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What Was Your First Computer?
michaelmichael writes "News.com.com is running a special report, asking readers to tell everyone what their first computer was. This was prompted by another article commemorating the 60th anniversary of ENIAC." I started on a trash 80 in like 5th grade. And although I did a lot of programming and games on 8086s, it wasn't until I got a 286 in middle school that I really considered a machine "Mine".
Ah yes,
They joy of finding the odd things you could do by POKEing numbers into the system variables (nicely documented in the manual). I also spent an awful lot of my time using dodges to save memory.
I seem to recall that using a real number in Basic took 4 bytes, so rather than using LET A=A+3 people used stuff like LET A=A+INT PI since that only took 2 bytes.
Also you could make some damn fine music* by placing your transister radio next to your ZX81 while it executed different types of FOR/NEXT loop. The more statements inside the loop, the lower the note. Map different loops to different keys and you've got a synth baby.
Happy days.
* I lie, it was dreadful.
Hmm, after re-thinking this, perhaps the bigger news here is that I found a wife.
C64 that damn thing caused me not to get laid will I was in my late teens. Who needs girls when you have Mars Saga and Basic.
Yeah, I started off with the ZX-80, then "upgraded" to an -81. Now there's a scary concept - upgrading to 1K of RAM...
I say we take off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...
What would really be funny is to see if you could run your 2400 baud modem over the VOIP connection to Sydney :) .
There are 2 kinds of people in this world. Those that can keep their train of thought,
Why, in my day we had to carry our ones and zeroes six miles uphill through the snow. And each bit weighed eight pounds so a byte weighed sixty-four pounds and it took you three hours to get it there. But dammit, it was good for you, kept you fit as a mule and taught you to be an efficient coder. Not like the kids these days, with the hair, and the clothes and the rock music. Everything's going to hell.