If you have any corrections or additions to the information in these pages, I would be grateful if you got in touch with me (Bill Findlay) by emailing to kdf9, at the address obtained by replacing "www." in the URL of this web page by "kdf9@".
The following list names the computers and operating systems I have used, during my 4½ decades as a computer professional. I remember those at the start of the list with particular affection, despite their appalling unreliability and glacially slow speeds (by present-day standards)! Among them, the English Electric KDF9, the ICL 1900 Series, and the ICS Multum are of particular interest in the history of the UK computer industry.
SOLIDAC, an early mini-computer, was developed for teaching at Glasgow University in the early 1960s.
The M architecture, a virtual machine for Computer Science education, is the 21st century equivalent of SOLIDAC, but implemented (so far) only in software. Its emulator is a work in progress, despite which it runs programs 50,000 times faster than the SOLIDAC hardware!
These fascinating computer systems are documented more extensively at the given links.
But first a puzzle: what polygon connects Donald Knuth with programmers of the EE KDF9, the ICS Multum, and the SOLIDAC? An answer can be found by a bit of googling, after reading these pages!
In 1984 a great change came over my life. While working on a book, I decided I needed a word-processing computer at home. I visited a computer shop, intending to buy a BBC Micro, saw my first Macintosh, and was instantly smitten! Since then I have owned 10 Macs, and used another 5 (I am including the NeXTstation in that count, because its software is the ancestor of MacOS X).