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kurt_SPAMLESS@hotmail.com (Overlord) wrote in message news:<4071623a.194337343@news.central.cox.net>...
> sometime in the 80's
> Vic-20
> 5k ram
> No HD
> No Floppy
> cassette tape backup
> God only knows what video outputting to TV
> "roll yer own" programs in a primitive form of Basic
> Upgraded to 11k of RAM to alleviate my own feeping creaturism
>
Well, if it's jumped away from IBM compatibles, then
I've had computers for a quarter century, and right about
now marks the anniversary of bringing home the first computer.
A MOS Technology KIM-1.
1K of memory. Calculator-style keyboard and readout. Cassette interface.
6502 CPU running at slightly under 1MHz.
And yes, you could get "junk" computers back then. While it sold
for hundreds of dollars at the time, I got it for free. There
had been a seminar on microprocessors at a friend's workplace,
and a KIM-1 had been part of the package. A co-worker of his
didn't want the thing, so I got it.
My second computer came in 1981, an OSI Superboard II. Again
a 1MHz 6502, but with a modification it could run at 2MHz, which
gave it a rather snappy response. 4K of memory built in, but
sockets for another 4K and when I bought it I bought the extra 4K.
Microsoft BASIC in ROM. Again a cassette interface, though
OSI did make a disk drive controller if you were willing to pay
the high price. The video interface had 32 characters across,
and something like 16 lines, though the "II" was advanced over
the original model and had hardware that allowed for 80 columns
by I forget what if you were willing to write the software
and load it each time you turned on the computer. I paid something
like $500 for it, and that was downright cheap here in Canada.
My first printer, a crummy dot-matrix with no lowercase, was
$500 in the fall of 1982.
I didn't get a floppy drive until 1984. ONe floppy and a controller
cost $500. A box of ten name brand floppies were fifty dollars.
I paid something like $80 for 64K of RAM that year.
I didn't get a hard drive until December of 1993. And that was
the year that I got a computer that most people would recognize,
a worn out Mac Plus that was about to be tossed out.
I threw together some scrap parts to make an IBM compatible
about 1992, but I never used it as a main computer, and other
than trying it, never really used it.
I never used an IBM compatible until mid-2001.
I've never run Windows, though I did have DOS for the 1992 computer.
Michael