A Company of Misfits

[Nicky]

The Commodore 64 was a legend! I had one with a 'data set' which essentially meant you put tapes in it instead of discs, and I remember you had to tune it to get it to work properly. It had a little hole to put a screw driver in. There was an art too it. I had no idea why it needed to be done but it worked. Later we got a floppy disc drive. I had so many awsome games - hyper olympics, blue max 2000, summer games, californian games, caveman olympics, bubble bobble, double dragon, dune buggy...we had a dot matrix printer and continuous feed paper. I used to print out banners and it would take half a day.

[Constance]

My first computer was a Commodore Amiga 1000. It was a great little machine.

[Nicky]

Yep, the Amigas were good. I remember the games but that's about it.

[Jaimey]

I used to play Double Dragon on my Tandy.  I wasn't very good at it though.    I was much better at Where in the World Is Carmen San Diego? 

Imagine my surprise when at my last job when they had us using a DOS program..."what do you mean you can only use the arrow keys?"

[Shana A]

The Commodore 64 was a legend!

I might be mixing up model numbers, it was the portable one that they made...

Z

[Lisbeth]

The Commodore 64 was a legend! I had one with a 'data set' which essentially meant you put tapes in it instead of discs, and I remember you had to tune it to get it to work properly. It had a little hole to put a screw driver in. There was an art too it. I had no idea why it needed to be done but it worked.

The VIC 20 used the same peripherals as the 64. You had to adjust it because the digital information was recorded as an analog signal.

[Pica Pica]

You young bastard

i think it's actually more reflective of the slow coming of the internet revolution to the shores of blighty and my low status on the social/technological ladder.

[KYLYKaHYT]

I was a late bloomer too, as I didn't get on line until 1998 either. That's when I bought my first real computer: a brand-spanking-new Bondi Blue G3 iMac.



At the time my singular motivation for getting on line was a short picture caption I read in article about Usenet in an old (1994 I believe) issue of Wired magazine I was browsing through one day. The caption read simply "The transgender community has found a home on the Internet". I'd never seen the word "transgender" before, but I knew what it meant. 

Prior to that my only computers were a variety of old Macs (mostly LC "pizza boxes") that I cobbled together out of parts from the tech department's garbage cans at the school I worked at. They were fun and I learned a few things with them, but I didn't even own a modem, so I never connected any of them to the 'net.

[Jaimey]

I didn't have internet until I went to college in 2000.

[tekla]

Yeah, memories.  The Trash 80 (Tandy from Radio Shack, one of the few you could buy then) had cassette drives.  How quaint.

And the web has been around longer then the term internet has been in use.  I used one of the first public ones, The 'WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link) which was started by hippies in SF.

[Pica Pica]

Hippies will do stuff like that. Always starting something  Peace, Love, and getting connected 

never finish anything though

[imaz]

I was a late bloomer too, as I didn't get on line until 1998 either. That's when I bought my first real computer: a brand-spanking-new Bondi Blue G3 iMac.

Wow! that was mine too, so cool at the time

[KYLYKaHYT]

Wow! that was mine too, so cool at the time

I still have mine... along with its matching Flintstones' peripherals (well, the ones that have survived, anyhow). It now resides in my shop and is so caked with dust and paint overspray that its hard to even tell what color it originally was. 

[Kinkly]

ahhhh the memories my first computer was a comadore 64 it would take 1/2 hour to load some games off the tape drive we eventualy got a disk drive 360K 5 1/4 inch disc (if i remember rightly)
I wrote a number of programs and little games way back then
joystick control was way easier then on the windows systems we live with today then again there was only 8 colours
and the 64 in the name refered to how much Ram the computer had 64k LoL we have come a long way

[Constance]

64K, we have come a long way indeed.

One of the first pagers I ever carried had 1 M (that 1024K) memory. It was considerably smaller than the first IBM PC I used, which had 640K of memory.

Ah, to be an info-tech old fart!

[Jaimey]

64K, we have come a long way indeed.

One of the first pagers I ever carried had 1 M (that 1024K) memory. It was considerably smaller than the first IBM PC I used, which had 640K of memory.

Some much younger kids were making fun of my old flash drive because it only had 256 meg.  Made me feel old...

[Simone Louise]

I took my first programming course in the summer of 1960. I programmed on the IBM 7080 ("The IBM 7080 was a transistorized variable word length BCD computer in the IBM 700/7000 series commercial architecture line, introduced in August 1961, that provided an upgrade path from the vacuum tube IBM 705 computer."--from Wikipedia). I designed the DE 525 for Olivetti. My first personal computer was the KIM-1 ("The KIM-1, short for Keyboard Input Monitor, was a small 6502-based microcomputer kit developed and produced by MOS Technology, Inc. and launched in 1975. It was very successful in terms of that period, due to its low price (following from the inexpensive 6502) and easy-access expandability."--from Wikipedia); it is on display here in my basement office. My partner and I went into business doing technical writing/graphic design on a Mac Plus and LaserWriter Plus in February, 1987. My G3 iMac is the Tangerine Machine, sitting unused on a desk down here. My FreshRoast Plus Coffee Bean Roaster is also down here. None of these machines have male or female bodies or identities, so far as I know.

S

[Eva Marie]

64K, we have come a long way indeed.

One of the first pagers I ever carried had 1 M (that 1024K) memory. It was considerably smaller than the first IBM PC I used, which had 640K of memory.

Ah, to be an info-tech old fart!

I had one of the original ibm pcs. It sported 128kb of memory LOL..... The tech came out and installed another 128kb of memory, and a 2nd floppy drive. The upgrade consisted of dozens of 16kb dram chips that he had to press into the motherboard one by one. They came in a long tube.

It was cool because I could leave the dos disk in drive A, and my word processing disk (wordstar) in drive B. Then one day I scrounged up a 10mb hard disk, and the fun really began.

Our boss had a 4mb "above board" card in his pc. It took something called an "expanded memory manager" to use it. We all sat around trying to decide who would EVER need that much memory   

[KYLYKaHYT]

My G3 iMac is the Tangerine Machine, sitting unused on a desk down here. My FreshRoast Plus Coffee Bean Roaster is also down here. None of these machines have male or female bodies or identities, so far as I know.

"Tangerine Machine" is definitely an androgyne name.

"FreshRoast Plus Coffee Bean Roaster," however, sounds like some kind of deity. 

[Nicky]

...and at the heart of the forest is a shrine to the great Fresh Roast Coffee Bean Roaster. It is a place of quiet contemplation and a place to receive an excellent cup of coffee, but if you are in a hurry and of common disposition you can also pop next door to the quickymart where the owner, Tangerine Machine, crafts a mean brew at a fraction of the price...