Here’s one for the geeks:
My first real computer (as we know them to be now, and not the old microcomputers that you used to be able to build from Heathkit) was an II+ that my dad bought in 1980. I was ten.
It cost something like $3500, and I think it had 48kbs of ram, and a CPU that ran at a springy 1mhz.
For the longest time we used a standard audio tape player to load Breakout and other games onto the computer. Our monitor was a Baycrest 12” colour television (which cost a fortune back then, but still works to this day[!]).
Three relevations:
- My dad splurging one Christmas and buying two 51/4” disk drives, which meant we could actually play games like Ultima, Lode Runner, and Castle Wolfenstein. I worshipped at the altar of Br�derbund and Origin Systems.
- Learning how to program in BASIC by reading books like BASIC Computer Games by David Ahl.
- Being introduced to (and being consumed by) Bulletin Board Systems when we got a 300 Baud modem. Memories of my first email, my first chat with a Sysop, my first online game…
I “grew out” of computers by the time I turned 15 or 16. My interest had turned to the more tangible entertainments high school presented. Once I discovered partying, girls, and punk rock my time using computers seemed like a long forgotten memory.
I didn’t use computers again seriously until just five or six years ago, where I first introduced to the Internet, and where I first saw glimmers of what would become a fond obsession, and a career.
What was your first experience with a computer?
