Actually, I had a diskette drive and modem on my C64. This was pre 1985 so there wan’t much of an internet in existance, however, Compuserve and Prodigy were there for me. High speed access, at the time, was 300bps.
Bob
When I get a monitor adapter, I’ll have my NeXTstation Turbo Color up and running again. Better yet would be if I could find another NeXT color monitor, but the odds of that are unklikely.
KayPro4–still chugging as we put it out on the curb. Never crashed, never failed (even when my roommate dropped it). Many theses written on that cold little box with the icy green readout.
Other Brit dopers might be familiar with this one: the BBC Micro. When I was a kid, this was THE computer used in schools. Drab beige and brown coloured boxy case, with a colour monitor perched on top and a separate 5 1/4" floppy drive. Always hooked up to a noisy Epson dot matrix printer, which was fed with banner paper.
I remember a couple of the programs we used to run on these machines. PenDown was a rather basic word processor, which seemed to be the standard at the time for every single school I went to. Then there was Logo, which worked in conjunction with a device called a turtle. This was basically a robot housed inside a clear perspex dome, into which you would insert a marker pen. Lay a huge piece of paper down on the floor, tap your commands into the computer, and the turtle would draw on the paper - fantastic!
Later the BBC Micro was phased out and replaced with the Acorn A3000 (I think), and the Archimedes. Last time I used one of those was is '97, just before I left school… at the time I thought they were the coolest thing ever, and that things couldn’t possibly get better :).
My all time favorite was the TI-99 4/A. Not just because it was my first computer, either. I loved programming in TI BASIC, it was full of easy-to-use subroutines for creating graphics, making sounds, etc., which made it the only computer I was ever able to successfully make games that were not text-based (I later had a Vic-20 and a TRS-80 Color Computer II and never got comfortable doing more advanced stuff on them). It also had some great games, like Tunnels of Doom, a surprisingly deep RPG/dungeon crawl, with randomized dungeons, exploration in 1st person, battles in a tactical overhead 3rd person view…damnit, now I’m going to have to find another one.
I’d have to say the amiga500, I use the amigas monitor as a tv still, although I did dig the commadore 64’s summer games.
PDP-8. Greatest of the CISC machines, original UNIX machine, first machine to have a C compiler, and, therefore, the last machine for Real Programmers.
C spawned UNIX. UNIX spawned portable OSes written in high-level languages. Widespread use of high-level languages spawned widespread need for fast compilers. Widespread need for fast compilers spawned RISC architectures. No more obscure assembly magic, where five opcodes somehow worked faster than a single opcode to accomplish the same thing.
I enjoy writing assembly for RISC architectures immensely, but the PDP-8 has so much history attached to it I just can’t resist.
My favorite desktop machine would probably be the Acorn Archimedes, the first desktop RISC machine and the source of the ARM (Acorn RISC Machine, now Advanced RISC Machine) architecture.
TI994A, Apple ][ – lotsa fun.
But my favourite will always be the Coleco Adam. It was like the three-legged, one-eyed cat that followed you home. You can call a tape drive a “High-Speed Digital Data Pak” all you want, it’s still a tape-drive.
I really geeked out on that thing, though, and had it operating as much like a “real” computer as was possible: Hacked RS232 port, (which allowed me to use a 2400 baud modem, instead of the 300 baud Coleco “SmartModem”.) a real floppy drive-- and best of all, a real OPERATING SYSTEM! (CP/M) Wow! I even ran a BBS (which I wrote myself, in BASIC) on that thing for a while in 1986. Grandfather’s Alligator Farm. Those were the days.
kirk280980 - mmmmmm BBC Micro…
I can honestly say that it was the BBC Micro that got me hooked on computers. They had one at school and i loved it - completet with turtle.
First computer i ever owned was a Commodore Plus 4 - my elder sister got it for christmas and got bored with it after a month and give it to me. Never really appreciated it though (was very young at the time).
The first computer that was bought specifically for me was my Commodore 64 - which i still have. Loved that too.
I have to say though that the computer which still tugs most at my heart strings, and which every now and again gets pulled out of the cupboard and used by myself and my mates is…
My Amiga500 
I miss my little souped-up “sleeper” Mac SE. It was born with 1 MB RAM expandable to 4 and a 68000 8MHz processor, but I had 16 megs and a 40 MHz '030 under the hood. It was still doing real daily workhorse service until 1996 when the Applied Engineering card shorted out.
Count me in the Amiga crowd. The first computer shipped with more than 16 colors standard (4096) and digital stereo sound right out of the box. I’ve had an Amiga1000, a few 2000’s and two Amiga 3000’s.
Currently I am looking to buy an Amiga500. Anyone want to unload it?
If you’re serious, throw me an e-mail, I know someone who’d probably want it. Abadoozy@hotmail.com.
dwc1970 I agree the CoCo 3 was fantastic. I made the mistake of selling mine too, I had the floppy drive, DMP, two joysticks, etc… I missed it so much that I bought another one years later on ebay!
Before that I had the Coco 2 and prior to that I had an MC-10, a buddy of mine had the Timex Sinclair. It was pretty lame, but it had a flight sim, which the MC-10 did not have… those were fun times.
Although I started on the Commodore Pet, and once owned a TI99, my all-time favorite was my college computer:
The IBM PS/2 Model 25
8 Mhz 8086 (I pulled it and put in a NEC-V30, 11Mhz!! woo hoo!)
20 meg hard drive (my friggin camera had 128 meg on stick the size of chewing gum!!)
Low-density 3.5" floppy
MCGA (a whole video standard created for 2 models of IBM PS/2’s that used it)
640 meg ram
It still works.
It was advertised as portable. I bought the huge case you rolled it around in. It makes a cube approx. 30" on a side, with 4 wheels and a pull strap.
The one cool thing was I actually bought one of the first Sound Blasters Creative ever made. It was an 8 bit card. I was the guru of my hall because I could play Tetris sounds thru my stereo speakers.
I did a LOT of work on that little bugger tho, a lot of work.
We have a MITS Altair 8800 sitting in on a shelf in the garage. Perhaps I’ll need to find a place IN the house for it now.
I have fond memories of the Kaypro 4 - Mr. Legend had one he was allowed to borrow from work, and we were both sad when they upgraded. A friend told us recently that her husband had an old Kaypro just sitting around collecting dust, and we jumped at the chance to take it…and then he brought it over, lugging in box after box - it was a desktop.
I was getting ready to shoot you an email, Joe K, but if Athena knows someone who has a good use for it, never mind. The Altair doesn’t really need a friend to sit on the shelf with it.
Yes, do shoot me emails with any old computer you want to get rid of. We can definitely use 'em for our Computer History book, and we’re also probably going to do a Computer Museum of some sort. I don’t know that we can pay a lot of cash to take these old machines off of your hands, but we’d at least pay shipping and handling and maybe a copy of the book if/when it comes out. Email me if you’re interested. Hell, if you want the things back, we’d probably even take our screen shots, run our programs, and send 'em back to you.
Mac SE
Mac Plus
Mac IIci
I tell my wife they’ll be worth something someday…hehehe. That woz one, maybe. Wish I had one.
I still have my original Commodore 64 & 1541 in a closet, neither of which have been in working order for several years. In the same closet is a 64C, 1541II, 128, and a 1571. Those did work last I checked.
Howyadoin,
Favorite for geek factor: DG MicroNova - barely running when I got it, booted up on alternate Tuesdays if it felt like it (hard disk was pretty glitched out). Made a helluba coffee table tho!
Favorite for power-user factor: Amiga 2000, V1.2 ROM, modded to ECS chipset, 4MB RAM (1MB chip), 60MB HD between the two of them. Ran a highly modified Workbench 1.3 and a XT Bridgeboard. BTW, I now have a bunch of Amigas, including a A1200, 2 2000’s, one with a Video Toaster, one with a Flicker Fixer and CD-ROM, an A600, all kindsa stuff. Anyone out there use WinUAE (Universal Amiga Emulator)? Amazing stuff, they finally managed to emulate the Amiga… Only took a frickin Pentium 4 and DirectX
Favorite for fun: C64… I can still hear the szizz-szizz-szizz-szizz-GRONKGRONK-szizzszizz of the 1541 in my mind. The first computer I had with a modem and printer - Remember the VICModem? Dialing the number, waiting for the answer tone, then unplugging the handset and shoving it into the modem? Remember thermal printers with silver paper? Thermal transfer color (Okimate) printers? Drooling over the Protecto Enterprizes ads in “Compute!”? “PRESS PLAY ON TAPE”?
Favorite for learning: TRS-80 Mod I - Level 2 BASIC (Microsoft BASIC IIRC, they also did the C64’s BASIC, no?). A whopping 4K of RAM, cassette drive, monochrome bastardized TV display. Level 2 BASIC was very good for its day, and the TBUG cassette based Z80 machine language monitor was great. Only problem was that you needed floppy disks to run the Assembler software, so you had to hand-compile your mnemonic code down to hex before punching it into TBUG… that’ll put hair on your chest. Also, the Level I BASIC manual… still one of the best introductions to computer programming ever written. Cut my teeth on that sucka…
I could go on forever, but I won’t…
-Rav
So THAT’S what a Trash 80 looks like! I’ve heard oldtimers talk about them but I’ve never seen one.
Me, I started out on a Tandy 1000. (286) Wish I had a nickel on a dollar for the money I’ve spent on computers since then. 