First computers : Stranger Fruit

Who am I?

John M. Lynch is an Honors Faculty Fellow at Barrett the Honors College at Arizona State University. He's also affiliated with ASU's Center for Biology & Society. When he's not an historian of anti-evolutionism, he's an evolutionary morphologist. Much to his surprise, in 2007 he was named the Arizona Professor of the Year. No doubt his students were surprised as well.

Search

Social Networking

Currently Reading

Always Reading

Non-Sbs I have met

hpb etc. Rob Skipper
The Intersection Chris Mooney
Lippardblog Jim Lippard
Ragesoss Sage Ross
Systematics & Biogeography Malte Ebach & David Williams
Time to Eat the Dogs Michael Robinson
Unscrewing the Inscrutable Brent Rasmussen
Warning! PhD in Progress Jessica Joganic

Fighting the Good Fight

Panda's Thumb The source for information on evolutionary biology and anti-evolutionism.
Sunbeams from Cucumbers Steve Reuland.
De Rerum Natura Reed Cartwright.
Austringer Wes Elsberry.
Astroblog Ian Musgrave.
Thoughts in a Haystack John Pieret edits the Talk Origins Quote Mine project.
Playing Chess with Pigeons Troy Britain is a talk.origins regular.

Other Stuff

featured in openlab 2007
View My Openlab Entry

View My Openlab Entry

« As promised | Main | Good news from Ohio »

First computers

Category: Bits and Pieces
Posted on: February 13, 2006 1:59 PM, by John Lynch

Over at Slashdot, there is a story discussing readers' first computers. The first computer I owned was a ZX-81 with an 8k ROM, 1k RAM and a Z80A cpu (more specs here). I learned to program in BASIC and assembly on it and stored programs on audio tape. That was 1982. In 1984, I got a Commodore 64 - a whooping 64k of memory, great graphics (sprites, anyone?) and sound. I think it was 1990 before I bought a computer that ran Windows. My next machine wont.

TrackBacks

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://scienceblogs.com/mt/pings/1086

Comments

My first was ZX-Spectrum, the very next model from Sinclair. I skipped Commodore 64 (my girfriend at the time had it). Next - I don't remember, but something clunky with DOS.

There is always a PC and Mac in this house, serving different purposes for different masters.

Posted by: coturnix | February 13, 2006 2:10 PM

TI-99 here. Yes, basic and sprites. Then an IBM with one floppy and no hard drive. Graduate students can't afford to buy too much at one time. For a long time I considered Macs toys, but changed over at about the time Windows was introduced. There are only Macs at home, but eventually there will be one with an Intel chip.

Posted by: Mark Paris | February 13, 2006 2:36 PM

Oh dog. I Googled the TI-99 and found a site. People are still using them, and possibly emulating them on Windows computers. Someone please help them.

Posted by: Mark Paris | February 13, 2006 2:49 PM

I also had a TI-99. Getting the extended BASIC cartridge (with sprites) greatly improved the programming experience. I only had the tape recorder, though. No printer, no productivity. The speech synthesizer was fun, as were the games (even though the joystick sucked).

A 16-bit computer in an 8-bit world.

Posted by: Mr. Upright | February 13, 2006 3:27 PM

I learned BASIC in the mid-seventies before I had any access to a computer. I would type up short programs on a typewriter at home, and imagine how they would work. A couple years later I got access to a Honeywell GCOS system that I could use from a lineprinting terminal at school, which I did as much as I possibly could. I regularly skipped PE or snuck out of other classes to go use the terminal, which was accessible by those of us in the gifted program. I joined a Honeywell-sponsored Explorers Post, which gave me access to my very own Multics account that I could use at the Tuesday night meetings, then bought a junky gigantic CDC713 CRT terminal and a 300-baud acoustic coupler so I could use the Multics mainframe from home, all weekend and every weekday after 4:30 p.m. until 8 or 9 a.m. each weekday morning. I later upgraded to a Wyse terminal and a faster modem (1200 bps, then 2400 bps). When I finally bought a computer it was a Kaypro 4 running CP/M with a 9600 bps modem I still have--my primary interest was in using it as a terminal to access Multics (where I learned to program in PL/I) and downloading text files. This was a large suitcase "portable" computer with two 5.25" floppies, no hard drive, and 64K of memory. After that I switched to and stuck with Macintosh (with a bunch of OpenBSD servers on the side), though work makes me use Windows.

Posted by: Jim Lippard | February 13, 2006 5:07 PM

My first thing was a CPM beast called, if memory serves, a Koala. Then a Commodore 64, a PC, and then a Mac. Thereafter nothing much else mattered. However John, you can run Windows on an Intel Mac... but it takes some work. I can't now find the article in which two computer mag techies did this, but it can be done.

See here, here, and here

Posted by: John Wilkins | February 13, 2006 6:39 PM

I would get a new Intel Mac if Windows ran without requiring computer mag techies to get it to work. I read that the next version will boot. I wouldn't bother, but there are Windows-only programs used where I work, and it would be convenient to be able to run them on my own computer when I need to.

Posted by: Mark Paris | February 14, 2006 8:45 AM

My first computer was not too exciting, but my coworkers at Los Alamos (LANSCE) used to love to one-up each other about their old computers, my mentor always being declared the winner when he brought up that his first computer was made out of wood (one of those card and peg kind of deals). Though, can that really be considered a computer?

Posted by: sho | February 14, 2006 12:55 PM