My History With Computers, Part 1

For some reason, I have been on a nostalgia trip recently. I was looking at PC World's Top 10 worst computers of all time, and the first computer I ever bought was up there! It was a great computer! Anyway, I started to reminisce, and I was surprised to find out how many screen shots, articles, and emulators there are out there for these old systems I used to own or use. Here is my brief history with computers.

My first time to use a computer was in 4th grade, around 1983-1984. Our school had a Commodore 64. They would send all of the artsy/nerdy students to what they called "Gifted & Talented" class once a week - and the C64 was one of the activities they kept us busy with. Interesting how GT started out as a way to describe the "weird" kids. Anyway, I basically learned how to use |/\{} etc draw a rocket ship that would scroll up the screen. And to play a game or two.

I also remember back in the day when Target had a C64 on display. My brother and I would always jump at a chance to go shopping with our Mom, and then get to Target only to dash off to the electronics row. The game that they always had, that we always played, was G.I.Joe. Mom would have to drag us kicking and screaming out of that store every time.

I also remember visiting Sears a lot and playing their ColecoVision every chance we got. We loved to play the Smurf game. Yep - it was labeled the "Easiest Video Game Ever." But we never won it. Sad.

Somewhere in mid-80s, my parents broke down and bought us an Atari 2600. We actually owned something before that to play Pong on, but I can't remember what it was. Anyway, we used to spend hours playing Atari games at friends and relatives houses, so we eventually ended up with one of our own. The games were simple, but we loved to play. For days on end. I think school happened in there somehow.

Also, along the way, we talked our parents in to our first home computer as a family - the TI-99 4/A. We also spent hours playing Parsec and Tunnels of Doom on this thing. Tunnels was great because we could get the whole family together and explore the dungeons looking for the King's treasure. We even has a tape player to store stuff on - that was what the po' folks did back in the day when floppy disk drives were too expensive. Um... a floppy disk is... well, if you don't know - go look it up. Anyway - cassette tapes are very finicky, so every other time you stored stuff on them, you usually lost it. But it was soooo cool to be able to turn off the computer and have it remember where you were in the game.

I even learned how to do graphics and some video game programing on the TI. Now, granted, the pixels on the graphics were a good 1/4" square. And the action was pretty slow in Basic programming language. But I still fondly remember my first program - Stormtrooper Battle 357. You had to go up 10 levels of the DeathStar, each level with a Stormtrooper to shoot. Of course, the trooper just stood there until you hit the 'F' key - because I didn't know how to do it differently. Then, when you got to the top hatch of the DeathStar, you had to enter the "secret code" to get out. What was the secret code? Take a wild guess....

Any way, I also remember in High School how the Nintendo Entertainment System became huge. We spent hours at friends houses playing Super Mario Brothers, Castevania, Duck Hunt, etc, etc. Until my brother got one for Christmas, and then we spent hours in his room playing those games. Yeah, and we did manage to make it to school most of the time. Somehow.

About the 10th grade (1989), my school started offering a computer course. So, I jumped at that. Don't even remember what computer was used, but it was IBM, and it had the old monochrome screen. I Spent hours programming BASIC (that's one of those old computer programming language, for those that don't remember) and designing goofy banners to print out. I was the envy of my class when I learned how to change the color of the text on my screen from green to any one of 16 basic colors.

Of course, I was also around when the arcade video game scene took off (late 70s - early 80s). Wasted many quarters on anything from Donkey Kong to M.A.C.H. III to Karate Champ to Dragons' Lair. Also, I remember playing on several Apple IIE's back in the day.

Well, that pretty much takes me up to college, and the fact that I got a job the last month of high school and worked through my entire 6 year stint at college (yep - 6 years, not 4) pretty much changed the computer landscape for me. I'll hit that in part two.