IdolHands.com :: Days in the Life of an Alpha Geek
Random Access Memory Lane
Boing Boing Gadgets did a great post yesterday on 101 classic computer ads. Looking through the grainy images of futures past, I saw my own history of computing writ large.
I was really lucky as a kid to have so much technology at home. It started with our first computer, the Radio Shack TRS-80:
My dad taught me the BASICs of programming on that thing. When I ended up monopolizing the silver plastic beast, he got me a computer of my own, the Timex Sinclair. It plugged directly into a TV and had a membrane keyboard with BASIC commands printed right on them.
While my school was well-equipped with Apple ][ computers and the first Apple clone that I recall, the Franklin Ace, we ended up with a Commodore 64 at home. That opened up a lot more programming possibilities for me, and I ended up teaching myself assembly language so that I could render "hi-res" graphics. I also did my first hacking/cracking on that machine.
My school got its first Macs in 1984, which I immediately adopted for graphics and layout. I remember waiting for Aldus Pagemaker to catch up with my typing as I worked furiously on a variety of zines.
In college, I didn't have a computer of my own, but I worked at a print shop and had access to top-of-the-line Macs. After college, when I was in Austin, my friend Dave from Team Fat was kind enough to give me his Atari ST, the first (only?) computer to have MIDI ports built right in. The machine had a modem, and I used it first to dial in to local BBS systems, and finally, the Internet... So this is the box that I used to create my first web site in 1993. Remarkably, I've still got it stored up in the attic-- the computer, not the web site.
I eventually replaced this with my first personal Mac, a 33 MHz Performa, and discovered Adobe Photoshop. I used to start Photoshop rendering an effect, go to dinner, and come back to see how much progress it made. Amazing that my bloody phone has more processing power than that thing did.
Once my career got going, I treated myself to higher-end machines, but always sticking with Macs. Now, of course, our house has three times more computers than people, and that's only counting the ones that we actually use.
Maybe when I retire I'll open a museum or something, since I can't bring myself to actually get rid of old tech.
Comments
Lisa
August 10, 2008 at 4:56 PMGoodwill could "set up a museum" for you. Just drop things off where it says "computer recycling"-- that's their secret code for "put it in the tech museum". grin.
dolst
August 25, 2008 at 4:41 AMHello from Claremont! The Timex Sinclair 1000/ZX81. Wow... just, wow! The ZX81 was our family's first computer, and also the computer I learned BASIC on. Our next one was the TS2068. I burned away so many hours on that one. In fact, I blarged about it here: http://dolst.com/article/ultraquest_demon_castle I never had an Atari ST, but about 10 years or so ago, Charlie Marks gave me his old Atari XE. Very few 3D space-fighting games of this day and age are as fun as Star Crusaders! I need to visit your site more often. Surf Wisely!
