Introduction to the IBM PC

Hello again everyone,

On the previous installment I promised to tell you about the IBM PC and how it opened my eyes to the possibilities it offered.

I was working for a long established and famous restaurant located in the west side of Los Angeles, where the owner had a publishing company and at the restaurant there was a terminal tied to the mainframe of his main business.

The terminal was used mainly to keep track of the large wine inventory, which had hundred of different classes of wines and thousands of bottles, The accounting was done with electromechanical accounting machines and the totals at the end of the month were keyed to the mainframe to produce the financial reports.

A new manager demanded that an in house PC system be implemented and the IBM PC came in. The operating system was DOS and the software for the accounting was specially developed , and was very expensive. There were few systems in the market and all were highly priced.

The salesman that installed the software and trained me in the operation of it was very friendly and taught me a lot about DOS system and some of the programs available at the time such as Lotus 123, which I thought was awesome.

The speed and accuracy of the system and the features of Lotus 123, enabled me to create spreadsheets to analyze financial data and create special reports. Needless to say, I was elated about it.

Having concluded my assignment I went to an assignment at a yet to be opened high class restaurant

located in Toluca Lake, a prime location in San Fernando Valley. I was able to select the PC system for this location and by then, there was an accounting system made by Peachtree, which although expensive, was very functional.

After completing my assignment there, I went to work as a calibration technician in a facility in Burbank, California and did that for a couple of years, prior to returning to restaurant accounting.

In my next installment I will relate the opinion I have about the Windows operationg system and the introduction to Linux Ubuntu, which is now the only system I use.