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About Lincoln Computer Centre |
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Established in 1983
by Barry Leverington with backing from Kingsley Mason and a small number
of brave investors, Lincoln Computer Centre was the
first dedicated computer outlet on Lower Eyre Peninsula and offered a wide
range of computer hardware and software to a somewhat bemused marketplace!
In 1983, our main computer product was the Apple II computer which ran a
clever word-processing program called Zardax, and later WordStar which was
written for the IBM PC but could be used on an Apple II computer provided
you installed the CPM board to make the Apple II IBM compatible. By
the end of 1983, Greg Williams had joined the firm to make a total of four
employees, Raelene Carr (now Sampson) was the receptionist, Richard Pobke
was our copier and computer technician, Greg looked after sales and
accounts and Barry ran the business at the same time as he was developing
accounting software for the local marketplace. We offered a popular
bureau accounting service where companies would drop in their docket books
and we would enter the data into the computer and produce invoices,
statements and reports to suit. Also in 1983, we successfully gained
a dealership for Microbee computers which were assembled in Sydney by a
firm known as Applied Technology. Microbee computers were more
powerful than the Apple II and initially had 128 kilobytes of RAM and a
pair of floppy disk drives. We used a modem with a speed of 300 baud
to communicate with Applied Technology for technical support requests,
product information and orders. It was a very advanced way to
communicate for the day, but pretty ordinary by today's standards given
that ADSL broadband internet connection are over 1,000 times faster!
In 1984 we were selling the Adler Alphatronic PC to our business
customers, complete with a full suite of accounting software for which we
had the source code so we could make modifications to the software to suit
our customers. 1984 also saw a slight hiccup in the service
department and we were very fortunate to obtain the services of Ian Jones
who became our copier technician, and later a part owner of the business.
This was also the year of the Sirius computer, a wonderfully powerful
16-bit computer with a high definition (green) screen and high capacity
floppy disk drives (1.2 megabytes capacity each). I can still
remember the day Barry demonstrated a new 15 megabyte external hard disk
drive by showing off the speed of transfer which was about 10 times faster
than from floppy disk. Today's CD-ROM drives have faster disk
access times than those early hard disk drives! To be continued..... |
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A
word from Greg ... |
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| OK, so I have
compiled most of this history from memory, and have got a bit of
work to do yet. If you have been mentioned in this story and
don't want to be, or if you have noticed some glaring errors, or
if you have not been mentioned and would like to be, please
email me |
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