[SunRescue] First Computer... (and a bit more)

[Ken Hansen]

The first computer I ever used was a dial-up connection to Lawrence
Laboratory in the hills overlooking Berkley. I was able to use this computer
with the [A|K]SR-33 terminal (the one with a keyboard and paper punch) and a
110 baud modem (maybe 300 baud, it was an acoustic coupler, meaning you
shoved the handset into the modem when you heard the squeal).

I have no idea what was on the other end,  I suspect it was some sort of DEC
beastie... ;^)

Then I started reading Byte Magazine, back when the hot topics were things
like Don Lancaster's TV Typewriter, the RCA 1802 personal computer,
re-wiring salvage keyboards to spew ASCII (typically involved EPROMS - you
would record a translation table, EBCIDC would get mapped to the address
lines, and then each location would get the mapped-to ASCII value - rather
clever, IMHO). Maybe 1974? (That would have had me about 10-11 years old)

I read alot about the Sol-1, the North Star 1, and the others. like Altairs
and MITS machines, not to mention SWTC 6800 machines). Floppy drives were
rare, and Hard Drives were unbelievable.

My town had one of the first Computerland stores, and that was where I saw
my first Apple II, and I remember when the TRS-80 was first released. I was
living in Walnut Creek, CA.

I also read Kilobaud magazine (remember when software was included in
barcode? How about the included floppy-records? You would patch your
line-out from your stereo into the casette port on your computer *and make
sure the volume was turned down*, lest you blow out your speakers!)

I remember Mr. Osborne's series of books, and thinking he was really on to
something when he introduced his "luggable" CP/M machine...

The first machine I owned was a SYM-1, a clone/knock-off/improvement over
the KIM-1, these were 6502-based single board computers. I think I paid
about $250 for it way back when (1979? Earlier?). The next was an OSI
Superboard - another 6502 machine with Microsoft 8K BASIC in ROM, composite
video out, and up to 4K of RAM (IIRC). OSI was really in the business of
large systems for VAR applications. I think that cost me $179 +/-, circa
1980-1.

Then came the Atari 800 - a fun game machine, but the graphic programming I
wanted to do was beyond my abilities (remember these had sprite graphics in
hardware - you would make a bitmap of your object, load some register to
point to the image, give it a heading and velocity, and the hardware would
handle the rest!).

Then I got serious, and bought a Mac Plus w/ an ImageWriter II - paid about
$1800 for the setup, didn't hold on to the machine long enough to afford a
hard drive (swapped a lot of floppies, 400K each!)... Loved to play Arkanoid
on it. Maybe around 1985/86.

Then I went esoteric, and started playing around with PCs - I bought a
486/33 with 4 Meg of RAM, cost some obscene amount of money, like $1500 (oh,
including monitor!). It was two months before I realized my MB was set to
4.77 MHz clock speed, not 33 MHz - boy did that explain alot! Then I got 4x
30 Meg SIMMs for a few hundred dollars. 1988, give or take...

Oh, but the esoteric part was the AT&T UnixPC/7300/3B1 - I peaked at about 4
of these in my basement, I still have a collection of manuals/software, but
I had to ditch the machines in a dumpster after I couldn't even give them
away...

After woking with Sun equipment around 1993, I started picking up
IPC/IPX/LX/SS/2s and turned some of them into real money (I once sold an IPX
w/o RAM or HD for over $300 - that was when Ebay was new (BTW, I remember
when Ebay did not have it's own domain name, it was
http://www.some_ISP.com/~ebay, IIRC).

Today my basement is a virtual wasteland for old x86 and SPARC machines,
mostly acquired with the (false) hope I would have time to tinker with
them...

So there you are,

Ken