I have been around computers since the days of the ZX81 and Commodore PET, both owned by a neighbor. What follows are some of the interesting machines I have owned and used over the years.

ZX Spectrum

The ZX Spectrum was released back in 1982, hot of the heels of the ZX81. A simple machine by modern standards but as a way to learn code, fantastic. Because of the huge limitations you had none of the learning curve present for new people today. You could write in BASIC or if you were brave direct memory manipulation to write Z80 assembly.

Storage was via cassette tape, slow and very error prone. to say the least.

This started my life long journey into the world of code, in all its forms. Without this I have no idea who I would have been.

Atari 600 XL

The Atari 600 XL was part of the XL family of machines (600, 800 and 1200) which had various specs, think I got this around 1984. Again this was a time when BASIC was king. For the time was a good machine and also carried over the game cartridge from the earlier Atari machines.

Storage was still all cassette tape.

I probably played more games than did code around this time if I am honest.

Atari 520ST

The Atari ST came out in 1985, and I got one soon after release. This is when I really started to code and also started work as a programmer on full size commercial Flight Simulators. This was a serious step up in horsepower and capability. A stable windowing system in the form of TOS. I have the hi-res (640*400) black and white monitor and a massive 10Mb hard disk (Not Mb and not Gb lol)

Storage was Floppy Disk and Hard Disk.

Psion Series 3

The Psion Series 3 was an early forrunner to a netbook in a way. A clam design powered by 2 AA batteries in the spine, it would run on those for days/weeks depending on usage. Real OS and meaningful applications. I actually wrote the account package with a friend which was sold by Psion under their own brand.

Cant remember the language it used, a form of BASIC if memory serves. But it was actually workable as a dev platform, hard to believe but true.

PCs all the way on

From that point on I have only owned PCs of various forms. I spend years with various desktops, many self build. Then a decade exclusively with laptops. Now back to a grunty custom gaming desktop along with a Surface Pro 3 i5.

Hard to remember all the specs or how many machines this covers, the industry moves so fast :) I know I my first PC was a 486 and I have used Microsoft software since the 286 DOS days and all versions of Windows since Windows 3.0.

Work machines of interest

I have used some pretty esoteric stuff over the years. Most around the time when Microsoft were the biggest supplier of Unix via their fantastic Xenix operating system. Machines include:

• Silicon Graphics Workstation
• Vax
• Sparc Workstation
• PDP11
• Harris Nighthawk

Summary

The computer world moved as lightning pace in those early days but is was a power and feature war. That has slowed so much over the past decade but the width of the industry is staggering to behold. The blockchain being the latest real innovation, but I am preaching to the converted on steem lol.

Hope you enjoyed :)

Woz