First personal computer nostalgia

From: Mike <dogas_at_bellsouth.net>
Date: Thu Nov 16 14:18:40 2000

pre-78: womb, pong, pinball, calculators...

78: I played alot at Radio Shack breaking out of 'Canon' and getting at the
inner goodies of the Trs-80 m1l1

79: Highschool starts.. Science Teacher bought a trs-80 m1l2, I got to
borrow it some weekends. Found two Superbrains in the math department and
began developing some CAI for some lagging classmates. Started learning
z-80 assembler.

80-83: Purchased my first computer: An Atari 800 16K quickly followed by a
32k ramcard and not so quickly a Rana 1000 floppy (kinda flaky but cool) I
saw 'De Re Atari' and was in love. Characters could be easily redefined and
I also liked the i/o interface possibilities inherent in the 4 joystick
ports. I hombrewed a digitizing arm and worked out the trig of a few
pivoting arms in software to run it all among many other joyous things.
Friends had purchased a CoCo(running os-9 with a c compiler, I loved it), a
TRS-80 m1l2, a TRS-80 m3, (another Atarian), a Timex, and an Amiga 1000 (my
first lisp...) and we all stretched our machines and software in woderful
comradarie. Roamed bbs's far and wide

81: Discovered a CDC-6600 at the end of the phone line, learned compass and
a few dear trails through the os and loved talk/confer (early chat)

82: Some basic programming on a IBM System 34 doing simulations for school
projects and although my account was initially locked down, SDA provided in
a utility, ummm.... modifications to my assigned menu that allowed
unordained exploration in ocl. Got my first job on a TRS-80 m2 with the
3 extra drives filling the expanion unit and trs-dos 2 and basic writing job
costing software. Woohoo! I still have that machine.

83: The IBM PC hits and the lawyer of my boss with the Model 2 has a few
ideas and I'm quickly off and running slinging code for the new PC which
intermittantly continues to this day... ;)

84: Did a small stint at DeVry (heh... Had to buy a TRS-80 Pocket Computer
for the coursework there) One cool note. One of my profs was John
Blankenship, a hell of an Apple II guy. The class was (mostly) working on
Apple IIs (in a language Blankeship developed for the II (many graphics
extensions))

The rest is pretty much a drug induced blurr of imagery and old computers...
;)

Cheers
- Mike: dogas_at_bellsouth.net
Received on Thu Nov 16 2000 - 14:18:40 GMT