What was your first computer?

[kishy]

DE9.

Plug-nazi reporting in.

[TexasFlood]

When I was a kid, my next door neighbor had one of those. All I remember about it was that he had some funky Abominable Snowman game and that the cartridges loaded in on a plastic runway.

I can't remember, what kind of controllers did those take? Did they work with Atari plugs?

I don't think they were Atari compatible.  They weren't great as I recall.  Think mine were like these below although I don't really remember clearly.  When I first got it, I didn't have any joysticks and only games I had used the keyboard.

[Brian8bit]

My first machine was a Commodore 64. I was born in 84 and my brothers and I got a C64 when I was 6. This is my current machine.



I pick up bits and pieces as I go round garage sales, car boot sales and occasionally dip into fleabay. The breadbox works, thought the shift lock key needs reseated and re-wired. I thought I could do it myself, but I don't have the stones to attempt it myself incase I end up shorting something. The PSU works and is rock solid, but I don't like to power it up too often (it's been at least a year since I tested it). The huge keyboard is an original Commodore branded one, however it requires the sound expander module to work and I haven't come across any at a price I was willing to pay. The datassette works as well as of the last time I powered the system up.

Someday I hope to have somewhere I can set up a proper little studio and have all the addons and can make that SID really sing.

[EverythingIBM]

Are you insane? All the best games back then were on Amiga. PC games absolutely SUCKED in comparison. Before the Amiga, all the best games were on Atari. (arguably C64)
Games on PC only improved in early 90's when they got high-colour graphics cards and good sound cards.

No I'm not insane, I'm referring to the 1994-1999 era. Amiga was already DEAD by then.

C64 was *okay*, but nothing that impressive. It was mainly about the music than the games. And playing the last ninja looks exceedingly annoying waiting for everything to load on 1 Mhz.

[hyperlinked]

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Whoa! Is that your collection? What's the name of the tiny joystick about half the size of your palm with the red stick and two red buttons on both sides? I've been trying to find out the name of those sticks for months.

[mr_a500]

No I'm not insane, I'm referring to the 1994-1999 era. Amiga was already DEAD by then.

C64 was *okay*, but nothing that impressive. It was mainly about the music than the games. And playing the last ninja looks exceedingly annoying waiting for everything to load on 1 Mhz.

Why were you referring to the 1994-1999 era? Otterclock was talking about the Apple IIc and you said "All the good games back then were on DOS". The Apple IIc was out from 1984-1988. So, "back then" was 1984-1988 and that's the era we were talking about.

Maybe you are insane.

[megarat]

Anyone play around with the Cambridge Z88?



Another brainchild of Clive Sinclair ... it's relatively innovative, with lots of amazing functionality packed into such a small package for the time, got a couple dozen hours of life from only a few AA cells.  The bizarro rubber keyboard was both a boon (quiet, interesting action, waterproof) and a curse (wears down over time, key response on large keys (shift, space) was lacking).  I played around with one of these for a while and it was really fun, but nothing I could use for practical work, particularly because file-transfer was cumbersome, and the keyboard and I just didn't get along.

Sorry if I'm turning this into another retrocomputing thread ...

[mr_a500]

Anyone play around with the Cambridge Z88?

ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/company-pics/SinclairResearchLtd/SirCliveSinclair-HoldingTheZ88.jpg

Another brainchild of Clive Sinclair ... it's relatively innovative, with lots of amazing functionality packed into such a small package for the time, got a couple dozen hours of life from only a few AA cells.  The bizarro rubber keyboard was both a boon (quiet, interesting action, waterproof) and a curse (wears down over time, key response on large keys (shift, space) was lacking).  I played around with one of these for a while and it was really fun, but nothing I could use for practical work, particularly because file-transfer was cumbersome, and the keyboard and I just didn't get along.

Sorry if I'm turning this into another retrocomputing thread ...

I thought it already was a retrocomputing thread.

I liked the look of the Z88 and always wondered how good the keyboard was. I suspected it was nice and quiet, but crap to type on - and it's good to hear from somebody who actually tried it and find out I was right.

I just got a 1983 TRS-80 Model 100, which is similar, but has a very nice keyboard (with double-shot keycaps). File transfers are no problem because I've got a SD card reader for it.

[EverythingDell]

My mom n dad gave me a old Inspiron 1100 for my birthday last yr. Its a littl slow but it still totelly r0xx0rs becuz its a Dell dude!

b4 I wus using there Dimension 4600. Such a tight box its so fast and it plays counter strike but I keep gettin killed by camper ***s. Its even faster after i got my mom n dad to get more ram for it n i put it in myself!

[kishy]

What the hell just happened here?

Welcome...to...geekhack...

[didjamatic]

I thought it already was a retrocomputing thread.

I liked the look of the Z88 and always wondered how good the keyboard was. I suspected it was nice and quiet, but crap to type on - and it's good to hear from somebody who actually tried it and find out I was right.

I just got a 1983 TRS-80 Model 100, which is similar, but has a very nice keyboard (with double-shot keycaps). File transfers are no problem because I've got a SD card reader for it.

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Hey, I have one of those as well.  Since it's solid state, no moving parts and runs on AA batteries, those should work forever.  Long after many other vintage systems will have bitten the dust

[EverythingIBM]

My mom n dad gave me a old Inspiron 1100 for my birthday last yr. Its a littl slow but it still totelly r0xx0rs becuz its a Dell dude!

b4 I wus using there Dimension 4600. Such a tight box its so fast and it plays counter strike but I keep gettin killed by camper ***s. Its even faster after i got my mom n dad to get more ram for it n i put it in myself!

http://www.pcworld.com/article/129857-2/the_10_worst_pcs_of_all_time.html

Consumers who purchased this machine entered a new dimension all right, the altered dimension of Dell Hell. The Dimension 4600 was only a middling machine when new, but after about a year--or shortly after the standard warranty expired--power supplies in some machines began to fail. Worse, Dell's customer support misdiagnosed some of these problems as motherboard failures.

Dell's support forums filled up with complaints from similarly powerless users, but the company refused to admit to defects with the power supply. (Dell politely declined to comment for this article.) The Dimension 4600's problems were yet one more reason why the "Dude, You've Got a Dell" tagline became a joke--though not a particularly amusing one for some customers.

Is that so....

[megarat]

I just got a 1983 TRS-80 Model 100, which is similar, but has a very nice keyboard (with double-shot keycaps). File transfers are no problem because I've got a SD card reader for it.

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Likewise, I'm the original owner of a Model 100, which I received for my 16th(/17th/thereabouts) birthday back when RS was blowing out the 100 to make room for the new (and not much different) 102.  I regard this as one of the coolest technogizmos ever made, but honestly I just can't get myself to do much with it anymore.  It's been collecting dust and I've been considering letting it go.  (The HP 48sx beats it for handheld programming and data collection, and the Alphasmart Neo crushes it like a bug for text processing.  Especially w/r/t battery life.)

Hey, I have one of those as well.  Since it's solid state, no moving parts and runs on AA batteries, those should work forever.  Long after many other vintage systems will have bitten the dust

Almost.  There is gumdrop-sized a capacitor that acts as the memory-backup battery which frequently goes bad after 10-20 years, but you can get a replacement from Club 100 for cheap and it's trivial to de/re-soldering.

EDIT:  Also, make sure you keep those AAs out of them (and the memory persistence switch off) during storage.  I've heard of more M10Xes getting toasted by leaking alkalines than anything else.

[mr_a500]

Likewise, I'm the original owner of a Model 100, which I received for my 16th(/17th/thereabouts) birthday back when RS was blowing out the 100 to make room for the new (and not much different) 102.  I regard this as one of the coolest technogizmos ever made, but honestly I just can't get myself to do much with it anymore.  It's been collecting dust and I've been considering letting it go.

Yes, it can be tricky finding useful purposes for vintage computers, but... this post was completely typed using the 1983 TRS-80 in that picture. Neat, eh? (pointless, but neat)

[megarat]

Yes, it can be tricky finding useful purposes for vintage computers, but... this post was completely typed using the 1983 TRS-80 in that picture. Neat, eh? (pointless, but neat)

Agreed.

Just for kicks, I made an acoustic Model 100 modem cable, connecting from the DIN modem jack to a 1/8" phono plug.  This way I can plug the M100 into a mobile phone and get a modem connection from nearly anywhere.  I tested it once for the gee-whiz factor -- dialed into my ISP and browsed the web via Lynx from the middle of nowhere ... totally cool! -- but haven't used it that way since.  It was a fun diversion, though.

[mr_a500]

Agreed.

Just for kicks, I made an acoustic Model 100 modem cable, connecting from the DIN modem jack to a 1/8" phono plug.  This way I can plug the M100 into a mobile phone and get a modem connection from nearly anywhere.  I tested it once for the gee-whiz factor -- dialed into my ISP and browsed the web via Lynx in the middle of nowhere ... totally cool! -- but again, haven't used it that way since.  It was a fun diversion, though.

That sounds awesome! Nice work. I love hearing about people doing things with 80's computers that were unimaginable back when they were created. Example: I took all my TRS-80 CoCo 2 programs, which were on dying cassette tape, sampled them on my Amiga 500, converted them to MP3 and put them in a playlist on my iPod ("album art" is a screenshot of the program). Now, I've got every program I ever wrote for that computer safely stored and easily accessed on my iPod - without screwing around with tape positioning. (Anybody out there old enough to have saved programs on cassette tape? It wasn't fun, let me tell you.)

By the way, I like your avatar. Ballblazer (a.k.a. Ballblaster) is one of my favourite 8-bit games. I still play it occasionally on my 800XL - loaded from SD using the SDrive Nuxx.

[megarat]

Example: I took all my TRS-80 CoCo 2 programs, which were on dying cassette tape, sampled them on my Amiga 500, converted them to MP3 and put them in a playlist on my iPod ("album art" is a screenshot of the program). Now, I've got every program I ever wrote for that computer safely stored and easily accessed on my iPod - without screwing around with tape positioning. (Anybody out there old enough to have saved programs on cassette tape? It wasn't fun, let me tell you.)

I've heard of people doing this with M100 software (on the Club100 mailing list), but using CD audio.  Each different program would be on a different audio track.  Just hook the M100 up to a Discman or equivalent using the cassette/audio cable, select the track of the program you wanted to load, tell the computer to "CLOAD" and press PLAY on the Discman.  Then sit back and have a beer while it loads.

(Of course, this predated the SD- (and other-) based storage methods available today, but at the time it was super-genius.)

(And I agree, using audio cassettes as a storage medium was an exercise in masochism.)

By the way, I like your avatar. Ballblazer (a.k.a. Ballblaster) is one of my favourite 8-bit games. I still play it occasionally on my 800XL - loaded from SD using the SDrive Nuxx.

Cool, thanks.  As far as I know, you're the only person who has made the connection.  I have an 800XL as well, as a dedicated game machine, and Ballblazer is probably among my top-10 8-bit games.  (Certainly among my top-10 competitive two-player 8-bit games.)  My preferred method of delivering software is the AtariMax flash carts, but I haven't heard of SDrive Nuxx.  I'll have to investigate.

EDIT:  Just looked up SDrive Nuxx ... man, that looks terrific, especially for disk-based games.  (I'm still a sucker for "Imperium Galactum".)  It's a bummer they're out of production or else I'd be ordering one today.

[megarat]

I thought it already was a retrocomputing thread.

Well, this thread is technically themed "what is your first computer?", not "isn't this vintage computer awesome?", and I think there's at least one other general retrocomputing thread here on GH.  (To explain my logic.)

I liked the look of the Z88 and always wondered how good the keyboard was. I suspected it was nice and quiet, but crap to type on - and it's good to hear from somebody who actually tried it and find out I was right.

To elaborate, I wouldn't say it was "crap to type on".  I've typed on much, much worse.  The Z88 is "interesting" in a way that isn't necessarily positive (and difficult to get used to, at least in my case), and like I said, you need to hit the large keys in the right place, or else you won't hit the key actuator.



For anyone who's interested:  the Z88 keyboard is the ultimate "rubber dome" keyboard.  A "key" is itself an extruded (square-shaped) rubber dome, with a stem within that is aligned to the key actuator.  When you press the key, the molded rubber buckles, and the stem presses the actuator.  So the outer layer of the keyboard is a solid sheet of rubber, pimpled with extruded, deformable rubber "keys".  (Now imagine the Shift keys, Enter key, or worse the space bar, working this way.  You can't trigger the actuator from just anywhere on that key.  You need to hit it in the sweet spot, ideally right over the stem.  Also imagine the rubber breaking down over time.)

This "rubber sheet design" makes the keyboard quite water-resistant, but it also collects dust like nothing else.  The question remains:  does this rubber keyboard also use rubber dome switches?  I don't know for certain, but probably.

Well, okay ... upon reminiscence, it is crap to type on.

[JBert]

I took all my TRS-80 CoCo 2 programs, which were on dying cassette tape, sampled them on my Amiga 500, converted them to MP3 and put them in a playlist on my iPod ("album art" is a screenshot of the program).

What do they sound like? :-)

[mr_a500]

What do they sound like? :-)

They sound like robotic rats in a blender.

None of these program MP3s is not going to make the music charts.... but I hear somebody's doing a remix album that's going to kick ass.

[Harry_Y]

Sinclair ZX81 followed by a Commodore Vic20.

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That was my first one as well

[bitflipper]

...I took all my TRS-80 CoCo 2 programs, which were on dying cassette tape, sampled them on my Amiga 500, converted them to MP3 and put them in a playlist on my iPod ("album art" is a screenshot of the program). Now, I've got every program I ever wrote for that computer safely stored and easily accessed on my iPod - without screwing around with tape positioning. (Anybody out there old enough to have saved programs on cassette tape? It wasn't fun, let me tell you.)

Yeah, I'm old enough. Was my first computer, still have the thing and the tape deck. I was thinking of hooking it up to a monitor or tv, loading each program from the cassette and paging through it snapping digital photos. Then I could use OCR or at worst, just key them from the snapshots.

I don't even remember the commands, skipf & loadf ring a bell.

So how do you take them from mp3 to source code again? Re-record them back to analog cassette?