7 ms·

Ahh, the Commodore 64. I never had one. I had a TI-99/4A with a Forth cartridge, while my friends had VIC-20s and C64s. Such an odd and wonderful time to be int

by mkovach 14d ago

Ahh, the Commodore 64. I never had one. I had a TI-99/4A with a Forth cartridge, while my friends had VIC-20s and C64s. Such an odd and wonderful time to be into computers. I managed to put together a decent Space Invaders clone in Forth that beat their Commodore BASIC version. I considered this an important victory and still have bragging rights when I see one of them. Eventually my parents realized that, despite the disk drives and accessories we'd accumulated, the TI probably wasn't the horse to keep betting on. One trip to Radio Shack later, I had a decked-out original Tandy 1000. I kept both machines until my last move, when a neighbor's kid spotted them and wanted to play with them. That seemed right. Time to put them back in young hands and let someone else figure out what the hell they could make them do.

the_af 14d ago
The 8 Bit Guy has a pretty good video about the Tandy 1000, a great machine.
- mkovach 14d ago
  I probably used that machine for 15 years. It became a nice, distraction-free word processor (WordStar!!), a great machine for running Sierra games, and I had Turbo Pascal and Turbo C, and eventually ran DR-DOS, I believe. I almost blew it up once while making an ISA board to connect to some sensors. Replace quite a few caps on that weekend. My other machine(s) went from Windows 3.11 -> Windows 95 -> Linux, but that Tandy 1000 had a near-permanent spot for quite a while.
LeBit 14d ago
I loved playing Rampage and Thexder on the Tandy of my friend!
martypitt 14d ago
This thread prompted me to go and find out what my first computer was -- I have vague memories of it. Turns out, it was a Sega SC-3000H, back before Sega decided it was a console company. Also, interestingly, it was really only popular in NZ/Aus (I grew up in NZ). I have very clear memories of spending hours copying BASIC code of games, line-by-line from the monthly Sega magazine into the BASIC editor, playing it for 15 minutes, then everything dissapearing when I restarted it. I was always envious of my friend who had a C64, but that Sega was a great little machine.
- wazoox 14d ago
  Yep, it was a "pre-MSX" like a couple of other machines like the Spectravideo SV-328... My first computer was a Casio PB100 (with the 1.5KB extension, so much memory! :D ), then the Sony HB75 (an MSX).
  - kakoni 14d ago
    Hello fellow MSXian! I got started with Spectravideo SV-728 (and all those fantastic Konami games that it had)
    - r4ge 14d ago
      My dad came home with a 2nd hand spectravideo sv-328 and it got me started as well. It had a book of basic programs that I could never really get working. A year or so later we got an Amiga 500 and I really learnt a lot about computers using that. I've been working a personal project that replaces the A500s 68k CPU with a FPGA.
kwanbix 14d ago
Similarly for me. My dad bought a fully expanded TI-99/4A from a friend who was selling it to buy a C64. On the TI, I learned LOGO and then BASIC, and played Parsec, BurgerTime, and others. Cartridges were super expensive in my home country. A few years later, we traveled to New York and bought an IBM PC XT with a 20 MB (yes, MB!) hard drive, 640 KB of RAM, a floppy drive, and a CGA monitor. At the time, IBM had already announced the IBM PC AT with a 286 CPU, and Compaq was already selling clones.
- noir_lord 14d ago
  My first PC was an XT Clone I suspect around the same time, One of these https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/15452/Olivetti-PC1-Prodest/ https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/15452/Olivetti-PC1-P... I adored that thing (coming from a ZX Speccy it felt like a proper computer), I've considered buying/tracking down a non functional one and putting a high performance ITX build into it a few times over the years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe77esw9-nU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe77esw9-nU (PC1 booting into a game) - that instantly takes me back more than 30 years. EDIT: I forgot, one came up on Adrien's Digital Basement a while back - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou-_sHTxwc4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou-_sHTxwc4
  - mkovach 14d ago
    One can build a really close approximation with 86box; in fact, you can build an original 5150.
  - spankibalt 14d ago
    > [...] I've considered buying/tracking down a non functional one and putting a high performance ITX build into it a few times over the years. I'd buy a classic keyboard case x86 (with PCMCIA card slot, Enhanced Personal Computer Keyboard layout plus integrated trackball), preferably made to last, made out of metal. Sadly, no one makes decent cases for something like a Vortex86. It's either weird mini towers to appeal to the nostalgia of the Old Breed, or cheap 3D-printed contraptions in the vein of stompboxes (for MiSTer implementations). Sad.

by mkovach 14d ago

the_af 14d ago

The 8 Bit Guy has a pretty good video about the Tandy 1000, a great machine.

mkovach 14d ago
I probably used that machine for 15 years. It became a nice, distraction-free word processor (WordStar!!), a great machine for running Sierra games, and I had Turbo Pascal and Turbo C, and eventually ran DR-DOS, I believe. I almost blew it up once while making an ISA board to connect to some sensors. Replace quite a few caps on that weekend. My other machine(s) went from Windows 3.11 -> Windows 95 -> Linux, but that Tandy 1000 had a near-permanent spot for quite a while.

LeBit 14d ago

I loved playing Rampage and Thexder on the Tandy of my friend!

martypitt 14d ago

This thread prompted me to go and find out what my first computer was -- I have vague memories of it. Turns out, it was a Sega SC-3000H, back before Sega decided it was a console company. Also, interestingly, it was really only popular in NZ/Aus (I grew up in NZ). I have very clear memories of spending hours copying BASIC code of games, line-by-line from the monthly Sega magazine into the BASIC editor, playing it for 15 minutes, then everything dissapearing when I restarted it. I was always envious of my friend who had a C64, but that Sega was a great little machine.

wazoox 14d ago
Yep, it was a "pre-MSX" like a couple of other machines like the Spectravideo SV-328... My first computer was a Casio PB100 (with the 1.5KB extension, so much memory! :D ), then the Sony HB75 (an MSX).
- kakoni 14d ago
  Hello fellow MSXian! I got started with Spectravideo SV-728 (and all those fantastic Konami games that it had)
  - r4ge 14d ago
    My dad came home with a 2nd hand spectravideo sv-328 and it got me started as well. It had a book of basic programs that I could never really get working. A year or so later we got an Amiga 500 and I really learnt a lot about computers using that. I've been working a personal project that replaces the A500s 68k CPU with a FPGA.

kwanbix 14d ago

Similarly for me. My dad bought a fully expanded TI-99/4A from a friend who was selling it to buy a C64. On the TI, I learned LOGO and then BASIC, and played Parsec, BurgerTime, and others. Cartridges were super expensive in my home country. A few years later, we traveled to New York and bought an IBM PC XT with a 20 MB (yes, MB!) hard drive, 640 KB of RAM, a floppy drive, and a CGA monitor. At the time, IBM had already announced the IBM PC AT with a 286 CPU, and Compaq was already selling clones.

noir_lord 14d ago
My first PC was an XT Clone I suspect around the same time, One of these https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/15452/Olivetti-PC1-Prodest/ https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/15452/Olivetti-PC1-P... I adored that thing (coming from a ZX Speccy it felt like a proper computer), I've considered buying/tracking down a non functional one and putting a high performance ITX build into it a few times over the years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe77esw9-nU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe77esw9-nU (PC1 booting into a game) - that instantly takes me back more than 30 years. EDIT: I forgot, one came up on Adrien's Digital Basement a while back - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou-_sHTxwc4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou-_sHTxwc4
- mkovach 14d ago
  One can build a really close approximation with 86box; in fact, you can build an original 5150.
- spankibalt 14d ago
  > [...] I've considered buying/tracking down a non functional one and putting a high performance ITX build into it a few times over the years. I'd buy a classic keyboard case x86 (with PCMCIA card slot, Enhanced Personal Computer Keyboard layout plus integrated trackball), preferably made to last, made out of metal. Sadly, no one makes decent cases for something like a Vortex86. It's either weird mini towers to appeal to the nostalgia of the Old Breed, or cheap 3D-printed contraptions in the vein of stompboxes (for MiSTer implementations). Sad.