Personal personal computer history
I started to post this in the Oldest Mac on AI thread thread, but then it went from off-topic to thread-jacking pretty quick. So here it is, an all new, personal computer history thread. Let?s start with mine.
First off, a disclaimer. All of the computers in my family eventually got handed down to me, so even if they were purchased when I was 3 or 4, I still consider them "mine."
The 16k Radio Shack TRS-80 COLOR computer. I dug this out of a closet in 6th or 7th grade. By this time it had 32k of memory that my father had put in long ago. Alas, this upgrade eventually led to its downfall. It was a peskily unstable machine with cooling issues and some loose connections on the video-section of the board. Thus it ran cover-off, with the monitor suspended above on a pre-iMac aluminum system... 4 Dr. Pepper cans. Unfortunately the good Dr. only delayed the inevitable. The processor eventually succumbed to the heat and died. That extra memory always kept it busy with plenty of data. Now it resides once more in the closet.
The Tandy Color Computer II, 64k. My dad felt so bad that my dear old plaything had died that he bought me the Color Computer II and tons of software... for $35. It kept me amused as I struggled to achieve the utmost in frustration with BASIC. But then I started to hear about these things called modems and BBS's. True, I still had the 300 baud modem from the TRS-80, but it didn't seem to like the Tandy and I don't think it would have liked BBS's anyway... ASCI graphics, I think they were called, would have warped its tiny little mind I'm sure. Nevertheless, the "big" family computer had moved on to a Magnavox 386 so I garnered custody of the former "champ"...
The Commuter Computer. This early "portable" weighed in at approximately 45 pounds and was both bigger and heavier than the Color Computer II that wasn?t ?portable.? Ahh? but this beheamouth at least featured a fold up LCD screen that is put to shame by any 10-year-old GameBoy, as well as 2 double density 5 1/4? floppy disk drives! Most importantly, however? was an external 1200 baud modem. Soon I was playing Outpost Trader and Legend of the Red Dragon in utter bliss.
After that came a succession of uninteresting machines, an Acer Pentium 125 w Win95? a homebuilt AMD-750 based machine and then? the great awakening
A used B&W PowerMac G3? the rest is history.
First off, a disclaimer. All of the computers in my family eventually got handed down to me, so even if they were purchased when I was 3 or 4, I still consider them "mine."
The 16k Radio Shack TRS-80 COLOR computer. I dug this out of a closet in 6th or 7th grade. By this time it had 32k of memory that my father had put in long ago. Alas, this upgrade eventually led to its downfall. It was a peskily unstable machine with cooling issues and some loose connections on the video-section of the board. Thus it ran cover-off, with the monitor suspended above on a pre-iMac aluminum system... 4 Dr. Pepper cans. Unfortunately the good Dr. only delayed the inevitable. The processor eventually succumbed to the heat and died. That extra memory always kept it busy with plenty of data. Now it resides once more in the closet.
The Tandy Color Computer II, 64k. My dad felt so bad that my dear old plaything had died that he bought me the Color Computer II and tons of software... for $35. It kept me amused as I struggled to achieve the utmost in frustration with BASIC. But then I started to hear about these things called modems and BBS's. True, I still had the 300 baud modem from the TRS-80, but it didn't seem to like the Tandy and I don't think it would have liked BBS's anyway... ASCI graphics, I think they were called, would have warped its tiny little mind I'm sure. Nevertheless, the "big" family computer had moved on to a Magnavox 386 so I garnered custody of the former "champ"...
The Commuter Computer. This early "portable" weighed in at approximately 45 pounds and was both bigger and heavier than the Color Computer II that wasn?t ?portable.? Ahh? but this beheamouth at least featured a fold up LCD screen that is put to shame by any 10-year-old GameBoy, as well as 2 double density 5 1/4? floppy disk drives! Most importantly, however? was an external 1200 baud modem. Soon I was playing Outpost Trader and Legend of the Red Dragon in utter bliss.
After that came a succession of uninteresting machines, an Acer Pentium 125 w Win95? a homebuilt AMD-750 based machine and then? the great awakening
A used B&W PowerMac G3? the rest is history.
Comments
Originally posted by Guartho
This is for us switchers and dual-platformers, that thread is about Apple computers. I'm interested in people's Commodore 64's, DOS machines, No-name 386's etc.
Gotcha.
Originally posted by Guartho
This is for us switchers and dual-platformers, that thread is about Apple computers. I'm interested in people's Commodore 64's, DOS machines, No-name 386's etc.
Not so much. The thread name is misleading. If you read the first post of the Apple History thread you'll see that it mentions switchers, not Commodore 64's, DOS machines, or No-name 386's (I know, I started the thread)...but the thread goes off topic toward the end, as all AI threads seem to do.