I was thinking about the various computers I've used. I grew up in the 70s when home computers were really rare. I think a friend had a ZX80 when I was about 13, but the nearest I came was playing arcade games like Pong.
My first real experience of using a computer was via one of these. We had one at school that connected to a local college via an acoustic coupler. That's something you pushed a telephone handset into and it used sound. This was slower than a modem, but fast enough for what this did.
A few years later I got a BBC Micro. It had a mighty 16kB of memory (upgraded to 32kB by me), loaded from cassette and a fairly puny CPU, but I had a lot of fun with it. When I learned about fractals I had to try making my own. Something like this may have taken hours.
Although I worked with various IBM compatible computers (now just known as PCs) on DOS and Windows I didn't do much at home with computers for a while. Eventually I bought a second hand Amiga 500. That was great for games. Later I got the Amiga 1200. That got upgraded extensively until I was able to use it to emulate a Mac. I didn't get onto the internet for a while, but I was into bulletin boards. I went through various modems in search of more speed.
Eventually I decided I needed to get a 'PC' (I don't like this as a it is used as it just means Personal Computer). I got a Windows 95 machine. That was the last PC that I didn't build myself. I've been through lots since then using Windows 98, NT, 2000. I found Windows frustrating and experimented with Linux. I think it was Red Hat first followed by Mandrake, Knoppix and then Ubuntu, which I have stuck with for many years. I obviously had at least three computers when this was taken. I suspect one was still running Windows as the kids played some games on it.
I'm not into gaming, so I don't need the latest hardware. I've had my current AMD quad-core for a few years and it is fine for running Ubuntu for all my needs. I've seen a lot of changes over the years. From paper printout to multiple screens. There's a whole other history in the mobile devices I've used.
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I'm Steve, the geeky guitarist.
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