newly digital
Our first computer was the Apple ][+ which my dad bought in large part because the guy who started the company attended his zendo. Particular pleasures included: Beagle Bros software, Ultima ][, text adventures, Brickout, 20 GOTO 10, PR # 6, Aztec, Wizardry, Wilderness Adventure, Ctrl-G, Castle Wolfenstein. There were many more, some of which I've relived lately with emulation software.
Our next computer was the Mac, which was upgraded to a Mac 512k and then a Mac Plus. That thing, in its travel case, survived a fire which destroyed our Volkswagen van on the shoulder of the New Jersey Turnpike -- just south of exit 8A if memory serves. I don't think anything else was salvageable. I was... 11? -- my most affecting loss was the Gordon Korman and Douglas Adams books. My bookbag full of schoolwork was also lost, but I don't remember having any trouble in school about it. I wonder why.
Then we got a Mac SE/30. Somewhere in there I got a TI99/4A to mess around with. Finally I got my own first computer, a Mac IIsi.
My high school had an internet connection so I guess I've been online since 1992. The big "wow" came for me when I discovered the song lyrics FTP server. I knew in that moment that this thing was big.
All I've got going on now is this silly weblog, but back in the day I was serving up an online version of Kyosaku from my IIsi in my dorm room. I didn't have a domain name or a static IP but I was listed in Yahoo nonetheless, so whenever my server crashed I'd have to stay up until 2-3am watching the network to grab the dynamic IP I needed.
Comments
1975 was the year I first used a "computer". It took up a small room in Syosset High School, and due to the fans was noisy as hell. I'm guessing it was a PDP-11. You had to stand in line for twenty minutes to use it. Then you got to sit down on a metal folding chair and enter your code on a huge ibm-typewriter-like keyboard, and then go into another room where a teletype machine spat 'output', which was almost always unintelligible because you made typing errors. Also there was an obnoxious kid hanging around the teletype machine in a Led Zeppelin t-shirt that you usually had to punch in the face. But that's another story.
The first computers I had extreme lust for were the Tandy 100 and the Lisa (both 1983) but even the Tandy was out of my price range at the time. (I still lust for that Tandy.)
The first PC I actually owned was a color Mac II with a 40mb hard drive and a 2400bd modem. Stylin!
Posted by: xowie | June 11, 2003 12:09 PM
My first memory of ever interacting with a computer is with a SE/30 that my dad would bring home from work on the weekends. The program was a simple dot-to-dot emulator that rewarded completion with a little song. It was my first taste of computer interactivity.
Posted by: Forrest Oliphant | June 13, 2003 8:00 AM