I've been interested in computers for almost as long as I can remember. The first time I saw one in real life, though, was way back in 1975 when my dad brought me to work one day. Nothing could have prepared my six year old mind for the coolness of "Spacewar!" beaming from a black & white vector graphics terminal connected to a giant PDP-11 minicomputer rack. Shortly thereafter, I went on a school field trip to a bank where we got to see an IBM System/360 in action, and we were all presented with a blank punch card on the way out! I guess you could say that I've been hooked on computers ever since.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to briefly document some of the machines that I've used over the years, with particular emphasis on the older ones with real character. Following is a brief timeline of many of these, along with descriptions of some vintage computers that I've rescued from the dustbin.

ATARI 2600

OK, so the Atari 2600 was really just a gaming system, but it was the first machine that I was able to take apart and see what was going on inside. Some games were a bit difficult to control with the joysticks, so at some point I decided to create a keypad using an old apf Mark V calculator and a broken Atari joystick. I wired the "8", "6", "2", and "4" keys to the joystick cable's "up", "right", "down", and "left" functions respectively, and I originally wired the fire function to the "5" key, although that proved to be somewhat difficult to use. I later wired it to the larger "=" key. In practice, the keypad was harder to use than joysticks for most games, but it was still a fun little project.

TRS-80 COLOR COMPUTER

The "CoCo", as it was affectionately called, was my parents' first personal computer, so I never actually got a chance to take this one apart. It had a pretty slow Motorola 6809E processor, only came with 4K of RAM, and could only display four colors, but the price was hard to beat at the time. Despite its limitations, my dad was able to use an assembler to successfully program a "horse racing" game that was a big hit at "Vegas night," a fundraising event at my grade school. This was the first computer that I ever tried to write Basic programs on, and it actually wasn't too bad once we upgraded it to 16K of memory, although I honestly can't remember ever doing anything too amazing with it. Mostly, I just used the "Typing Tutor" program to try to learn how to type, which is kind of ironic given that this machine had one of the worst "chiclet-style" keyboards ever made.

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS TI-99/4A

In the early eighties I decided I wanted to buy a computer of my own, but since my only income at the time came from mowing neighbors' lawns at $10 a pop, my budget was very limited. The two main candidates when I first started looking were the Sinclair ZX80 and the Commodore Vic 20, but I ruled these out pretty quickly given their limitations.

MORROW MICRO DECISION II

At some point in the mid-80's, my dad brought home a Morrow Micro Decision II, and this become the main computer that I would write papers on during high school.

TANDY/RADIO SHACK MODEL 100

The Model 100 was my dad's first laptop, and the first portable computer that I ever used. One of its biggest claims to fame was that its built-in software was one of the last programming projects that Bill Gates did mostly by himself. There's also a pretty cool users group that still exists called Club 100 that refurbishes these machines for enthusiasts and collectors.

AMSTRAD PCW 8512

When I graduated from high school in 1987, my parents bought me an Amstrad PCW 8512 as a graduation gift. The Amstrad was yet another Zilog Z80 based machine running the CP/M operating system, but it was different in that the computer itself was housed in the "green on black" monochrome monitor enclosure along with two very unusual 3" (not 3.5") disk drives. The biggest selling point was that it sold for around $500, much cheaper than any PC and monitor combination available at the time, and it even came with a dot-matrix printer. I mostly used it for writing and printing papers in college, although I did mess around a little with some of the software that came bundled with it. This was my primary computer for eight years before the monitor started to go and the disk drives became unreliable.