Personal Computers in the 1980's

In the '80s most early computers had no hard drives and every time they were turned on they required a DOS (Disk Operating System) program booted from four 5 1/4" floppy disks. Additional programs then had to be booted from additional floppy disks.

At NavBase Seattle, our office computers had 20 MB hard drives which meant the computers booted up right away. (No boot up from floppy disks.)

Our office also had a program that combined a word processor and spreadsheet. (sort of like MS Office, but much less powerful) All documents and files had to be saved to a 5 1/4" floppy disks, but, in the mid '80s that was cutting edge.