You may have seen the recent CNN story about many people’s first computer being a Commodore 64 and how many still hold a fond memory of that experience:
Like a first love or a first car, a first computer can hold a special place in people’s hearts. For millions of kids who grew up in the 1980s, that first computer was the Commodore 64. Twenty-five years later, that first brush with computer addiction is as strong as ever. Commodore 64 still loved after all these years, CNN
I myself didn’t travel the Commodore route. My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81 which I purchased in 1982 in England…where I was stationed as a member of the USAF. It was a slow and clumsy computer to type on as the keyboard was a “touch sensitive membrane.” But I learned my first principles of programming using the included basic language.
Then around 1984, after returning back to the U.S., I purchased an Atari 1200XL, a 300 baud modem and a 5.25 floppy disk drive. I remember logging on to some of the local BBS’s and being able to read text file as they were downloading…that’s how slow the modem was. The 1200XL wasn’t a good model for Atari but it served me well.
Somewhere around 1987 or 1988 I moved up to a “real” computer with the Atari 1040ST. It was based on the Motorola 68000 16/32-bit microprocessor running at 8 MHz. It had a whopping 1 MB of RAM and was very advanced for it’s time especially with it’s audio capabilities which included a build in MIDI interface. It used the TOS operating system with GEM desktop very similar to the Windows environment of that day.
From there I moved to my first Windows/Intel PC and finally to Apple Mac’s.
Yes, I do still have fond memories of my first computers…but then that’s the geek in me. :-)