Re: First computers . . .

[smentzer@pacbell.net (Steve Mentzer)]

Wow... first computers...

Well, the first computer I ever had real access to was the old venerable TRS-80 
Model III's that we had in 5th grade. That is where I learned to program in 
BASIC. 

Shortly thereafter, my uncle gave me a commodore vic-20 with the 8k RAM 
expansion pack and a casette drive. It also had a fair amount of games. I 
quickly lost interest due to the limited 22 column screen. Believe it or not, I 
actually buried it my father's backyard. I aughta dig it up someday.

Next in line was my Apple IIe (64k). Had two disk drives, an apple III monitor 
and a cp/m card.  Very cool box. Remember BONUS disks? 

After upgrading the IIe to 128k w/ a color composite monitor, 1200 baud modem 
and a ton of stuff, I learned pascal and assembly. I used the CP/M version of 
turbo pascal. Very cool.

Sold the IIe and bought a IIgs (ROM3), 256k ram expansion board, 20MB Applied 
Ingenuity HDD, Transwarp GS, PC Transporter, RGB Monitor, Imagewriter II, 
2-3.5" DD, 1-5.25" DD and a bundle of software to boot.

I still have the machine. My 3 year old daughter uses it regularly. For some 
reason, she loves AWGS paint.

A little while later, I got into the PC scene. Started with a 8088 amstrad 
machine w/ 512k of RAM and a 20MB miniscribe. Talk about slow. 386sx25, 386/40, 
 486/66, 486/120, pentium 100, pentium 200, pentium II/300, Pentium III/667...

I can't place any of the old PC crap, but I still have my IIgs.. :)