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To commemorate the 60th anniversary of Eniac, the world’s first electronic computer, News.com asked a number of US industry luminaries about their first brush with computing. Sneak liked Michael Dell’s recollections of the time in 1981, aged 16, his beady eye fell on the family’s new IBM PC: “I remember taking it completely apart to understand how it worked. My parents were pretty upset with me. I then put it back together... The PC back then was built using discrete logic devices instead of ASICs [application-specific integrated circuits], so you could look inside and really understand everything that was going on in terms of the architecture.”
Now, note what Dell doesn’t say. He may have put it back together, but did it still work afterwards?
Also, Sneak can’t help wondering: would Dell’s warranty department look kindly on modern youths trying the same route to self-education?
We will probably never know, but Sneak would welcome readers' reminisces about their first taste of technology.
14 Feb 2006
