I was recently reminded of my first computer... The Sinclair Z81 in the summer of 1981. I paid $80.00 for the kit. I spent the whole day soldering the kit together (4 ICs, power supply, caps, jacks, etc). I used an old B&W TV (it had 32x15 text mode and 64x44 graphical resolution), and a cassette recorder as an I/O device to save my Basic programs. No sound capability. It had a 3.25MHz Zilog Z80A processor with 1KB of RAM (expandable to 56KB) and 8K of ROM with a crippled Basic interpreter. I was a sophomore in College and was just introduced to time-share systems with teletypes and punchcards. So this interactive graphical "personal" computer was very cool. The thermal printer was actually helpful for debugging my program listings! It is amazing what we put up with just 25 years ago!

My next purchase was a COLOR Timex/Sinclair 2068 in 1983 for $200.00. It had an amazing resolution of 256x192 color, or 512x192 monochrome. I picked up a crisp green-pixeled monochrome monitor. The TS2068 had the same processor (Zilog Z80A), but slightly faster (3.58MHz). It also had sound!! It had a whopping 72KB of RAM, and 24KB or ROM, with an expansion ROM cartridge port. I could use the same cassette recorder for saving programs. I still have this one :-)

I had an alternating semester co-op job in Boca Raton with IBM in '80-'82, and was there when then introduced the PC jr. So I was pretty much locked into the PC vector (rather than the Apple worldview). So, when I was ready to buy my first "real" computer, I settled on the Tandy T1000SL PC clone.  That was in 1988, when Radio Shack came out with the T1000SL for $900.00. It was actually a very nice system for the time with an 8MHz Intel 8086, 6400x200 video resolution with 16 colors! It had a 5.25" 360KB floppy, and a 20GB Hard Disk! It had 384KB of RAM, which I expanded to 640KB. It was an IBM XT clone with some PCjr enhancements.

The rest is, well, history... As I type on my laptop with an 80GB disk, wireless networking, 2.4GHz processor, and 1400x1050 display!!

December 02, 2004 07:56 AM EST Permalink