On the subject of Techno-history

[Matblack]

I was trying to think when the microchip first made an impression on my life.

It was probably in the late 70s when it first started to make its mark, I remember I had one of these



Simon came out in 77 but I probably didn't get one till 78 and I was 6

the next thing which I distinctly remember was my 'Little Professor' which was a handheld maths game. Amazingly this came out in '76 but I'm pretty sure I didn't have one till about '80 and I was 8, mine definatly a pre LCD version



1981 Brought a whole new experience to the home

My father bought a soldering iron and a box of bits



After hours of muttering and swareing he finally got it to work and we had our first home computer. I can without any hesitation catagrically state that it was rubbish! It took hours to program it to do anything vaguely interesting and then it would crash endlessly

A year later we bought a 15k RAM pack for it, which due to the design, (it had no feet and placed all its weight on the circuitboard) made the bloody thing crash even more badly. At this point I was a lot more interested in my TCR (Total Control Racing) set, which actually worked, probably because it didn't have any chips in it!



Next major advance for me was the Amstrad CPC464 which Dad got me, I suspect that my father not only harbored a lot more respect form Alan Suger than Dr Sinclair but he also didn't want me hogging the TV



Released in 1984 the CPC 464 was quite literally the mutts nuts, it had everything built in, you didn't need to buy a tape recorder or a seperate monitor and it seemed pretty advanced graphics wise. I set about programming it for hours on end with code from computer magazines which never ever worked usually due to being full of misprints. Comercial games like Turrican and Kung Fu Master were great though



Whilst people around me graduated to Spectrums and BBCs I was pretty happy with my CPC464

Probably around 1989 I got my Atari St, which of course kicked arse and imediately got me into playground fights about which sucked most the ST or the Amiga. I knew deep down that I was probably wrong when I stuck up for the ST and the Amiga certainly outlasted it but I loved it. Especially

ALIEN SYNDROME



At around this time my mother was writing her Masters on one of these green screened abominations




Yep its another Amstrad an 8512!

It wasn't long before we got our first machine which could actually be called a PC, guess who this as made by?



It an Amstrad 1512 launched in 1986 an despite my initial disinterest in it it outlasted my Atari!

That machine had a proper chip too, an Intel 8086!

My father must have been Big Al's favorite customer, I had an Amstrad vertical record deck too!

After that my computer history is a hotchpotch of personal builds, PCs rescued from skips and stuff

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