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Back in 1983 the home PC was becoming the thing to possess, the advent of more memory and the disk drive made home computing almost possible. What do I mean by almost? Well, the Commodore Vic20 was the first computer I had seen and it was driven by a datasette that took forever to read the information from a tape into the computer... requiring you to boot the program at least 30 minutes before you intended to use it, and each process you could leave and do a little more housework, make a sandwich, gossip on the phone while waiting for it to complete it's task. I did not buy into a computer until the advent of the Commodore 64, which at that time was twice the cost of my current system. The big disadvantage was the lack of software, so I began copying code from computing magazines until it started to make sense, then I had learned to write in assembly. Eventually there was a lot of software support, albeit clunky and lacking. My first computer graphics were turned out on a noisy 9 pin dot matrix printer, and I had 5 1/4 inch floppies all over the place. From reading the magazines I learned other skills including how to align and pin the head of the 1524 disk drive. I was one of the first in my group of friends to get online... I purchased my 300bps modem for $400 and was off to visit the BBS's and begin exchanging ideas and information. Time caught up to the C64 and it suddenly lagged behind, so I upgraded to a computer designed for graphics, the Amiga 3000 became my next tool of discovery. This was more like it, better software, more intuitive OS and tools, and now I was out browsing at speeds of 14.4k. This was about the same time the Internet expanded into the World Wide Web and pages went from static text and text links, to graphics and images. While the Amiga had support for BBS browsing, it was not as well supported for the Internet and it was already obsolete by the bankruptcy of Commodore turning our programmers to new directions. Now, the Amiga is still used for graphics and games, but has been replaced by the PC. I had to face the challenges of learning yet another operating system (I'm not fond of Windows) and gather new software. Now backed by the option of laser or inkjet printing, full scanning, digital photography, non-linear video editing, and a CD writer to save my completed works, I have a workstation that provides endless possibilities in creation and capabilities. I winch when I think back to the connection speed of that 300 baud modem now that I'm running ADSL, and have to giggle at the first bitmapped graphics ever created on the C64 by comparison to what I'm achieving today. FACT! - I still own my original C64 and all it's software, manuals, and magazine publications, and it is still being used for game playing. I also have my two Amiga 3000's, an Amiga 500, and two Amiga 1000's that get set up and used as needed. |
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