My first computer was an Adam, and it was of the ColecoVision expansion port variety. From the moment it was announced, I eagerly and agonizingly awaited its release. I begged my parents to let me spend my meager $400.00 worth of savings bonds (I argued that the money wouldn’t exactly pay for college) on real-life personal computer. Fortunately, although sometimes much to their dismay, they relented.
I remember many nights spent writing code until daybreak when I was a kid. I had to learn to type in the dark without making any noise, and I even got busted once when I accidentally hit Print… BANG, BANG, BANG, oops…
That printer may have been loud, but it rocked at a time when teachers gave extra credit for “hand-typed” reports. Never a misspelled word. Math problems? - bring them on, I could code anything the 6th grade teacher could dish out. At the time, I didn’t know anyone else who had a computer - it was like my personal secret weapon.
I remember a feeling of pure ecstasy upon receiving my spanking new 5 1/4" floppy drive after 9 months of suffering with those brutal tapes (for my parents, stuff like computer parts were left to the realm of Christmas gifts). And again when I finally got the CP/M assembler. I even wrote my own menu driven DOS. I too lament the loss of the days when one could do that sort of stuff on their own (that being said, I’m not giving up my Mac and Xcode!).
There really is something to be said for having to learn to squeeze a lot of power out of a small amount of code. Until I got CP/M, I had a mere 25k (25 pages of code!) with which to work. Man, that 40k expansion card sure felt good. Can you say 120k - put that in your sock, Commodore 64! Sorry, just a little time-warp smack-talk…
Even my Dad who had never touched a computer used that Adam for years. After I went to college (and got a Mac ;-), he put it together in the basement and did all of the accounting for his business with Calc. He did his checkbook, cash register, bookkeeping, tax forms, and even had a bowling secretary program. I couldn’t believe the day I went home to visit and saw it there - it was so easy to use that he didn’t even have to ask me anything about it. Well, he did ask if there was anything we could do about those damn tapes. Of course, I told him to go buy some 5 1/4" floppies and copy everything - twice… I think he went through a several floppy drives and tape drives before finally putting it to rest sometime around 1995. 12 years of somewhat faithful service for $400.00 - you just can’t beat that. Actually, I still have it and it works!
-Rob
rob@prophetsofgame.com