I've been reading The Soul of a New Machine and it's made me feel nostalgic. My first computer was the Coleco Adam (http://oldcomputers.net/adam.html).
I collect old computers and now own: Kim-1 ('75), Apple II ('77), Commoodore PET 8K ('77), TRS-80 Model I (78), Apple Lisa-1 (83), Osborne-1, Atari 400/800, Heathkit H89, Northstar Advantage, Next Computer Nextstation. I even own a reproduction Apple-1 and manuals to the Xerox Alto.
Me too.
Funny thing is, I don't ever remember learning _how_ to programme it, just that I always have been. Still have it too.
Oh, and +10 points for the Vic=20 manual, complete with schematic and entire list of memory addresses and their uses.
I learned to Hack on a Commodore PET that was owned by my elementary school. It was far more fun to modify the learning programs we were supposed to be using, than to actually USE the programs as intended.
Then the school got a Commodore 64. Oooh! Colors!
Then the first PC that was mine, and located at my house was a PCjr (but I had the "real" keyboard). A lot of people slam the jr, and I've never understood why. I wrote thousands of lines of BASIC on it, learned to interface with various peripherals, hand-soldered a memory expansion card, and other fun things.
Then I built an IBM PC from parts (and by PC I mean a 5150), followed shortly by an XT, and then about a year later an AT (and I overclocked it from 6Mhz to 8Mhz, IIRC).
Next was a PS/2 Model 30 (bought), Model 55 (built), Thinkpad 700 (built), and a couple of other IBM machines. If it's not obvious by now, my dad worked for IBM, so I had access to a lot of IBM parts. The PS/2 Model 30 talked to the AT and jr over a parallel-port LANtastic network. Then I got actual LANtastic ISA cards. There was PCNet broadband network in there somewhere also.
After the IBM's was a whole slew of built clones, from a 486sx, up through Pentiums.
ZX81 (3.25 MHz Z80 cpu, 1KB of RAM, cassette tape storage). I used it to teach myself Basic when I was 9.
The funniest thing about it was "fast" and "slow" mode. The Z80 was actually used to generate a TV signal, so you had two modes for running programs: In fast mode, the screen went blank, and the cpu just ran your program. In slow mode, the cpu got interrupted regularly to update the screen (which made your program run a lot slower!).
I had the same thing. I also used it to teach myself BASIC... Just because there was no other way to communicate with the computer, really.
My "favorite" part was how long it would take to load a program from the cassette drive. At least 5-6 minutes, during which the screen would go weird colors (with time, you learned to distinguish - white/red means nothing happening, blue/yellow means program is loading) and make really weird sounds...
It was a Pentium 60 Mhz, had 8 MB RAM, 420 MB HD. 14.4 Modem. I think it also had 1 MB Video memory and a 2x CD-Drive. I later upgraded it to 16 MB Ram. I built the next few computers I owned and have since switched to Macs.
I actually did my first programming on that machine. I used QBasic to make a simple game where you moved a car around the screen.
The only differences were that I upgraded mine from a 486 to a Pentium 90(!) and bolted an internal Iomega Jaz tape drive to the outside of the case for more storage. It ran Windows 3.1, which allowed me to wile away the time playing SkiFree when I was young.
My QBasic game was a word guessing game. It was fun to write, and not fun at all to play.
Commodore 64. But it wasn't really mine, I had to fight with my two sisters over it ( Oh for the days of dig dug ).
My second was a Performa 476. Also had to fight.
I got a Commodore 64 in '82 when I was eight, with disk drive and dot matrix printer. By the time I was 12 I was going to garage sales with my mom (an antique dealer), buying old broken C64s and other machines of the era (by high school I'd already owned several Spectrums, an Apple Lisa, many TRS-80s, a Coleco Adam, a Commodore Plus 4, and other assorted weirdness), and fixing them for resale (fixing computers back then meant soldering iron and a meter and lots of trial and error). So, my first business sprang from my experience with my first computer.
I also ran a BBS on my C64 through middle school and early high school. So, it gave me experience with computer networks, too. ;-)
I also loved Soul of a New Machine. Fantastic story, and reading it back in 97 or 98 lead me to research and buy Data General stock, which turned out well when they were acquired by EMC.
A PET 8K. I wrote my first contract program on an Apple II about the same time, so it was a tie.
We had one PET in the high school library. The other nerds and I used to fight over who could program it. There was a sign-up sheet but the rules weren't strictly enforced. One guy named Roland kept using teacher's notes to jump in line. So I wrote a program called "Kill Roland" that all the other kids loved. As I remember, little "R"s came down from the top of the screen and you maneuvered a gun to shoot them before they got to the bottom. Very simple stuff, but the game got so popular that Roland never came to the library anymore.
Mission accomplished.
I miss that little PET. I think I still remember the POKE statements used to control the screen. Geesh -- those brain cells should have been recycled a long time ago.
Honestly not sure what it was... featurewise it only had RF out and did everything from a tape drive... so I'm thinking an Atari 400... but don't remember a membrane keyboard, so may have just been something similar.
First computer I really used a lot was the 486DX2-80 my family got in 6th grade. I was so excited to play X-Com on it!
A ZX-Spectrum Z80 clone. Something like 32KB of memory, and audio tapes for storage. A game would take 4-5 minutes to load, during which time the border of the screen would have funky coloured lines, and you could "hear" the program loading (similar to modem sounds). There was also a way to "compress" programs, which would make the lines thinner and the sound more high-pitched - I guess it simply recorded everything twice as fast and tried to deal with the error recovery as well as it could.
This was back in Romania almost 10 years after the original Z80 came out in the rest of the world. It was a big hit for a couple of years because it was so affordable, and many people got their computing start on one (or on a Commodore 64), before graduating to a 286 or 386. One TV station actually had a show where they broadcast games and programs - since it was just the audio signal, you could easily record them off the TV. So you basically had an entire TV show with the funky moving lines on the borders and the modem-like sounds. Looking back it seems a bit surreal. :)
I had one too! Just as in Romania, The ZX was a long time coming to India and was insanely expensive, but I learned programming on it, mostly by writing simple games.
. Once you got your head wround assembly, you could do anything with it and I was fiddling with that machine 12 hours a day till Mom took it away in an attempt to remind me of "normal" life.
Damn I feel old now :-(
Tracy Kidder's book is what got me into computers! Love the part where they can't figure out why the motherboard isn't working and the project leader, and old grizzled veteran, just grabbed the board without warning and shook the hell out of it, giving all the young whiz kids cardiac arrest. But it fixed the problem!
Home-built from mail-order box w/ Intel 386SX chip, 1024K ram, 40MG hard drive, VGA video 5.25 and 3.5 inch floppy drive. I really wanted the full 386 chip, but couldn't afford that and VGA. Figured I could always add the i387 math co-processor later.
83 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 73.6 ms ] threadI collect old computers and now own: Kim-1 ('75), Apple II ('77), Commoodore PET 8K ('77), TRS-80 Model I (78), Apple Lisa-1 (83), Osborne-1, Atari 400/800, Heathkit H89, Northstar Advantage, Next Computer Nextstation. I even own a reproduction Apple-1 and manuals to the Xerox Alto.
;)
Then the school got a Commodore 64. Oooh! Colors!
Then the first PC that was mine, and located at my house was a PCjr (but I had the "real" keyboard). A lot of people slam the jr, and I've never understood why. I wrote thousands of lines of BASIC on it, learned to interface with various peripherals, hand-soldered a memory expansion card, and other fun things.
Then I built an IBM PC from parts (and by PC I mean a 5150), followed shortly by an XT, and then about a year later an AT (and I overclocked it from 6Mhz to 8Mhz, IIRC).
Next was a PS/2 Model 30 (bought), Model 55 (built), Thinkpad 700 (built), and a couple of other IBM machines. If it's not obvious by now, my dad worked for IBM, so I had access to a lot of IBM parts. The PS/2 Model 30 talked to the AT and jr over a parallel-port LANtastic network. Then I got actual LANtastic ISA cards. There was PCNet broadband network in there somewhere also.
After the IBM's was a whole slew of built clones, from a 486sx, up through Pentiums.
The funniest thing about it was "fast" and "slow" mode. The Z80 was actually used to generate a TV signal, so you had two modes for running programs: In fast mode, the screen went blank, and the cpu just ran your program. In slow mode, the cpu got interrupted regularly to update the screen (which made your program run a lot slower!).
I had the same thing. I also used it to teach myself BASIC... Just because there was no other way to communicate with the computer, really.
My "favorite" part was how long it would take to load a program from the cassette drive. At least 5-6 minutes, during which the screen would go weird colors (with time, you learned to distinguish - white/red means nothing happening, blue/yellow means program is loading) and make really weird sounds...
When I got it, it was nearly top of the line.
It was a Pentium 60 Mhz, had 8 MB RAM, 420 MB HD. 14.4 Modem. I think it also had 1 MB Video memory and a 2x CD-Drive. I later upgraded it to 16 MB Ram. I built the next few computers I owned and have since switched to Macs.
I actually did my first programming on that machine. I used QBasic to make a simple game where you moved a car around the screen.
I think I still have it in a closet somewhere.
The only differences were that I upgraded mine from a 486 to a Pentium 90(!) and bolted an internal Iomega Jaz tape drive to the outside of the case for more storage. It ran Windows 3.1, which allowed me to wile away the time playing SkiFree when I was young.
My QBasic game was a word guessing game. It was fun to write, and not fun at all to play.
I also ran a BBS on my C64 through middle school and early high school. So, it gave me experience with computer networks, too. ;-)
I also loved Soul of a New Machine. Fantastic story, and reading it back in 97 or 98 lead me to research and buy Data General stock, which turned out well when they were acquired by EMC.
We had one PET in the high school library. The other nerds and I used to fight over who could program it. There was a sign-up sheet but the rules weren't strictly enforced. One guy named Roland kept using teacher's notes to jump in line. So I wrote a program called "Kill Roland" that all the other kids loved. As I remember, little "R"s came down from the top of the screen and you maneuvered a gun to shoot them before they got to the bottom. Very simple stuff, but the game got so popular that Roland never came to the library anymore.
Mission accomplished.
I miss that little PET. I think I still remember the POKE statements used to control the screen. Geesh -- those brain cells should have been recycled a long time ago.
First computer I really used a lot was the 486DX2-80 my family got in 6th grade. I was so excited to play X-Com on it!
This was back in Romania almost 10 years after the original Z80 came out in the rest of the world. It was a big hit for a couple of years because it was so affordable, and many people got their computing start on one (or on a Commodore 64), before graduating to a 286 or 386. One TV station actually had a show where they broadcast games and programs - since it was just the audio signal, you could easily record them off the TV. So you basically had an entire TV show with the funky moving lines on the borders and the modem-like sounds. Looking back it seems a bit surreal. :)
. Once you got your head wround assembly, you could do anything with it and I was fiddling with that machine 12 hours a day till Mom took it away in an attempt to remind me of "normal" life. Damn I feel old now :-(
But programming foray was on a 386SX running MS-DOS with QBasic.
Home-built from mail-order box w/ Intel 386SX chip, 1024K ram, 40MG hard drive, VGA video 5.25 and 3.5 inch floppy drive. I really wanted the full 386 chip, but couldn't afford that and VGA. Figured I could always add the i387 math co-processor later.