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

[Tim Ikeda]

First one I bought was a MacPlus (Could just barely afford
it during grad school - but Macs were the std. computer for
academic biochemistry. That or SGIs) At the time, the competition
for my meager savings was a Zenith 8086 portable (not even close)
and an HP touchscreen computer (a closer call than I'd like to
admit for now). Just tossed the MacPlus last week (but not before
dremel-ing out the CPU as a keepsake).

The next (almost 10 years later) was a Zenith 8086 laptop with
dual floppy drives (used as a Ham radio modem), followed by a Compaq
Portable II (for an eprom programmer) & then a III. Later a used
Mac SE/30 and after a couple years a Pentium II 266, & a Thinkpad
701CS (I've got access to fast laptops from work, but this thing is
way cooler and does everything I want to do while on the road).
Somewhere along the line I picked up a couple i-openers and tricked
them out with drives and alternate processors (fun with a dremel and
a soldering iron with tiny tips - these machines run fairly cool).
Recently an SS10, an IPX, and just now a CP/M based Epson PX-8
"laptop" with Wordstar in PROM. It uses a microcassette tape for
storage.

It's like Altered States (& I'm old enough to have seen it in the
theaters): I'm bouncing around in time.


Either that, or I'm collecting all the machines I used to drool
over... whatever.

The thing is, there aren't many computers I drool over today. The
novelty isn't there. Well, maybe the new titanium laptop from
Apple with OS-X installed. Hmm... Ask me again in about 8 years.

Now, I'm thinking smaller; trying to figure out what to do with
PICmicro microcontrollers and the like. I'm finding that so many
crappy instrument interfaces I run into in the lab could be fixed
with the prudent application of microprocessors as translators/data
transmorgifiers.