I've been playing with computers for several years now. In 1981 I started out with a Apple ][+ (1MHz Motorola 6502 cpu) with 48K of RAM and two 114K floppy drives. It had a monochrome green screen. During this time I also started to play with a 110/300 bps accoustic coupler.
Over the next few years I taught myself BASIC and 6502 assembler, and added various bits of hardware to the computer building it up to a "massive" 320K (yes - three hundred and twenty K), unfortunately the only software that could make use of all this memory was my own. I also upgraded to a "high speed" 1200 bps modem.
In 1987 I purchased a new computer - an 8MHz 286 with 1MB RAM. About this time I picked up a 2400bps modem. Both the computer and the modem are still working to this day, even though their use is occasional.
I upgraded various bits and pieces of the computer to the Pentium 166MHz with 128MB EDO RAM that I used for a few years. The only original component is the case and power supply (correction Dec 98 - I had to replace the power supply). I was using a 56000 bps modem with this equipment which sure beats the days of 300 bps.
Replaced my system with a Pentium 4 3GHz. I recently installed more RAM so I now have 4GB to run virtual systems as my programming development environment. After years of programming, mainly in Pascal and Delphi, I'm now coding software in Visual C#. At the moment I'm writing code to import many different text data files formats and export the data in an XML format. Also writing code to extract data from an SQL database and export the data into various file formats.
My current workstation is a Core i5-10400 2.9GHz with 32GB RAM to run a couple of virtual systems as my programming environment. Still mainly programming in Delphi (6, 2010 and 10.2 Tokyo). No more modems, just using NBN FTTP (Fibre To The Premises).
When not computing I enjoy reading. My favourite authors are Dale Brown, Clive Cussler (Dirk Pitt), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes), Ian Fleming (James Bond 007), John Gardner (some Sherlock Holmes and James Bond), Robert Ludlum, Jerry Pournelle, Craig Thomas, Wilbur Smith, Matthew Reilly, Lev Grossman (The Magicians), and Mark Dawson (John Milton series). Like many, I've also enjoyed the books by J K Rowling (Harry Potter).
My favourite movies / TV shows include the James Bond movies, Pump Up The Volume, The Flight Of The Navigator, The Andromeda Strain, Blake's 7 and Dr Who (Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker).
Curriculum Vitae / Résumé (PDF)
Various Delphi / Pascal / Windows Tips
PopPass allows an internet user to change the password on their internet account as long as their ISP supports the "epass/tcp" protocol (port 106). PopPass uses the same protocol as Eudora's "Special > Change Password..." option.
DOWNLOAD PopPass v1.01 (16-bit version for Windows 3.x)
DOWNLOAD PopPass v1.05 (32-bit version for Windows 9x/NT4 English/French versions)
DOWNLOAD DskWatch v3.04 (DOS TSR to monitor disk errors + ASM source code)
Send comments and suggestions to: mphillip@pcug.org.au
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