[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Icelander

9) hat is it good for? I basically have no idea what computers did, beyond word processing, before they had Internet.... what can more active, adventuring-type people, like FBI agents, use theirs for

Email. Databases. Spreadsheets (which often served as small databases). And taking notes for the inevitable FBI report. Possibly special-purpose software, if there's something applicable. CD-ROM references would be mostly post 1990.

The modem built into the GRiD will come in handy. Before the Internet, there were still networks and standalone systems, commonly accessed over the phone system by dialing a dedicate phone number that had a modem waiting at the other end. Pre-Internet, there was also a large network of systems that exchanged email and Usenet via dialup modems.

Originally Posted by johndallman

The GRiD is very cool, but may not run the software you need.

It's PC compatible. GRiD marketing may have liked to talk about "GRiD-OS", but it ran MS-DOS. Runs the same software as any PC, off-the-shelf. (Which, now that I'm reminded, probably makes those a "Case" rather than a "Compass". We didn't have the bubble memory mentioned in Wikipedia, either -- which probably helps with the price point, too.)

As far as I know, GRiD sold mostly to the government. If the computer is personal property from Stanford, it seems less likely than the Toshiba. On the other hand, she might get a GRiD from the FBI. Or knowing that she plans to be a field agent, maybe it was worth Daddy's money. And they did market it to executives, so Daddy could well have heard of them.

Originally Posted by sjard

In 1988? That was called a photocopy sent through a fax machine

Scanners were certainly available in 1988. (Cheap little ones were, after all, built into fax machines.)

The FBI had "live-scan fingerprint devices" in the 1980s with a spec for minimum image quality, which term is distinct from "card-scan" reporting. So, two types of scanners, plus the physical cards themselves.

"It is important to understand that live-scan devices are digital, that is they represent the information in fingerprints as discrete values rather than as continuous shades of grey produced by ink and paper." (Higgins, "Standards for the Electronic Submission of Fingerprint Cards to the FBI", speaking in 1995 of the history leading up to their planned improvements to their existing system -- the new one to be called IAFIS and to go online in 1997 to replace the then-current AFIS. Well, 1999, as it turned out, and they're just now talking about replacing IAFIS.)

Sounds like you could take a traditional printed card and scan it, or use one of the live-scan devices. Or, indeed, mail in the printed card. It doesn't seem like a stretch for a PC that's a particular computer geek for the FBI to be using the latest tech she can get. We don't even need the "it's a prototype" excuse.

Apparently the first FBI contract for fingerprint scanners went out in 1966, though I think that was for scanning their existing cards back at central HQ. They also created a standard for digital image reporting in 1985 (10 pixels/mm in the scan and 20 pixels/mm), because there was enough of a proliferation of competing equipment in use that they felt a need to standardize it. Bandwidth limitations were enough of a problem in the early 1980s that they were investigating methods into ways of classifying "minutiae" (details about ridges and loops and whorls and so on) in the field and transmitting that instead of images, but that never got settled before advancing modem technology obviated that problem. I came across one report from 2006 that mentioned "many" local agencies still using printed cards at that time. It seems less a matter of technology than budget and will to adopt.

More historical detail here on the development of automated fingerprint ID, though unfortunately it doesn't focus on the field end of things.

In 1988, most computers wouldn't even have a hard drive.

Depends on whether or not you needed one. In 1988, the GRiDs we used were issued with a twin 10-MB Syquest removable cartridge system that sat underneath the computer and connected via an IEEE-488 (GPIB) cable in the back. These drives took square plastic cartidges, like big thick floppy disks, and the media was rigid. Kind of like the Iomega ZIP drives, if you remember those, except Syquest was doing it earlier. Expandable storage, easily stored in a safe (particularly useful for media with classified information), but not as fast or reliable as a fixed hard drive.

Those Syquest drives were a bit temperamental. Sand and Syquest did not mix well. So they were getting replaced by an external hard disk, a typical 3.5" disk drive, for deployment in Operation Desert Shield, thus before August 1990.

As far as the non-GRiD, non-portable stuff was concerned, all our development machines had hard drives; we (a small company, ~30 people, <$3M revenue) had an Ethernet LAN as well. The principals of the company were the only ones stuck with PCs with no hard disk. The admin staff, graphics, HR, and support all had hard disks. 1988 is a few years later than you're remembering, I think, and PC technology changed faster back then that it does now.