-=> Dave Drum spoke thus to Gaylen Hintz <=-

 DD> I built my first confuser from a sandwich baggie of parts and
 DD> mimeographed instructions that were sold as a "kit" in the back pages
 DD> of Mechanix Illustrated magazine. There was no storage and input was
 DD> via dip switches.

 You really were a hearty soul   With no storage did you have to leave
it run to maintain whatever program you were running or did you have to
reprogram it evry time?

 DD> First "store bought" item was a TRaSh-80 Model 1 (level 2 dos) with the
 DD> 16K memory expansion already installed. At the time if one owned stock

 Hmmm those seem popular to some nostalgic collectors these days. 

  DD> 'puter. I remember pounding in the basic programs from the back of
 DD> BYTE, Creative Computing and .info. And logging on to my first local
 
 hehehe never tried those but as a proud Coco computer owner and a 
subscription
to Rainbow magazine.... spent hours pounding in those programs myself.  I even
created a few programs of my own and sold a couple of them to Tom Mix 
software.

DD> BBS (home brewed on a Burroughs Mini-Frame) a multi-line affair which
 DD> would get me connected to (gasp) usenet. And trying to view 80 column
 DD> porn on a 40 column screen.  Bv)=

hehehehehe, that must have been quite a trick. <g>

 DD> Which prompted my next computer purchase - a PET 8032 ... still a
 DD> monochrome, cassette storage machine with a lordly 32K of ram and an
 DD> 80 column display. It also had a real ieee printer port and supported
 DD> a disc drive (only $395).

 wow, that was a bargain back in those days. 

 DD> Ahhhhh .... the best thing about the good old days is that they're in
 DD> the rear view mirror.

 ah come on now, just think how much fun you had learning all this stuff and 
it
carries on to today.  Imagine growing up and getting into computing with only
the point and click interface. 

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 * Origin: Outpost BBS * Limestone, TN, USA (1:18/200)