (for me at that time) like\u00a0software design patterns<\/a>,\u00a0eXtreme programming<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>(XP<\/strong>),\u00a0test-driven development<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>(TDD).<\/p>\n

Had a Compaq ProLiant ML570 (4x 900 MHz Intel Xeon) machine, running in some darkroom.<\/p>\n

Worked with Java, the\u00a0Eclipse IDE,\u00a0JUnit<\/strong>\u00a0and SWT<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"200px-Mono_project_logo.svg\"<\/p>\n

Worked for a company in the advertisement business in their software development division. Used\u00a0C#<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0on Linux with\u00a0Mono<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0NUnit<\/strong><\/a>. to build some network service daemon of instant messaging using Jabber (XMPP<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

\"oaw-logo-side\"<\/a>Got into the world of\u00a0model-driven software development<\/strong>\u00a0approaches (MDSD), using tools such as\u00a0OpenArchitectureWare<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0xText<\/strong>\u00a0to define meta-models, models themself and generate pieces of software components from the models.<\/p>\n

Also started to get closer the world of systems programming<\/strong> and\u00a0embedded systems<\/strong>, while building custom OpenWRT<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0firmware images for various hardware platforms (for example the\u00a0LinkSys WRT-54<\/a>,\u00a0LinkSys NSLU2<\/a>\u00a0or the Fonera FON2100).<\/p>\n

Adapted using\u00a0Git<\/strong>\u00a0for version control.\"logo\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Xen_logo.svg\"<\/a>Further more I delved into to world of machine\u00a0virtualization<\/strong>, started using\u00a0Qemu<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Xen<\/strong><\/a>, later then\u00a0KVM<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

2008<\/h3>\n

\"240px-Ruby_logo\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Worked for a communications design (architecture, museum guides, fair booths) company, where I did network administration for something close to 100 machines. Manage a two-machine cluster<\/strong> using HA-Linux<\/strong> components such as Heartbeat<\/strong>, DRBD<\/strong><\/a> (cluster block-filesystem) and fail-over. Managed MacOS X and Linux server and services on them such as\u00a0SSH<\/strong>, netfilter\/iptables<\/strong><\/a>, Postfix<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and sasl<\/strong>, NFS<\/strong><\/a>, Apache HTTPD 2<\/strong>, Samba<\/strong>, OpenLDAP<\/strong>, OpenVPN<\/strong> and L2TP<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Used\u00a0Ruby<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0to develop web applications using\u00a0Ruby on Rails<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and wrote loads of other little pieces of software for system administration.<\/p>\n

2009<\/h3>\n

\"The_GNU_logo\"<\/p>\n

Back to the roots! Started to write lots of\u00a0C<\/strong>\u00a0using the\u00a0GNU Compiler Collection<\/a>\u00a0(GCC<\/strong>),\u00a0GNU Make<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0for libraries such as\u00a0GTK<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0SDL<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"AVR-logo\"<\/a>First breadboard, flash programmer (SP-12<\/a>) and micro controller circuit using an\u00a0Atmel AVR<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0ATmega8. Started to learn Assembler<\/strong> for the AVR. Had an refurbished IBM ThinkPad T60 (with no parallel port).<\/p>\n

2010<\/h2>\n

\"GplEDA\"<\/p>\n

\"cadsoft-logo1-304x377\"Started doing loads of circuits, first using\u00a0electronic design automation<\/strong>\u00a0(EDA) tools from the\u00a0gEDA<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>project, then\u00a0EAGLE<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0from CadSoft.<\/p>\n

\"USB\"<\/p>\n

Build my first\u00a0USB<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0circuit (see projects\u00a0RFM12USB<\/a>) using a micro controller and a USB software implementation called\u00a0V-USB<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Worked with\u00a0SimulAVR<\/strong><\/a>. Got test-infected after reading “Test-Driven Development for Embedded C<\/em><\/a>” by James Grenning. Started to use\u00a0Unity<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and later\u00a0CppUTest<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0as my standard xUnit testing framework. First “new” (now Lenovo)\u00a0ThinkPad X201T.<\/p>\n

2011<\/h3>\n

\"200px-Libvirt_logo.svg\"<\/p>\n

Worked for a cloud hosting<\/strong> company as a tester in the quality assurance department. Learned using libvirt<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0for machine virtualization. Adapter new testing tools like Selenium<\/strong> and Sikuli<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Developed code in C for embedded systems, writing “drivers” for\u00a0UART<\/strong>,\u00a0GPIO<\/strong>,\u00a0I\u00b2C<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0SPI<\/strong>\u00a0bus interfaces,\u00a0LCDs<\/strong>. for 8-bit\u00a0ATmega<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0ATtiny<\/strong>\u00a0devices.<\/p>\n

Started working on an digital storage oscilloscope (see\u00a0lzoDSO<\/a>).<\/p>\n

2012<\/h3>\n

Manufactured my first PCB using toner-transfer and etching (see\u00a0project page<\/a>\u00a0in the labs wiki).<\/p>\n

Started studing Computer Engineering (Technische Informatik) at Beuth, Berlin<\/p>\n

2013<\/h3>\n

\"omg\"<\/p>\n

Adapting\u00a0SysML<\/strong>\u00a0into development process.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Personal Computer History 1990 and onwards In 19xx, I first saw a\u00a0VT220\u00a0terminal\u00a0at my mothers office at\u00a0DIGITAL Equipment Corp\u00a0(DEC). In about 1994, \u00a0my mom\u00a0brought\u00a0home our first personal computer, which was a\u00a0DECstation 300\u00a0machine with an Intel 80386SX processor … More→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":25,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-992","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lazlo.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lazlo.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lazlo.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lazlo.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lazlo.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=992"}],"version-history":[{"count":48,"href":"http:\/\/lazlo.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1045,"href":"http:\/\/lazlo.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/992\/revisions\/1045"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lazlo.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/25"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lazlo.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}