[MotorBikeLes]

I am much like some others here. I could not see the point of taking something analogue and converting it to digital then back again (CD players), and those little early things meant nothing to me. In 1989, my circumstances changed, and I had to find a job. Mostly simple audio stuff, but there were many of these things needing repairs as well. C64s, BBCs, Spectrums etc.. Fortunately I was working with a guy who was bright, and UNDERSTOOD computers. He used to read the "BOOK" on the 6502 whatever that was, and having worked for Amstrad, was fully conversant with all their stuff. He taught me how to locate faulty RAM (though I did not really know what it was). He taught me stuff like "Print, POKE etc" by which he could say WHICH RAM chip was faulty (I wrote it down, never understood it) and so it went on for 8 months, then circumstances forced me to leave and back to the UK. Before I left, the Boss had given me a Commodore PLUS4. A better replacement for the Commodore 64 that never caught on, so it was worthless new old stock. It had a built in word processor, and I managed to pick up both a floppy disc and a printer (7 pin DM type) and with that, I wrote a few articles for John Reddihough in TV mag.
Later I picked up an IBM XT with DOS and Wordstar, making the Plus4 redundant. Since then, I regularly updated what I had, but ONLY to use. The hardware side I mastered, but never the software.
Next I found myself having to repair CDs, and finally understood the apparent nonsense of taking an analogue signal, converting it to an 8 bit, then converting that into a 14 bit version. What a palaver that seemed, but in due course i "got it", with the result that we got back to the analogue world after all at the 'speakers.
I later returned to the Isle of Man and the same employers, now computer stuff only, building something less than two thousand PCs, but studiously avoiding the software wherever possible.
Now I use various software programmes to do my bidding, all courtesy of a Linux operating system. I have learned a few command line routines (but all copy and paste), still not understanding any of it.
Les.