My Experiments & Experiences with an Amazing Gadget – The Computer!

Prelude:

We can’t imagine a world without computers once they entered our lives about 40-45 years ago. The speed at which these machines have evolved over the last 4 decades is unimaginable. The first of the computers almost filled a mid-sized room, and a few simple calculations took almost forever, in today’s context.

From the Mainframes and Minis, to Desktops (also referred to as Personal Computers – PCs), Laptops and Handhelds, these computers have come a long way in reducing the size, weight, et al, while increasing the processing power in Geometric Progression.

This article of mine surrounds the time at which I got introduced to these lovely gadgets and my experiences thereafter. Self-taught, as the learning of computer operations was very expensive, more due to the novelty involved, it was an uphill task to upskill ourselves, as the means and opportunities to learn economically were very limited. The struggles with technology, which many of my generation may perfectly relate to, made us very adaptive as we learnt the ropes of newer things, albeit in a difficult way, though not systematically like a curriculum, but effectively enough to work with these computers.

My Experience:    

My first experience with this amazing gadget was in my erstwhile workplace at the Mafatlal Group, Thane, Near Mumbai. In those days, the personal computers (PCs as they came to be known as and Desktops now) were very few in numbers, and the offices and establishments that could afford it could be counted on the fingertips. We had an EDP (Electronic Data Processing) department that was instrumental in all computer-related activities, and our prized possession was the IBM Mainframe 1401 Machine.

That said, the data entry in those days was two in two stages. First, there was a ‘Punch Card’ with columns and rows that were punched using a card punch, and this was a prestigious function in the erstwhile days, resulting in a very high demand for Punch Card Operators.

These punched cards were run in the card processor, and each batch of punched cards was stored for posterity. It required a huge infrastructure to store these card batches safely.

Then came the floppy disks that were magnetically written by the disk reader/writer to store data. Incidentally, the first of the computers required to be started with these disks to activate the operating system, and only then run the other programs. These were of 640KB data capacity and were progressively sidelined by stiff 2½” diskettes (stiffy) that could hold a princely 1.44MB of data. CDs and DVDs entered the fray much later, let alone the memory cards and the pen drives.

On the RAM side of it, 640MB was the basic, and additional memory came in multiples of 1MB (1,024MB). Of course, many in Gen X and Millennials are unaware of any memory size below a gigabyte, while we had not even heard of this term. 

One of the earliest operating systems was MS or PC-DOS (Personal Computer – Disk Operating System) from Microsoft. There was a plethora of MS/PC-DOS versions before Windows came into being.

I restrict the discussion about the evolution of computers here, as this topic is too vast to comprehend in one go!

Thereafter, I moved to Chennai for a year or so, where our office had just two PCs dedicated to R&D and Operations. The accounting function was totally manual. In late 1990, I joined a major Alco-Bev Group in Bengaluru.

There was a time gap of a few months till I joined this Group in the late 1980s, when my good friend Srikishan ventured into the business of Computerised Horoscopes and Predictions. He had invested in a PC and I forcibly helped him out (?) with the data entry and printouts, heralding my first experiences of using a PC.

Joining this Group in the late 1990s, we had a limited number of PCs to use and had to wait for our turn. It was only when I was transferred to Goa to head the Finance Dept that I got a PC for my exclusive use. The price of this PC was a princely Rs.98,000, and it came equipped with a massive 2MB RAM, a 5¼” floppy drive, a 20MB Hard Drive with MS-DOS – one of the top-end machines those days, and included a soft-white monitor and a keyboard. Mouse, as an input device, was unheard of in those days.

It was here that I learnt the tricks of networking. I had visited D-Link’s (one of the leading networking hardware companies) manufacturing facility in Verna Industrial Estate to procure the requisite network cards to connect the PCs to the server. Installing the network cards on stand-alone PCs, connecting it using coaxial cables, and configuring it to access the server was a different ballgame altogether to me, as a professional Chartered Accountant. But I always had a flair to learn anything about computers and electronics, and therefore, this was a blessing to me. My colleagues in the EDP team were quite helpful in allowing me to experiment with the networking. In those days, we used the Novell NetWare operating system to connect to the server.

All the productivity applications like the erstwhile WordStar, Word-Pro, Lotus 123, Framework, and a plethora of different versions of the Microsoft Suite of products like Excel, Power Point, Word, etc., were learnt by us either by trial-and-error or referring it to friends, peers at work, etc., as was needed in discharging the daily routine in our work-lives. 

From here, my job took me to Mumbai, where in this greenfield brewery, I had to run, operate, and maintain the computer systems, including the network (excluding the Brewing process-related system). We were hit by the scare of Y2K (remember, the scare that ‘planes will fall off the sky at the stroke of midnight on 31^st December 1999’? Yes, it was this scare) and I had to be in the Brewery, a good 35 km away from our place and during the mid-night, ran the diagnostic program to enable all the computers (mainly the process related systems) to circumvent the crash due to Y2K, so that on dawn of 1^st January 2000, all computers were hunky-dory!

Well, I had been there and done that, too!

My next sojourn was in Kolkata, where I didn’t play any major role in computers as I didn’t want to disturb the setup, as the EDP department was quite capable of handling the software-related issues, and there weren’t any hardware-related issues.

Providence took me from here to Johannesburg, South Africa, in mid-February 2002, where I was supposed to be seconded on a two-year contract extendable by another two years. Instead, I ended up living at this lovely place and country for over 16 years (the longest two-year contract for anyone, I suppose).

Climbing the corporate ladder to head the Finance function, I was also the Administrative Head of the Info-Tech functions of the company. My learning about computers took a different turn here as the company had countrywide operations and we had to link with the system users across the country, online and on real real-time basis. Though not operationally educated on these terminologies, I kept abreast of the different topologies of networking, including the issues relating to switches, routers, and different types of other peripherals. Understanding the Spec-ing of required hardware, compliance, and governance of all licensed software was another soft learning for me, though I had my colleague, the IT Manager, to take care of all these.

Oh! I forgot to add that I did take my CISA exams in June 2005 and passed in my first attempt, as a challenge from my then-colleague and boss. That I didn’t pursue becoming a member of the Institute, ISACA – USA, is another story.

In between, we had hit a potential catastrophe of our legacy accounting system (Solution-6) being redundant and to facilitate the migration to an ERP, I was tasked to create a common Chart of Accounts (just to mention, we had over 12 breweries and 100 depots connected to it), so that the accounting stories of each of these breweries could be on the same page of reference. Needless to add, this exercise saved us substantially in audit fees. The liberty of adding more lines in the Chart of Accounts was restricted, and initially, I was sworn at by all the Accountants of the Breweries as their favourite toy (of opening line of accounts, at the drop of a hat) was snatched away by me. Once they saw the wisdom, they appreciated the way I handled the exercise in a very strict manner.

Thereafter, I was intensely involved in the selection of and implementation of AccPac (Now Sage 300) ERP, setting up with various parameters, accounting controls, migration of legacy data, et al.

Probably, my openness in accepting the changes and my flair to learn new things, as life threw at me, kept me in good standing.

I am sure there are many in my generation, or older/younger, who can relate to my story and draw parallels.

Epilogue:

Agnostic about Gen Z, our generation has the attitude of never say die in adapting to newer technologies, whether by design or default. From the point of running a totally manual environment, we progressed through the ages of Main Frames, Mini & Micro Computers, Laptops, and to Hand-Held devices. With a pittance of memory (both RAM and ROM) to unlimited Cloud-based applications and data storage, we were forced to adapt ourselves to the ever-changing technological advancements, learning on the job, and implementing our learnings to the actual requirements demanded by our lives.

Change is the only constant – so they say and to stay relevant, we have to adapt with the times and tides that are thrown at us. We, from our generation, are probably less stressed in our lives than the successive generations, and consequently, we have a better frame of mind in accepting and adapting to the changes life throws at us than the severely stressed-out Millennials and Gen Z.