Commander X16

My path is recounted in my  intro in the intro thread, so the quick shortcut version ... Timex Sinclair, membrane keyboard, tape storage, 16KB RAM expansion crashing, into the closet, next comes the C64, an Epson Geneva for my Peace Corps teaching in Grenada in the mid 80s, back to US, a C128D where I fried the processor, back to my C64, off to Grad School where my C64, BusyBee PerfectWriter, Big Blue Reader, 1541 and 1581 drives and daisywheel printer were my paper writing setup for two years, then a cheap liquidation two floppy transportable as hard drive systems were becoming the main thing, then relying on office PCs and cheap two generations old PCs until the present.

15 hours ago, BruceMcF said:

my C64, BusyBee PerfectWriter, Big Blue Reader, 1541 and 1581 drives and daisywheel printer were my paper writing setup for two years

For me, it was an Apple //c with an Epson FX-80+.  I typed up a lot of papers on that, and made a lot of money doing so, as well.

 

I started to program as a young child in the early/mid 80's on an Acorn Electron (you may not have picked up on it, but there's a clue to my first favourite game, and most nostalgic).  Eventually got an Amiga 500, and soon after that an Amiga 1200 - loved using AMOS, Octamed, Deluxe Paint, WordPerfect (for course work) and of course hundreds of games and demos, which I used throughout college.  While at university I had moved on to a 486dx66 with DOS and Windows 3.11 (although I still far preferred the Amiga).

The last 20 years I've almost exclusively been using Linux, although I still occasionally use my A1200 and Acorn Electron, both of which have been upgraded to varying degrees since I first got them.

I attended a tiny school in Roxton Texas. "Tiny" as in "I graduated from a class of 16 in 1986." In late 1982, which I was in 8th grade, my school bought three Commodore PETs, a dual floppy drive, a printer, and three tape drives. Our math teacher went back to school to pick up a class so she could start teaching computer programming the next fall. Then she became in demand and left, so we had a table full of computer hardware in the back of our math classroom but no one to teach us anything about it. At that point I would rush through my math so that I could have time to play with the hardware. I was basically the only one who cared anything about it enough to learn how to use it. I was never an expert, as I was completely self taught with the aid of the manuals that came with it all, but it was magical.



Later my dad bought me a Timex Sinclair 1000 which never worked with a tape recorder, so it was just a write only device. I really wanted a C64, so I started saving money and bought one in 1984, I think. It was about $200 at the local KMart. My dad introduced me to COMB, a liquidation company that often sold Commodore equipment. I eventually had a 1541, a MPS-801 (I think that was the model), a Commodore brand daisy wheel printer, a 1520 (I think) plotter. Later when I went to college I bought a C128D and a 1581.



It was enough of a foundation, along with college programming classes, to have a great career as a software engineer. I play with VICE when I want to engage in nostalgia. I bought an FPGA trainer board to try to learn a bit about re-creating a C128. If only there were more hours in the day.