When we got their, my dad's friend introduced me to one of his sons and he brought me to the living room where I saw a keyboard connected to a large TV. It was Commodore VIC20. Back then, computers were so rare and expensive that only the rich could afford one. The computer was loaded with space invaders game but I was more interested on how this machine operate and how it made this images on the TV. That's where my interest in computers begun.
My interest grew even further when one of my dad's friends received several packages from the US containing computers of which he was willing to give one for me experiment on. It was a TRS-80 computer from Radio Shack. My first computer ever. I was so excited that I went to the school library the next day and found tons of information about this machine. I read and tried experimenting with it by creating my first ever program. Nope, it was not printing "hello world!" on the screen. My first program was displaying the sum of two numbers.So there it was, my first program using the Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code or BASIC for short, my first programming language. Since the computer did not come with a storage device, I wrote my programs on a notebook containing useful codes which made my life easier in my math and science subjects. I guess I was a computer geek but I never minded it. I never had too many friends back then so I spend most of my time on the computer from dusk till dawn. To me, it was the start of a new skill which eventually lead me to where I am today... :-)
3 comments:
My first computer was a Texas Instrument--it was simply a keyboard, hooked to the TV, and you could hook up a tape recorder to it, to "store" your programs. I, too, began with BASIC. I got it for my young boys, to help teach them math skills, and reading--but of course back then you had to in-put all the programs yourself (they had a book with the programs for these, but you had to do the work of in-putting them). Soon I branched out learning how to write music on it. Yes, I was a thirty-something "computer nerd" and didn't even know it--I was having WAY TOO much FUN!
Hi! Thanks for comment. I too got a Texas Instrument (TI-90A I think) after my TRS-80 Color Computer. It was also a fun computer and I loved it. :-) I think most of computers during those times were keyboards attached to the TVs... :-) Mine got an expansion module and it also came with program cartridges. Well those were the days before the IBM PCs came. :-)
i sadly finally just 2 years ago threw away my TRS-80 RGB. It still had a working tape drive and 5.25 external floppy.
When I cleaned out the basement I also tossed a couple heath zenith 8088's and some 286's.
I drew the line at anything 486dx and up.....my lovely wife accepted the compromise...:)
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