so i own uh a PCAT at my home
uh-huh i could never justify owning a personal computer at at home
uh i mean that's quite an expense to look
for uh well well well who is this what do you do use yours at home for
well that's actually a good question my wife works out of the home uh our home she has an office and it sits actually sits in the office and she uses it to compose and print out letters
okay well now
so that's a a very regular use of it that she has
uh-huh
and then in addition to that i tinker around with it i'm a computer scientist
oh
and so i write programs to do little things i'm actually working on a data base at home just just to keep track of things nothing special and also
i'm interested in writing some programs that will you know kind of like remind me of things uh like remind me that Wednesdays is trash day and the like
although
uh-huh
well
excuse me
i uh
uh well i'm i'm a technician electronics tech and years ago TI sent me to their uh computer school down in Austin
hum-um
um-hum um-hum
so uh i learned to repair one but you know i never really learned to operate one
oh that's a key thing well actually there's that's a there's really two issues to that that there's so many packages software packages available today that just require no programming
yes
so that you you in other words when someone built that software package they had to use the programming but if they were careful they could uh make the use of it totally without understanding how the computer works
um-hum
but i think you you you really hit the nail on the head for the average person is exactly what he can use it for and if your wife isn't working out of the home and sending out letters or if you don't
want to build a data base to keep track of the nuts and bolts in your garage or whatever there your issue is then there really is
well uh space is a handicap with me i live in a motor home
oh i see wow
and i'm preparing for retirement
i see well congratulations on that
hey i'm not too far from it another year and a half
yeah well actually uh one other thing i might ought to mention is that they are actually getting quite cheap that
yes definitely the just like the computers
um-hum
uh remember how they started out running three four hundred dollars
right oh the calculators you mean
now
i mean calculators calculators i beg your pardon yeah
yeah uh-huh
yeah they sure do
yeah i actually was thinking about upgrading mine very recently and kind of look at the whole spectrum you can actually buy a whole a whole brand new computer with a not not a uh necessarily a slow one or or inadequate one but a pretty good one
for six hundred dollars
you're kidding including a printer
no hm that
well actually actually i wasn't including a printer but you you can buy a printer now for a hundred dollars so make it seven hundred
a hundred
yeah
wholly smoke uh a respectable one
yes uh-huh um-hum
well see of not being particularly interested i don't keep track of prices on them but i'm i'm that does amaze amaze me
yeah the prices have plummeted you can buy the computer the guts just the guts with the power supply the box and the mother board of a a type of computer called an 8088 for about two hundred dollars
um-hum
hum
and then the keyboard is another fifty the monitor with the card that drives it is another hundred and then the disk drive is two fifty and
well what what is a a a good brand a for inexpensive
well that's the that's the deal is you're not buying brands now you're buying these knock offs so there's uh probably the way to do it if you really wanted to buy one there's there's a magazine called Computer Shopper
huh huh
it's a it's a big magazine i mean it's it's twelve inches across uh narrow the narrow side and and fifteen fifteen seventeen inches the tall side and it's probably an inch thick a thousand pages but the book is the magazine is full
oh wow
of these mail order computer mail order houses and they're all competing with each so you just flip through there until you find a 8088 computer
um-hum
that's that's called that's the original PC so it's be called a TI PC i'm sorry an IBM PC compatible
and you'll find all these things and you'll find the monitors for forty dollars and the card that drives the monitor that goes in the back of the board board for twenty five dollars which is amazing to me
and just you mix and match and then you do it by mail order
hum
but there's no real brands there's probably a half a dozen companies around the world that are making those mother boards the main computer the circuit board
i see how do you go about getting one of those uh catalogs
they're available in you know the B Daltons that that type of thing
um-hum
you'll notice it in that it's it's a it's a very it's although it's a magazine it's large and like i said it's about an inch thick
um-hum
well getting back to the PC's i'll tell you i uh first of all i don't like a machine that's smarter than me
and secondly i learned did learn this much about computers they're they're they are pretty stupid because they add one and one up and come up with ten
in binary
that's right
that's great
well anyway that's one of my favorite jokes about that
oh yeah
one and one equals ten
yeah that's great
course you it's it's kind of an inside joke you know
yeah
you can only tell that to somebody who understands binary
i understand that's great that's a good joke
so what do you uh uh work with uh computers uh at TI
well what i did for years and then i was was a scientist over in central research labs and just recently i've changed my job to actually do some of the marketing
uh-huh
so i now i i type that one but i don't use it anymore
um-hum well i just recently started using one uh connection with my work
i don't
um-hum
yes
uh i keep track of an inventory here and of course now that is where a computer is is very handy
um-hum
yes i agree
and
well
i it's my responsibility to see that equipment is sent off to be calibrated
oh yeah
uh see i'm with the QRA lab
oh i see that's fascinating
qualification and evaluation so naturally our equipment has to be in in top condition and is constantly calibrated and they're dated
um-hum
so i have to keep up with them uh and it's very handy doing it on the computer
yeah
i just run a printout every week and and it puts me right up-to-date what i'm what i have to do what i have to ship what i should be expecting to be returned
um-hum
so uh it it is handy
right
and i must admit that up until i did start using one uh it was
i had very little interest in computers
yes
but they are amazing
yeah they certainly are so let's see so i guess with respect to the question
yeah i i guess we've we've kind of covered it
well
i think we did
great nice little conversation with you Jack good good day thank you good same to you
yeah Mike you take care now good luck to you
