Why did you choose the micro you bought?

[Keatah]

Alright then.. Why did you choose to get the micro you got back in the day? What was the motivating (or limiting) factor? Or factors..

 

Back when Apple was getting the II series going I got all excited about the motherboard and how many chips it had. It was simple, the more chips it had the smarter it would be. And it was easy for a kid in primary school to understand. It had a big sophisticated microprocessor which took information from the rom memory banks (the middle-sized chips) about how to control all the smaller guys. Simple! And that model served us children well. And I loved that cute little speaker shown in the isometric photo of the motherboard. It was to die for.

 

I also thought the II series' case would have been at home in Space 1999. The angular white finish. The modest keyboard. And how the case styling "separated" the keyboard from the mainboard, yet was a single solid unit. Very appealing to me on many different levels.

 

The advertisement I read talked thoroughly about specifications and I didn't 100% fully understand or appreciate all it was saying. But it sounded good. I was excited at having many evenings of discovery - as promised in the first paragraph of the ad. It reassured us kids that we could program it with an English-like BASIC language. It said it had a typewriter keyboard and that was reassuring too. I was "scared" of all those incomprehensible lights and symbols on other micros like the IMSAI or Altair. They looked cool but there was no way I was going to learn all the patterns. They weren't like Simon.

 

It said it had color graphics and sound and that meant good games. Huge selling point! The ad spoke of I/O and 8 expansion options via these things called slots. And that meant I could take the computer into future and just plug in smarter and faster chips as they became available. There were even a couple of empty sockets on the motherboard for good measure.

 

I somehow caught wind of a kind of memory card that would add another 25 chips to the computer - what was later to become the Language Card, or in my specific case the Microsoft RamCard. And to think of the Artificial Intelligence I could create with all that memory 48,000 words plus ANOTHER 16,000. Yikes! It was scary almost. They said a new version of a "scientific BASIC" (what we know as floating point Applesoft today) was coming out and that just blew me away. I was envisioning conversations with the computer about space travel and all kinds of science and math. Well. We were kids!

 

They promised a disk drive would be out with a complete operating system. Whatever that was. They promised we could learn to draw psychedelic kaleidoscope patterns and make real useful programs - after gaining some programming experience. And they kept pushing the idea of expandability. I didn't even pay attention to the modem communications board. It was too early for BBS'ing as we knew it. And I was overwhelmed with possibilities. They promised the more we learned about it the more we would use it and find useful things to do with it. The machine's architecture was blank and flat enough that there was practically nothing between you and the CPU + Memory. An attractive blank canvas upon which to sketch your ideas. All these things! The choice was clear as crystal. This was T*H*E computer to get.

 

And to top it all off they delivered all they promised, and more. Over the next 10-15 years we would see literally tons of peripherals like printers, buffers, disk drives, additional processor cards, monster-sized memory boards, some sound cards, graphics tablets, light-pen, out-of-this-world hard disks, game controllers, clock boards, boards that gave it real 80-column business text for serious work, lo-speed to hi-speed modems, IEEE scientific input cards, a real DOS that worked seamlessly with the built-in BASIC. And even modified versions of DOS or complete replacements with new features. Many by 3rd party. One (ProDOS) by Apple themselves.  And that's just the hardware. Software was available to the tune of 17,000 programs in all areas and genres.

 

Most all this stuff came out in just a few years after I read the ad. It didn't come out all at once. It was a steady trickle, a steady progression as the technology permitted. And this allowed the machine to grow with its users in the nearly 20 years it was technically viable. All the way through the 386 and into the 486 era.

 

In my studies of astronomy it was an invaluable tool. The immediacy of its BASIC in firmware in conjunction with a fast seamless DOS was (and is) a good platform for testing out theories and ideas. I absorbed myself into Celestial Basic and all the concepts it presented. Just like I had imagined 4 years earlier just prior to getting the system. It was an awesome & instructive odyssey - a long interactive text adventure with real-life applications.

 

So a tip of the hat to Apple's early advertising department! They make it look real good without overstating anything. The company went on to deliver it all and then some.

 

[English Invader]

My story is quite a bit shorter than that.  I'm too young for the original 8-Bit computer market and my first computer was an Atari ST.  The Amiga was £100 more expensive and came with less software.  In business terms, this is what Alan Sugar called a "mug's eyeful" which is when manufacturers put together a load of outdated gear and present it at an attractive price point.  I still love the computer to this day so I don't think it was too bad a choice. 

 

My retro odyssey started 11 years ago with the VIC-20.  I feel I get a lot more out of micros today than I did back in the 90s.

[youxia]

Back then, in my area (behind Iron Curtain) there were only three realistic options: Atari 800, ZX Spectrum and C64. I was a teen with a practically non-existent income, plus the perception of micros at the time for the grown ups was that they're all about games, so nobody wanted to spend a substantial chunk of cash to get me one. Spectrum was the cheapest one, by sizeable margin, so it made it the first choice for my years-long campaign of saving/earning/borrowing/cajoling/etc.

 

But the other factor was also rather important. Me and my circle of friends were all about Sinclair and looked down on A8 because of its chunky gfx and weak games library (which nowadays I actually appreciate  much more). C64 was a bit more upmarket and much less popular. So I eventually ended up with Timex 2048.

 

No regrets at all, even from today's point of view, since it's an amazing machine, and despite its limitations. Or perhaps because of them - they were a direct cause of the very innovative software library which that micro has built up. I guess C64 (which I got a few years later) would be better, but without the super-expensive FDD it wasn't that much fun, and I would struggle getting soft for it because it wasn't so popular.

[fimbulvetr]

I got a ti99/4a because that is what my mom bought with a small inheritance as she wanted to try out computers. I don't remember her ever really using it. She bought it the first year it came out, and it was expensive. No idea why she chose the ti99 instead of something else. She also got a VCR at the same time, which she got a lot more use out of. 

 

Starting in the mid-80s I got cast-off PCs from my dad, so once I got into that ecosystem I stuck with it. 

[MrMaddog]

My mom chose the first home computer I got because after seeing me mess around with the displayed machines at K-mart & Radio Shack she wanted to get me one for Christmas in '83.  She went to various stores to ask questions but the computer dealers used techno jargon she couldn't understand and employees at department stores didn't know anything about the computers they were selling.  But someone at Radio Shack answered all her questions so she saved up and got me a TRS-80 Color Computer.  It was a great way to get started with BASIC programing and the Shack did sell games and other useful software.  But after five years I went as far as I could go with it...even the later models with more memory and CoCo 3's extra graphics wasn't enough.

 

But I've always wanted an Atari 800 computer after seeing one in TV ads.  However they were very expensive, even the 400 models.  So for my 13th birthday my mom let me picked out what I wanted and I've seen an Atari 130XE at a department store.  Finally the Atari 8-bit was very affordable and had lots more memory...it truely was Power Without The Price.  Afterwards I've gotten a disk drive, a handful of games and a magazine subscription was like a lifeline when we later moved to a small town where only the C64 and NES were sold.

 

[Omega-TI]

For my first computer...

Well, I never was a fan of and never had the time to play the "specifications game".   I also never wanted to memorize how many nano seconds computer A was faster than computer B or C or even D... that month.  I simply looked at what it could do for me in the bang-to-buck ratio.  I was young, newly married and had a kid, so that limited my financial expenditure.  The TI-99/4A did not need a specialized monitor, saving me money, it also had color, and sound built-in.  It looked pretty damn cool too.  It was also designed to upgrade in stages giving me a lower entry level cost.  

 

I even used my TI-99/4A with a VCR to add titles to videos besides other home related ventures.  I really liked that machine, so much so that I got back into the TI and am having a blast with it even now.

 

 

 

 

[wierd_w]

Too young to partake in the heyday of the 8bit generation.  I was wearing diapers then.

 

The best I can interject here, is that I got a PC instead of a Mac, because I felt there was vastly more software, a much wider selection of hardware, and it did not have an overbearing digital gatekeeper keeping watch over what hardware you could install. (seriously Apple, your scsi setup software checked the ID tag of your drive to make sure it was apple OEM? What rot.)

 

It helps that I was already familiar with a DOS console prompt, and that such things did not frighten me.

 

 

 

I recently picked up a 99/4A (as in, within the past 2 years), because it was a system I had not heard so much about. (the C64 and pals are much more well discussed, IMO), and it seemed like a fun idea.

 

 

[high voltage]

Way back I needed a computer with WP options to write foreign job applications.

 

I purchased an Atari 130 XE, because they (some) were sold in Germany with a US QWERTY keyboard.

Also, it looked such a beautiful computer. And it had 128KB, Basic, Music capabilities and games.

The XE was DM300.

I also was into Mandelbrot, I was intrigued by that. I read about it in Telematch magazine, surely I can do that on my XE....

.....As I found out.....you need other stuff too.

So I purchased a 1050, XC11, Seikosha printer, and The Writer's Tool (OSS). That lot was approx. DM1300. The woman in the computer store said that The Writer's Tool is the best for word processing program by far.

I'd already owned a Sanyo CD3195C colour monitor, which I purchased for my Atari VCS two years earlier. I think the monitor was DM300.

 

I was happy with my XE, learned Basic programming, making music, programming some effects I used on stage with my band (Nah, it was just a graphics program, but the XE/monitor looked cool on stage. Crowd was like...look at that, they are using computers on stage, awesome. That's showbiz**)

 

Yeah, C64 had the more games, but it didn't have the looks.

 

**I also used a Mattel Synsonic drums on stage once, but that's a different story

Edited October 25, 2020 by high voltage

[+OLD CS1]

The family got a TI-99/4A because it was cheap, then we found out how much it would cost to upgrade it and it pretty much languished other than me writing a few BASIC games and finally getting a MiniMemory.  I got a Commodore 64 because I could get it, a disk drive, and software on lawn-mowing money.  I got an Amiga to play Shadow of the Beast and just stuck with it because it could do everything I wanted to do.

[Arnuphis]

Okay. I got my first computer in 1981. It was going to be a ZX-81. Two of my school friends got one and having seen 3D Monster Maze and 3D Ant Attack I was blown away. Plus it was so much cheaper than an Atari VCS and you could type in programs. I remember asking my Dad for one and using the usual guff of 'I can do my homework on it'. After a week of begging he said 'Let's go have a look'. We went to WH Smith (Popular UK chain store) and there was the ZX81 on sale for around 75 pounds. I remember it was mounted flat on a wall display with a working one nearby and various tape programs and stuff. I also remember my father not being very impressed with it as it was small and cheap looking and 75 quid was a lot of money back then. He then said to me 'Let's go see if Debenhams (a large UK department store chain back then) Has any'. He had a store card for Green's Electronics which were housed there and sold various TV and Hi-FI appliances. So off we went. My hopes still high for a ZX-81.

 

Anywhere we got there and sadly no ZX81 to be seen. I was crushed. My Dad then pointed at a VIC-20 and said 'How about this one?'. I had never seen or heard of a VIC-20 before. It was so much bigger. It had a real keyboard and the blurb said 'Colour and Sound'. I was just so in awe of it. It was all I could do to say 'Yes'. My father bought it on the spot and I cradled the box all the way home.

 

I recall being up very late those next few days just going through the amazing manual and just being stunned at all the things it could do. Truly a magical experience. Of course when I told my friends I had a Vic-20 they were insanely jealous. Life is great sometimes.

 

My love of the VIC made me get a part time job so I could buy games for it. So not only did the VIC teach me computing/programming, it taught me that you have to work and earn the things you want. Both lessons have stayed with me all my life. Thank you VIC-20.

Edited October 25, 2020 by Arnuphis

[English Invader]

1 hour ago, Arnuphis said:

Okay. I got my first computer in 1981. It was going to be a ZX-81. Two of my school friends got one and having seen 3D Monster Maze and 3D Ant Attack I was blown away. Plus it was so much cheaper than an Atari VCS and you could type in programs. I remember asking my Dad for one and using the usual guff of 'I can do my homework on it'. After a week of begging he said 'Let's go have a look'. We went to WH Smith (Popular UK chain store) and there was the ZX81 on sale for around 75 pounds. I remember it was mounted flat on a wall display with a working one nearby and various tape programs and stuff. I also remember my father not being very impressed with it as it was small and cheap looking and 75 quid was a lot of money back then. He then said to me 'Let's go see if Debenhams (a large UK department store chain back then) Has any'. He had a store card for Green's Electronics which were housed there and sold various TV and Hi-FI appliances. So off we went. My hopes still high for a ZX-81.

 

Anywhere we got there and sadly no ZX81 to be seen. I was crushed. My Dad then pointed at a VIC-20 and said 'How about this one?'. I had never seen or heard of a VIC-20 before. It was so much bigger. It had a real keyboard and the blurb said 'Colour and Sound'. I was just so in awe of it. It was all I could do to say 'Yes'. My father bought it on the spot and I cradled the box all the way home.

 

I recall being up very late those next few days just going through the amazing manual and just being stunned at all the things it could do. Truly a magical experience. Of course when I told my friends I had a Vic-20 they were insanely jealous. Life is great sometimes.

 

My love of the VIC made me get a part time job so I could buy games for it. So not only did the VIC teach me computing/programming, it taught me that you have to work and earn the things you want. Both lessons have stayed with me all my life. Thank you VIC-20.

 

Sounds like you had quite a cool father and a smart one too - he wouldn't give you £75 for the Sinclair crap but he gave you £300 for a real computer.

[+OLD CS1]

2 hours ago, Arnuphis said:

My love of the VIC made me get a part time job so I could buy games for it. So not only did the VIC teach me computing/programming, it taught me that you have to work and earn the things you want. Both lessons have stayed with me all my life. Thank you VIC-20.

?

[+x=usr(1536)]

It's safe to say that none of the 8-bit machines I had when they were still current technology were ones that I got to choose - all were given to me.  The first computer I got to actually pick out by myself and purchase was a 1040 STFM, and from there on to various PCs and Macs.

 

But the 8-bit progression went like this: Odyssey² (present, Christmas of 1979), Apple ][+ (used by my mother), Mattel Aquarius (intended to keep me off of the Apple), Apple //e (the ][+ was stolen and I was on the //e like a shot because I couldn't stand the Aquarius), Atari 800 (which rather successfully kept me off of the Apple), Atari 800XL.

 

Once I was old enough to start earning my own money there were A8-family machines and peripherals that I swapped for and/or purchased, but I don't count them as necessarily being the first computer(s) that I chose because the platform choice wasn't mine initially; I was just locked into the ecosystem I already had.  The entire reason that I ended up with an 800 was due to my parents needing to keep me off of the //e at a time when one of my father's coworkers was getting rid of all that computer stuff he didn't understand, and a whole bunch of Atari hardware sort of fell into my father's lap as a result.

 

I still remember being completely awed by the 800 - it had two cartridge slots!  Sure, the mini-expander on the Aquarius had two slots, but one of them always had the 16K RAM expansion installed, so it was really a single-cartridge system.  And the colours and sound on the Atari - after both the Apples and Aquarius - were just mind-blowing.  Best system I never got to choose for myself ?

[Hwlngmad]

The micro my family had back in the day was a TI-99/4a.  It was the cost-reduced beige version which had included the worst joystick control known to man along with some games.  While I did play games on the machine and tried to fool around with it, I was a bit young (4 years old or so) and my parents made no attempts to learn and/or utilize the machine themselves from what I can remember.  After that, we finally got a Windows 3.1 IBM PC in December 1992 and that is what I have really used ever since.  Still, while I do have some good memories of the TI-99/4a, I wish I could have done more with it as I really didn't have anyone to provide some guidance on how to really use the machine.

[zzip]

It was 1983 when I decided I wanted a computer.   I had already taken a BASIC class in school.   But we didn't have a lot of money, my father lost his manufacturing job in the recession and was having trouble finding one that paid as well.   I knew for Christmas that year that asking for a computer that cost more than $150-$200 was probably a non-starter.  But the computers in that price range were limited.   Vic-20 was too weak, the C64 too much.  I wanted a real keyboard, not what the Atari 400 / Coco were offering.  Luckily the Atari 600XL came out just in time, and that's what we started with.

[+davidcalgary29]

I convinced my Dad to get an 800 because I pointed out that Consumer Reports had rated its keyboard as "excellent". He rated touch-typing as an important skill, and I assured him that I would learn to type properly. I did learn QWERTY touch-typing, but that was later on a Royal manual typewriter.

 

The salesperson we spoke with tried to convince us to wait and get a Commodore 64 (this was April '83). I said NO, and am so glad that I did.

[Casey]

My folks bought a TI 99/4A for me for Christmas in 1983 when I had asked for an Atari 2600.  TI was closing out their computers, so the 99/4A was cheaper than an Atari and that’s why they bought it, along with several cartridge games.  3 years later I was given a Commodore 128 and 1571 disk drive, and I used those all through high school until my senior year when I bought a Tandy 1000 RL, then RLX, then RSX in rapid succession (each was a trade in of the previous one and didn’t actually cost me any extra).

[jhd]

I had used a TRS-80 Model III a little bit in elementary school. I ultimately decided that I wanted a computer of my own. This was Spring 1983.

 

Really the only viable choice was Radio Shack -- Commodore computers were sold locally by big department stores (which obviously offered no technical support) and there was a small Apple retailer in an inconvenient location. The Atari 8-bit was undoubtedly available too, but I honestly cannot recall ever having seen one for sale at retail. Consumer's Distributing sold the TI 99/4A. Any other players would have had negligible market share. 

 

I sold my Atari 2600 and took some money from my savings account, and I bought a 16K Extended BASIC Coco (later upgraded to 64K). I continued to use it through 1988 when I got a PC. I learned BASIC and played lots of games.

 

I tried to develop a database to track my book collection, but saving to cassette tape made this an insurmountable challenge. Likewise, the absence of a decent wordprocessor (I was aware of better software, I just did not have access to it) became an issue by the time I reached High School a few years later. 

 

[bluejay]

7 hours ago, Hwlngmad said:

It was the cost-reduced beige version which had included the worst joystick control known to man along with some games.

I mean, it can't be worse than the CoCo joysticks.

 

I'm sorry, but I have nothing to say anything remotely interesting here. I was born well into the Windows era when even MS-DOS was pretty much extinct. But I can try to come up with something to say.

 

I was into retro video games, and I had an Atari 2600 and a Colecovision along with an old woodgrain TV to play them on. But I wanted to get into computers; they seemed fascinating. I had limited money to spend, and a Commodore 64 was too expensive. I didn't know too much about anything retro computer related, just the mainstream brands like Commodore, Tandy, IBM, Apple, and Atari. I didn't like IBM, and it wasn't like I could afford a PC anyways. Same went for Apple. I felt like Atari was more like a video game and less like an actual computer(an Atari computer feels weird to you if the only other Atari thing you know is the 2600) and I thought Commodore computers were better than CoCos. I realized that I wouldn't be able to afford a Commodore 64. They were just a tad too expensive. A VIC-20, however, was within my budget, and I bought one off eBay for a bit under $100. It came with a power supply, a manual, a video cable, and nothing else. I hooked it up to a little portable DVD player that I had and learned BASIC from the manual it came with. I made a lot of useless little programs using the sound chip, like instrument tuners and sound effects and stuff. I didn't dare type in the uber-long games that were listed on the back of the manual though, at least, not until I got my C2N Datasette. I also found this on eBay, an untested one for $36. It came with 6 VIC-20 cassette programs, and I needed it. A floppy drive was too expensive at $50+ and this was the only way for me to save my programs after I wrote them. I tried out the games on the cassettes and was so disappointed (damn you, 3.5k RAM.) and I saved my programs on the game cassettes, the little extra bits left over after the actual program. It's not a very good idea but I had no other choice.

 

This is far from the end of the story with my VIC-20 but it's how I first got it anyways.

[jhd]

15 hours ago, bluejay said:

A VIC-20, however, was within my budget, and I bought one off eBay for a bit under $100. It came with a power supply, a manual, a video cable, and nothing else. I hooked it up to a little portable DVD player that I had and learned BASIC from the manual it came with.

 

VIC-20 video output displayed on the screen of a portable DVD player... I am surprised that you have not gone blind from trying to read text on such a small and fuzzy screen. 

[potatohead]

Actually the VIC 20 might look good.  It does one pixel per NTSC color cycle.  Most of those screens will just make a pixel out of that and display it.

 

20 column text won't seem all that tiny on one of those displays.

 

For a few years, I ran my 800xl on a 5" portable TV.  CRT was nice and sharp.  Just tiny.  Older eyes won't appreciate that, but younger ones will roll just fine. Mine did.

.

[potatohead]

I bought an Atari 400 for gaming and learning about computers at home.  It eventually got a real keyboard and 48K of RAM.

 

Followed that up with an 800XL for the same purposes.

 

I bought an Apple2 to get work done and game on it.  The feel of all bitmaps games is different than machines using sprites.  I liked gaming on both machines for very different reasons.

 

Both machines ended up hooked to various electronics projects.  I preferred the 400 for having 4 game ports with bi directional I/O.

 

For bigger projects, I preferred the Apple for an 80 column display and fast storage and ability to get lots of RAM.

 

Somewhere in there, I bought a CoCo3 just to program on the 6809.  I did not use this machine to potential only ever having cassette on it.

 

 

 

[bluejay]

1 hour ago, jhd said:

 

VIC-20 video output displayed on the screen of a portable DVD player... I am surprised that you have not gone blind from trying to read text on such a small and fuzzy screen. 

The huge characters helped a lot. But the screen wasn't terribly small. It's slightly bigger than the TV I use for regular gaming at 9.5" but it's widescreen. The screen was rather crisp; It's a newer color LCD. It had a nice little 3.5" mini jack for composite input which I used an adapter to plug my VIC into. It worked very well until my Dad gifted me a 1702 which has been my primary monitor for pretty much everything ever since.

[carlsson]

32 minutes ago, potatohead said:

Actually the VIC 20 might look good.  It does one pixel per NTSC color cycle.  Most of those screens will just make a pixel out of that and display it.

Indeed. I've got a few 7" wide TFT displays intended for car DVD. NTSC VIC-20 displays all rows properly but in B&W while PAL VIC-20 and other formats skip a few pixel rows and thus graphics look garbled.

[bluejay]

5 minutes ago, carlsson said:

Indeed. I've got a few 7" wide TFT displays intended for car DVD. NTSC VIC-20 displays all rows properly but in B&W while PAL VIC-20 and other formats skip a few pixel rows and thus graphics look garbled.

Black and white? My VIC displayed in color properly.