I’m sure I have done this before but you know what? This is the ‘net and it’s no longer uncool to be a geek. In fact the consensus has now shifted and it’s the technophobes who don’t have iPhones and laptops who are out of step. Having a blog or a Twitter account is not just for chaps with no mates. My dad was a perpetual early adopter of tech kit because he always needed more processing power for his number-crunching work. Before home computers, if you wanted heavy calculations done you took punch-cards down to the nearest mainframe or, in later years, dialled into it remotely. So when personal computers started to appear on the horizon my Dad tried many of them to find something which could manage his work-load. The ones which didn’t suit him soon got junked and sent downstairs to be played with by us kids.
The first computer that I got to grips with was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum.
We had educational games to teach us spelling and arithmetic. The best one was a game where if you got the question right you got to blow up an enemy tank. At five or six years old it was very exciting. Of course software was stored as sound on audio tape in those days because disc drives took up whole rooms and were not for home computers. Sinclair and Acorn were in a huge battle to conquer the “cheap” home computer market. Most people nailed their colours to one or the other side, but we actually had both a Spectrum and a BBC B!
We used the BBC at school and so it made sense to have one at home. We had a teacher at primary school who was keen on getting us to learn about computers and my brothers and I took to it like ducks to water. Given how much DNA I share with my father, I doubt it took much persuasion that we should have one… He found a second-hand one and we loved it. My brother’s stellar career started with that machine.
The house was littered with kit. We had work slates especially imported from America, a Sirius (which made really meaty noises when accessing its disc drives) and a system which allowed a computer to operate a typewriter so as to be able to produce high-quality reports without the mortgage-sized cost of owning a laser printer.
Computer equipment was expensive on a scale that seems unbelievable in retrospect. I remember going to a computer shop to pick up the bleeding edge 33Mhz 486 PC that my dad had to warn his bank that he was about to buy. It cost thousands. I secretly installed Lemmings on it and crept into his office when he went out to meetings. It had Windows 3.1 but my dad never got used to the mouse, still preferring to use the command line.
At my mum’s office she had a Mac. An original Mac. I got hooked. A wealthy donor had given my school several Macs and we tested them to the limits.
I saved up and eventually I could afford my own computer and I plumped for a Performa 450 – such a good machine that there are now condoms named after it. Presumably it was a safe, long-lasting computer…
Some of my student loan went on one of these beauties, the Powerbook G3 (Wall Street). It was great. Our halls of residence had fast internet connections which were used purely for study (and maybe for setting up a website outlining our booze-fuelled antics in the city which if we had been canny could have pre-empted Facebook by several years…).
Unfortunately at some point I lent the laptop to my mum and it somehow “stopped working”. A bit of research revealed a power supply problem common to laptops that had been dropped in a particular way. I gave the G3 monster to a charity which collected broken computers in order to fix them up and send them to schools in Africa.
Shamefully my Mac history stops there. I switched to a borrowed PC and my current computer is this little gem:
It is still very much a decent computer even at three-and-a-half years old. I have no plans to replace the Samsung, I don’t need to. But come the summer, I have a slight suspicion that I will be investing in one of these.
Better a geek than a nerd!
I am pretty tempted by an iPad. Going to try and hold out a few months until there are some decent reviews out there. Do I need one? No. Would it be cool? Almost certainly, which might mean I get one.
“The first computer that I got to grips with was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. “
Ha! My brother had one of those. Oh, how I remember the whole family sitting round it, trying to play ‘The Hobbit’ (a frustrating text-based game)…
“But come the summer, I have a slight suspicion that I will be investing in one of these.”
I’ll admit, until I got an iPhone, I wouldn’t have known what all the fuss was about, being a dedicated PC owner. But I’m tempted too.
Amstrad 464 here!
We typed in a programme over several days and turned it into a music player too!
I spent hours on ‘Rigel’s revenge’!
I rate the Ipad – assuming it does what it says on the box, and wonder where you can go from there now?
Interestingly enough, one review said that it would wipe out netbooks now!
That’s saved me a few quid then, I was just thinking about getting one of those…
My first was the ZX81 with 1K of memory, expandable to 16K.
My first paychecks went on a portable TV. The next ones were for a ZX Spectrum.
Play Chaos in flash. Battle of the wizards. Brilliant fun.
http://www.mykeblack.com/flash/chaos/chaos_content.htmlb
First computer was an Amiga 600…. or was it 500+ something??
Wish you could still get some of the games that we played on that. “Heimdall” was my favourite.
Now I have a 750 Mhz, ahhh…THING, with “Intel? whazat then?” inside, and a sound card that does not work. Apparantly “not supported by windows” any more.
That Beeb picture makes me sigh. The happy joys of leafing through a 6522 VIA data sheet. It helped make me into the tedious twat I am today. Though the following approximate* extract from the user manual regarding the A/D drove me up the wall:
“Although the machine is fitted with a twelve bit converter, the user should not rely on greater than ten bit accuracy unless a great deal of trouble is taken with screening and ground connections”
Wrong. It was only capable of bloody ten bit accuracy because it only had a bloody ten bit A/D convertor you lying sods, and even then you only managed to use three bloody cheapo diodes as the voltage reference for it. And that in a machine costing £300 in about 1983. Tossers.
Loved the machine to bits though. There are still two somewhere at home.
*It’s as close as I can manage. Owing to a life of dissipation, my memory is not what it was. And it was never very much.
Well if the BBC docu-drama of a few months ago is to be believed, the BBC prototype was knocked up in a night!
Like The Engineer, my first computer was a ZX81.
It didn’t have a proper keyboard as such and if you pressed too hard on one of the “keys” the memory pack that slotted rather loosely onto the back of the ZX81 would wobble and cause the computer to crash.
Someone actually made a living out of making a simple metal clip that would hold the memory pack in place.
It’s the only thing that was designed by Clive Sinclair that I’ve ever owned. Just about everything he invented had design faults.
Wish I’d seen that programmme. And I don’t mind at all if a prototype is knocked up in a night. If true they must have been extremely clever. It’s the one they finally put to market I was grumbling about; from the poshest store in Cambridge too. My dad was not poor but also not rich, and £300 in those days hurt.
Mind you, part of the BBC Micro project involved Neanderthal, sorry, Netherhall School so I can’t say I’m too surprised.
(BTW I was going to call my Beebs in the loft the Acorn Antiques but then realised I’d best stick to boring. There’s a relic called a Nascom up in there with them. Z80s, 555s, 741s, BC108s. Happy days.)
What an informative childhood, BE.
My mother bought my father one of the very first hand-held calculators as his main Christmas present in the 1970′s. We lived in the Middle East where all the latest electronic goods were sold.
I remember us all oggling at this thing on Christmas Day, completely oblivious of its significance in the development of human culture. It was manufactured in Japan, has only basic functions and I guess it must have cost over £150 then. It is the size of a narrow chunky paperback book and has a small display. My mother still has it so I might photograph it when I visit her and post a picture of it on Twitter. Memories, eh?
I had one of those Macs too. Great.
The ipad looks brilliant as well – there is only so much miniaturisation that can be handled properly.
Yes, it’s great to find fellow nerds, or as I call them, friends.
There’s something very sexy about stripping down an engine though that you just don’t get with computers. It’s the smell. And the feel. And the sound. Of yes, the sound. Now that is sexy. You know when it’s running sweet. Now if you mix the smell of engine oil with the smell of man..
Ok I’ll go.
But you don’t get that with computers.
XX ut you don’t get that with computers.XX
Which is what most modern engines appear to consist of.
Nothing like stripping, and putting back together an old Harley Knuckle-head to relieve a boring Sunday.
I still play ‘Lords of Midnight’ and ‘Avalon’ on a Spectrum emulator, occasionally. Oh, and I also still have fond memories of playing ‘The Hobbit’, especially that time in 1984 (maybe!) where we locked Thorin in the trolls’ cave early on, but still went on to complete the game. Serves the silly bugger right; there’s only so much sitting down and singing about gold that a sane hobbit can put up with.
And yes, I know I’m sad!
Good Man – buy one and that’s another royalty towards the company I own shares in … all helps towards the university fund .. I appreciate it BE
Do I get commission (beer is a widely accepted currency)
I still use my Apple Newton. The cover is broken off and the plastic flap over the place where you plug in the charger is hanging at an angle, but the handwriting recognition system is great. Somebody saw it a while back when I was going through airport security and said “That’s a real dinosaur!” Yeah, okay, fine. (But dinosaurs were powerful!)