Your first experiences of computers??

[railsquid]

ZX 81....

with  detachable  RAM..  which  did..  halfway  through  any operation..

abs loved writing  simple programs  for it!!

yer  don't get the  'GO  SUB'  routine on  Windows 7...

(well  I don't)

Get yourself an emulator: http://www.zx81.nl/

We suffered no RAM pack wobble with one of these: http://www.zx81.de/memotech/_frame_e.htm 

[chub1]

Was talked into getting a BBC B when the kids were young, many moons ago .
My god it was slow, stick a tape in ok fine, starts loading yup fine, gets halfway, yup fine THEN wallop it all crashes and its start again
Kids enjoyed it WHEN it all went as it should

[austinbob]

Was talked into getting a BBC B when the kids were young, many moons ago .
My god it was slow, stick a tape in ok fine, starts loading yup fine, gets halfway, yup fine THEN wallop it all crashes and its start again
Kids enjoyed it WHEN it all went as it should

If you ever used a Sinclair  QL with a Microdrive, you'd be lucky if you got to load a program once before the Microdrive tape turned itself into a knotted work of art (or brown curly wart depending on your perspective!!)

[joe cassidy]

My first experience of computers was at Exeter university, 1978-1981, where I studied chemistry.

I opted for a FORTRAN programming course, where we filled in some forms and if we lucky were given a packet of punched cards as a reward but we never saw the computer.

Then I participated in a short research project where I had to enter data into a CBM Commodore that calculated curves to fit the data by a process of iteration (?).

Data was stored on a music cassette and there was a printer that printed on till rolls (?) a couple of inches wide that made a hell of a noise.

I still had to plot the curves by hand.

One of the "campus characters" while I was there was an Australian hippy computer science lecturer called Simon (?) who used to go bare foot in all weathers.

Happy days !


Joe

[MikeDunn]

If you ever used a Sinclair  QL with a Microdrive, you'd be lucky if you got to load a program once before the Microdrive tape turned itself into a knotted work of art (or brown curly wart depending on your perspective!!)

Can't comment on the QL & Microdrive, but the Spectrum I had with one was fine - never lost a tape ...

[Michael Shillabeer]

A Commodore Pet at senior school that was funded by collecting/selling waste paper - this was stored in an old railway van body

By 6th Form the school had a Research Machines 380Z which I did O' Level Computer Studies on.

For my 18th Birthday (well it arrived several months after...) a 16K Sinclair Spectrum and Rodney Zac's Z80 book. I wrote a space invaders using self modifying machine code. Despite having no musical talent my Spectrum + sound card and I provided special effects for my friend's band which he called Spectrum!!

During my first two years at Thames Poly doing Computer and Communication Systems I used a typewriter to produce my essays on!

My third year was spent in industry programming bespoke automatic test equipment in a language called Mediator. Towards the end of that year first gen Apple Macs appeared for writing reports on. I haven't used an Apple product since! lol

In my final year I splashed out on a Sinclair QL - a dual processor machine! I used it for my final year project and built an I/O card for it. The QL was also used for my final year report - it was ok if you saved every minute before it crashed! Early software purchase was a recovery program for the micro-drives!

I then spent 7 years programming various types automatic test equipment for various military projects.

Career-wise I then hit the jackpot and moved to a company nobody had heard of - Nokia! I spent 13 happy years working on loads of different phones. Got pushed into management which I sucked at - I wouldn't tow the line and challenged too many things!

I'm now a software contractor and have been moving to and fro between General Dynamics and GE Aviation for the last 5 years working on various PC and embedded systems.

Best regards
Mchael

[Zogbert Splod]

Ah!  Just remembered another wild stunt that was often carried out with the ZX80/81 machines...  If you added the memory extension card, they used to overheat and just stop working till they cooled down again.  The common fix was to lay a carton of milk on top of the stoopid thing as a heat sink.
Did we REALLY go through all that stuff back then?  Oh yeah - and loved every minute of it too.....

[Paddy]

Started with a Sinclair ZX81 that I bought from Curry's for £49.95.  This started me off and I have worked in the software industry all my professional life.  What a great investment that proved to be.

Thank you Uncle Clive - I owe you a great deal.

Paddy

[railsquid]

Started with a Sinclair ZX81 that I bought from Curry's for £49.95.  This started me off and I have worked in the software industry all my professional life.  What a great investment that proved to be.

Thank you Uncle Clive - I owe you a great deal.

Ditto. I never intended to go into IT (master in a humanities subject, nary a technical qualification to my name) but while working as a translator in an internet-orientated startup I found myself wheedling access to various systems to do stuff the Professional IT People felt was below their pay grade. Anyway the user/payment/website management system I ended up writing is still in use some 15 years after I first started it.

[EtchedPixels]

Commodore PET 2001 and 4032 at school along with a TRS80 model 1. PET had a mean game of space invaders with sound if you built the right add on board.

First computer that was actually "mine" was a ZX81, then a spectrum. That got me into the games industry for a while working for Adventure International/AdventureSoft on stuff from German Gremlins to Elvira. Then I escaped back to sanity.

I still fiddle with old boxes. I've been soldering up 8bit IDE controllers for my Amstrad 1640, as well as getting networking working on it. That and writing a tiny Unix clone for 8bit machines. There's something nice about running the genuine Bourne shell on a Spectrum 128, or a Dragon 32 with a memory expansion cartridge, although Microdrives really really suck for running Unix .

Once life is a bit more back to normal I'll finally have time to finish debugging it on my PCW8256 next, that and finish debugging the Scott Adams game player for the Tandy MC10 / Matra Alice....

Alan

[railsquid]

Commodore PET 2001 and 4032 at school along with a TRS80 model 1. PET had a mean game of space invaders with sound if you built the right add on board.

First computer that was actually "mine" was a ZX81, then a spectrum. That got me into the games industry for a while working for Adventure International/AdventureSoft on stuff from German Gremlins to Elvira. Then I escaped back to sanity.

I still fiddle with old boxes. I've been soldering up 8bit IDE controllers for my Amstrad 1640, as well as getting networking working on it. That and writing a tiny Unix clone for 8bit machines. There's something nice about running the genuine Bourne shell on a Spectrum 128, or a Dragon 32 with a memory expansion cartridge, although Microdrives really really suck for running Unix .

Once life is a bit more back to normal I'll finally have time to finish debugging it on my PCW8256 next, that and finish debugging the Scott Adams game player for the Tandy MC10 / Matra Alice....

First time I've heard someone describe Linux kernel development as sanity...

[EtchedPixels]

First time I've heard someone describe Linux kernel development as sanity...

It's all relative.

The games industry mostly consisted of a cross between the people who didn't quite make it in the music industry as they paused before selling their grandmother and Arthur Daley . There were some nice folks.. but they were in short supply.

From what I've seen much of the industry has not vastly improved, just they now try and pick off clueless masters students with maths/computing qualifications as they can be duped into working stupid hours for pennies and promises for a long time before they realise they could get a real job instead.

Alan

[Komata]

Aside from HAL in Arthur C. Clark's 2001 a Space Odyssey, which highlighted all the potential for 'wrong' that a'self-thinking' computer could do and gave us lots to think about, my first exposure to computers was with my first job at the head office of a  large, international,  insurance company, where the word 'computer' was used in awe and reverence.  The company had a large IBM mainframe. which lurked in a dust-free room in the centre of the building and was attended-to by men in white coats (seriously)!!! For those of us who were deemed to be of the 'lesser orders' there was absolutely and definitely NO admission to this hallowed sanctum and if any of the 'junior' staff were curious-enough to want to enquire more, then gaining 'permission to inspect' had to run the gauntlet of the company's chain of command, with the CEO having the final say. AFAIK, no-one was ever able to access 'THE COMPUTER' by such means; we largely gave up-it was simply tooo difficult.

The ironic thing of course, is that the mainframe probably had less capability than a modern calculator, although, not being part of the 'inner circle' we did not of course know such things.

It was all a rather long time ago; thanks for posing the question..  

[deibid]

Commodore PET 2001 and 4032 at school along with a TRS80 model 1. PET had a mean game of space invaders with sound if you built the right add on board.

First computer that was actually "mine" was a ZX81, then a spectrum. That got me into the games industry for a while working for Adventure International/AdventureSoft on stuff from German Gremlins to Elvira. Then I escaped back to sanity.

I still fiddle with old boxes. I've been soldering up 8bit IDE controllers for my Amstrad 1640, as well as getting networking working on it. That and writing a tiny Unix clone for 8bit machines. There's something nice about running the genuine Bourne shell on a Spectrum 128, or a Dragon 32 with a memory expansion cartridge, although Microdrives really really suck for running Unix .

Once life is a bit more back to normal I'll finally have time to finish debugging it on my PCW8256 next, that and finish debugging the Scott Adams game player for the Tandy MC10 / Matra Alice....

Alan

Respect mate! you have my full respect! When computing was fun... I started with a Spectrum 16k back in 1984... they were late to arrive to Spain and I´m kindda ..."young". 30 years after I´m in the business after a Spectrum + and +3, an Amiga 500, a 386, a 486 y built from parts and from then... several windows machines that are NOT FUN ar all.

[Zogbert Splod]

Just stumbled across a set of six TV programmes in the BBC archives, "Back to BASIC".  For anyone watching this thread it's probably worth checking out.   I got it through the BBC app on my tablet, so sorry, no link. Should be easy enough to find though.....