First Computers (was Re: [SunRescue] Yay, I don't feel...)

[Jeff Workman]

--On Saturday, March 10, 2001 11:57 AM -0500 Matthew Haas 
<wedge at lightlink.com> wrote:
> While we're on this trend- what was everyone's first computer? Do you
> still own it?? Still use it?

My first computer was a Coleco ADAM.  The version that was an "Expansion 
Module" for the ColecoVision game console.  Boy! that was a waste of money. 
Difficult to find software for, proprietary tape drive storage, and what 
turned out to be a pretty short product cycle.  After that became obsolete, 
I got a shiny new Apple //c.  Not much better than the ADAM, 
performance-wise, but at least I could use Copy ][+ to bootleg software 
from school and use it at home! }:->.  Then, I became a teenager, and being 
a teenager, for me, distracted me from computers for several years.  It was 
1995 by the time I came back on the scene, when my mom bought herself a PC. 
I was totally lost in the pointy-clickyness of Windows 95!  I had some 
experience with DOS from high school, and ended up spending much of my time 
at the DOS prompt.  I became a big time Usenet addict for a while, and 
learned about Linux.  They had taught us about the existence of UNIX in 
high school, but that was pretty much it.  I was really excited when I 
learned that I could actually run something like that on a PC, so I went to 
the local bookstore, bought a copy of Linux Unleashed, with Slackware 3.0, 
and bought my own PC to play with.  Now I own everything under the Sun (no 
pun intended) and do this stuff for a living.  Who'da thunk it?

Jeff