posted 06-21-99 12:46 AM ET            

I remember you could buy books of printed BASIC programs (games and such) and enter them into your computer by hand. I don't think I ever got one of those to work!

10 Clear Screen
20 Print, "This sucks."
30 Go to 10

I was brilliant for my time...

That was maybe the first 'popular' home computer. Then I went to the Commodore 64. Then the AMIGA 500, then AMIGA 1000 (was that the name?), then an 8088, 286, 386, 486. Now Pentium II 450. Never owned an Apple but many times wish I did.

posted 06-21-99 01:24 AM ET            

Don't you mean "The computer industry OWNS people like us"?

posted 06-21-99 05:55 AM ET            

I skipped the amiga, but all my friends had one, so I just played at their place.

Then came the PC world, I owned a 286/12, a 486/33, P/100 (and I still have it ) I also worked with a whole buch of other machines... 8088/4.77 (yeah baby), 386sx/16, 485dx2/50, P/90, P166 and (since last Monday at work ) PII/333

posted 06-21-99 09:13 AM ET            

I bought a C64 (which I still have)... wanted to buy an Amiga but couldn't afford one (used a friend's a lot).

My first owned PC, which I had until a year ago, was a 386/33SX. At the time I got it it was already obsolete. I seem to be good at doing that.

posted 06-21-99 09:49 AM ET         

Yin, you may have been a genius in your time, but now, if a GOTO statement goes to anything besides a "CONTINUE" statement, your computer science teacher will slap you around.

posted 06-21-99 11:17 AM ET         

I think it's OK what you did back then(and perhaps CONTINUE statements are only used in Fortran anyway). If a program had lots of GOTO's, however, it could be a challenge to debug. I certainly created my share of "infinite loops" for program crashes.

posted 06-21-99 11:51 AM ET            

Spook: I would have failed *any* structured programming class if I had used even *one* goto statement in there... I've been taught never to use it. I always argued that it is legitimate in some situations, but the teachers just won't listen to students, even (especially) if they are right...

(* In PASCAL since you asked *)
WHILE TRUE DO BEGIN
(* some stuff *)
IF condition THEN GOTO label;
(* more stuff *)
END;
label:
(* even more stuff *)

--------
Had to be coded like this, which works but can be quite clunky at times.

condition = FALSE;
WHILE NOT condition DO BEGIN
(* some stuff *)
IF NOT condition THEN BEGIN
(* more stuff *)
END
END;
(* even more stuff *)

posted 06-21-99 12:19 PM ET            

On the other hand, with a while loop, either
break or a subroutine with arguments usually /is/ a little cleaner (just like gosub was touted as better than goto), depending on the purpose of the loop. It's just occasionally far easier and quicker in terms of CPU time to use the goto/branch.

My theory is that a whole lot of CS teachers have never actually held programming positions, and that's why they think they can teach you 'perfect' code.

posted 06-21-99 12:44 PM ET            

My first computer was an Mac Classic, with 2 megs of RAM, 40 megs of HD, rather small B&W screen. I'm proud to say it is still in operation at my parents place, where it is a word processor etc.

Also I have owned a powerbook 100, which had 8 megs of ram and 20 megs of HD space. It was picked up second hand and I still have not found a proper battery for it (but it works when it is plugged in).

posted 06-22-99 08:38 PM ET            

Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy

First PC I worked on (let alone owned) was an IBM 8086 with 20MB HD and 1MB RAM.

On the other hand I still have Larn and Omega installed on my current PC, and don't laugh, prefer to play them then than stuff like Diabalo.

posted 06-22-99 09:12 PM ET         

Four years later I bought an Amiga 500. It had a monitor (the Atari needed a TV), two floppy drives, sound/graphics which would not be equalled in the PC world for at least 5 years, and 512K of RAM (which I quickly upgraded to 1M so I could play Dungeon Master). The price: $1300.

Last year I bought a P166 with 64M RAM, 1.6G hard drive; I forget what brand of sound and graphics boards I have, but like any of today's products they completely blow away what was so impressive on an Amiga 500. I paid $1000.

Amazing, isn't it?

posted 06-23-99 09:15 AM ET            

Provost: Let me introduce myself. I'm Eris.

Now you know someone else who remembers it.

posted 06-23-99 09:50 AM ET         

Commodore Plus 4 - games, some programming

TI 99/4A - programing, some games
I'd program on the TI for hours, run it a couple of times, then turn the computer off. Then, we got the cable to hook our TI to a tape player so I could save - It ROCKED!

Apple ][e Clone - programming, some games

IBM XT clone (w/ a homemade galvenized steel cover I found in a vacant lot) - games, some programming

posted 06-23-99 10:26 AM ET            

...click!...push

...click!...push [DAMN! Guards are coming!]

...click!...click!...push [I'm dead for sure...]

...click!...click!...click!

ALARM DEACTIVATED

"Excuse me. Which way to Hitler's bunker?"

"Any idea what caused the alarm?"

"Alarm? I didn't hear anything. Some bells were ringing too loudly to hear anything, you know."

"Good point. I heard the bells, too, but obviously couldn't hear an alarm in that case. Must have been something else."

"Ummm. Hilter?"

"Oh yes. SS entrance?"

"Why not..."

"That way."

"Good work. Carry on!"

posted 06-23-99 12:16 PM ET         

My first "real" computer (not counting the Atari VCS, which was eventually renamed the 2600), was a TI-994A with tape cassette storage and the speech synthesizer module. I spent lllots of time playing "Tunnels of Doom" (very good RPG for its time), "Parsec", and "Munch Man", as well as writing the usual assortment of cheezy BASIC games.

Eventually, circa age 13, I moved on to an Atari 800XL, then a couple of Atari STs, until finally getting my first PC about 3-4 years ago (on which I run Linux almost exclusively, except for SMAC and a couple other commercial games).

posted 06-23-99 07:53 PM ET         

Next came my first $4000 computer a 386-25 with 4 meg and 14" VGA monitor and also a 160 MB ESDI HHD. I also ran a BBS on a 386SX-16 with two lines, one a 14400 USR HST that cost me $600 at the time and a huge 550 MB on-line due to a great $800 buy on $350 MB HHD. Also got a listing in a book entitled "CyberSex in America" or somethig simular. At this time there were some really good games were starting to appear to name just a few Civ and Links 386 and thousands of different shareware games.

My next $4000 computer was a P5-90 with 540MB network card, 250 MB tape drive, combo 3 1/2 and 5 1/4 floppys, a double spin CD-Rom, SB16 compatible sound card, 1MB Video. A real powerhouse for it's day.

Over time the system above has grew to what I listed in a thread about the worst PC to play SMAC on. Over the years I have got to play a lot of great games and some really bad ones. I really like SMAC though it does have things that need fixed and there are things that can be developed further perhaps. My history of messing with computers goes back over 20 years to card readers, I hate it when I get old . I guess that life. I hope to enjoy the next 20 years as much.

posted 06-23-99 08:05 PM ET            

NoMercy: Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy on the Spectrum... ah memories!... it wasn't my Spectrum, it was my boyf's, but I remember those hours spent trying to load the games from cassette, only to have them crash in the last 2 minutes because the volume level was set slightly too high...

Jay & Aredhran: I still say that Eye of the Beholder 3 is possibly the best RPG ever made... hard enough to be challenging, good combat system, really inventive, lots of problems to solve, very AD&D-ish, but no dumb "guess the answer coz it makes no sense" puzzles, like those silly problems in the old Level9 text-based adventures... oh sure, to get the wizard to give me the scroll, I have to run three times round the room, balance a bucket on my head, throw a banana out of the window and kick the dog. Obviously.

And how about that old warhorse, Alone In The Dark? Pretty clunky by today's standards, but when that came out I was just stunned by the 3-D objects... sadly the humourless software auditors at work erased it from my (state of the art!) 486 and I lost all my save positions

I still miss Pac-Man, too... and Gorf... and Defender... arcade games these days are waaaaay too fast and tricky for an old git like me!

posted 06-23-99 09:50 PM ET            

anyone remember "Sneakers!" or "The Oregon Trail" for Apple? Or Apple Adventure for that matter (XYZZY!), never did finish that one.

I think I still have a very old console that would play variations of pong - the games had different names but are/were pretty much the same. I wonder if I baked it in the attic?

off in search of lost treasure,

posted 06-23-99 10:00 PM ET            

I never could get the first Pool of Radiance - that would be called Pool of Radiance, heh - to run on my "modern" PCs, even with a processor "slowing utility". Just won't boot, nuts.

posted 06-24-99 08:58 AM ET            

One of my dreams is to get a 2 bedroom apartment so I can have a computer room, which will hopefully have 3 computers in it when this happens.

posted 06-29-99 02:27 PM ET            

----

posted 06-29-99 08:53 PM ET            

My first computer was however a Very old one I can't remember the name on. You could only play something that was supposed to be a little bit like tennis.

posted 07-01-99 06:34 PM ET            

Horgawitz:
"The first computer I ever used was a radio shack `color computer' it used cassette tapes and the moniter was a color TV"
Funny how TV outs are coming back to the mainstream, eh?

----

posted 07-01-99 07:40 PM ET         

I got started on an 8K Commodore "Pet". It always overheated & crashed. What a dumb machine.

The first mainframe text game I played was Hammarabi some years earlier. By the early eighties I'd moved on to PC games like Hitchhiker. Took six of us an entire Saturday to get the babel fish into our ear. Jumpman (pre Mario Bros.) was good too.

My favorite late 80s game was Dungeonmaster. Didn't get to excited about anything else until Civ1. Such an improvement over the board game.

Amazing how far everything has come in the last 25 years.

-RedFred (yet another old guy)

posted 07-02-99 10:16 AM ET            

Pascal is a great language to learn in. Teaches you to define everything before you use it, be careful with your math, and where else can you tell the computer to REPEAT THIS UNTIL DONE;
Beats learning COBOL first... I still shudder at the thought of ADD 1 TO TOTAL_NUMBER_OF_STUDENTS GIVING TOTAL_NUMBER_OF_STUDENTS.

(before my IBM days I had a TRS/80 & a TI99/4a)

posted 07-02-99 10:29 AM ET            

or... Playing Wasteland as far as you could with only Brawling weapons - clubs, axes, chainsaws Photon/Proton? axes. Reading the fake paragraphs about FINSTER and the Martian Queen...

Was I the only person to play and finish the most aggravating adventure/RPgame ever made - Deathlord!

posted 07-04-99 11:28 AM ET            

PII 400
128MB RAM
16MB AGP*2 Diamond Viper V550 (Grpahics Card)
12MB Voodoo 2
Cable Modem (About 1.6MB/s)
21" Monitor
CD-RW 4*4*36
DVD *6
CD-ROM*32
10GB SCSI HDD
SBLive! Soundcard 256 (Fiber Optic)
Cambrifge Soundwors 5 Speaker set
TV Card (Hauppauge)

posted 07-04-99 02:12 PM ET            

For myself, i started on a Commodore64, then Commodore128, after which followed my beloved 8086, from which i have wonderfull memories(anybody remember the f19 game?It took 2 hours on this comp just to take off and get to the first nav point), then i got the IBM 486, which was a revolution of it's time, and spent the first few weeks playing blue force ...After that i just kept upgrading it and right now i own a K62-400 with chracteristics similar to one bossman mentioned(still got the 486 IBM case)

posted 07-09-99 10:14 AM ET            

I started with a commodore 64, absolutely wonderful machine, when I was 10 or so and still living at my parents' house...

Actually, it is still stored in my parents' attic and whenever I visit them, I sometimes start it up (good quality, never gives up ) and play a round of MULE (anyone remember that game??)

Greatest game ever I think.

Bossman, my computer is a PIII500 with 256mb ram, but most other options are lower than what you have...

Someone mentioned the eye of the beholder trilogy - I loved that too, I wish they would have continued with those series...

posted 07-14-99 01:54 AM ET            

Bossman: Who do I have to kill for that kind of PC? A Pope? Clinton perhaps?

posted 07-17-99 04:42 PM ET            

Yea, the Ethereals. And about Doom, I thought
it worked quite smoothly with "customized"
386\40 DX 4MB. Maybe I was wrong.

posted 07-17-99 05:03 PM ET            

I've now got a P2 450 128Mb, a P2 350 64Mb, a P133 40Mb and an old 486 DX/66 laptop that I've lent to my Mum for Internet browsing... and I can honestly say that if it weren't for 3-D games and Photoshop, I'd still be running the P133. Everything else, including Office2000, IE5, etc etc, runs fine on it.

Having said that, SMAC on the 450 is way more fun than it used to be... I no longer have to spend 20 minutes watching Yang move 30 missiles into the base I'm going to PB on the next turn

posted 07-18-99 11:21 AM ET            

I work on a Toshiba Satellite, 5 months old, pII 266, 32 ram and my only other need in a computer a 56k (well, i do need a hardrive...). Any RTS or TBS game will work on perfect but I still have problems running midtown madness at times.

posted 07-18-99 05:53 PM ET         

Then I got a Tandy 1000SX. The kickass new 8088 that hit 7.44 MHz in Turbo mode! This badboy came with a 3.5" 740k drive as well. Not just CGA, those Tandy graphics could get 16 colors, but that ate up some of your conventional memory. Luckily I upgraded to a full 640k.

Then there was the 386SX-16. It had a hard drive! Raw power! Came with a full meg of RAM, and a 512k Paradise VGA card. Of course, they tried to screw me over and give me the 256k VGA, but I knew right off when I couldn't look at my pirate BBS porn in high-res! So I saved up the $100 it took to buy another meg of RAM, then realized the SIPP's needed to be paired, and begged my mom until finally I got that upgrade to 3 megs.

posted 07-19-99 05:57 AM ET            

p.s. my first computer was an AMStad CPC464

remember Daley Thompson's Decathlon the game witch broke a thousand joysticks.

p.p.s OOP it's a government conspriacy