💾 Archived View for sdf.org › taranisw › retrocomp1.gmi captured on 2023-07-10 at 14:14:52. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-03)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Digital products I (used to) use
This was actually a rebranded and repackaged Tandy MC-10 for the French market. It was red instead of white and the manual has been rewritten and the cover was drawn by late SF comics artist Moebius.
It was my first computer and also the one on which I could finally program in BASIC language on my own (the first computer I actually touched was my uncle's TI99-4a). 4KB of RAM (yes !) was a bit short but it served its initiation purpose well and I had great fun with it, and could also get a feel of machine language and pixel art.
The 64 KB RAM Amstrad was one of the favorite I ever had. It was also interesting because of several dedicated magazines publishing articles, tutorials and lots of source code to study.
Here too, the BASIC language interpreter was the OS and shell. More RAM than the Alice and a way more capable BASIC. Big fun. I had quite a few games on it but could write software on my own for my personal use : text editors (some with encryption), drawing, sprite editing, simple database storage...
My first actual PC... And when I say PC I say "IBM-PC compatible computer". There were so many options back in the days :)
MS-DOS 3.3, Intel 8086, CGA graphics adapter on a non-backlit (slow refresh) LCD screen, 512 KB RAM, 2 floppy disc drives, a full keyboard, no mouse and... It could work on standard batteries. Yes, it was also my first "Laptop"... If you wanted to use it without the power adaptor you needed 12 alkalines batteries ^^
I mostly used it for school. Not many games because of the slow screen. Not my fave. It's a PC.
My first Amiga. I loved its form factor : It could also be included in a stereo setup, as it looked like a HiFi CD player (even had a remote controller that could serve as mouse). You had to put the CDs into a cartridge before inserting it into the computer. I had the keyboard and the floppy drive but not the mouse.
I could watch demos, plays games, program in Amos (a dialect of BASIC made for game programming)...
I used the Workbench 1.3 but when I wanted to use the Workbench 2.0 I had to open the computer, change the ROM (physically) and temporary remove the firmware chips that was in charge of the CD player interface ^^
I had an audio input so I could make sample music with Sound Tracker.
I don't have much memory of this one. It had an Intel 486-DX33, 4 MB RAM, Dos 6 and Windows 3.1, SVGA display. Used it to test the sharewares on magazines and also gaming, mostly Doom & Heretic. A bit boring... It's a PC
Back to Amiga. I find the the hardware architecture more interesting. Back to Sound Tracker sample music, and also digital art. Some wordprocessing too, and my first lines of HTML even if I didn't have internet at that time, there was a basic internet browser, so I could learn HTML tags and test the results.
Lots of geeking on it too, and a bit of gaming.
Got it veeeery used from the school I was working in as a janitor. I did a lot of writing and assignments on it.
Celeron processor, 32 MB. I geeked a lot on it, trying one Linux distribution after the other :)
I made it triple-boot : Windows 98, BeOS 5, and Suse Linux (the only at that time that supported my display adaptor).
I loved BeOS 5 !
Tangerine Apple laptop. Cute and good ! I loved it. The battery died, unfortunately. I had it second-hand with MacOS 9, but quickly upgraded to MacOS X Panther. Very different experience, and a command line, finally !
Niiiiiice. I kept the monitor from the Cibox and had a great time with it. I made some music with it too.
Internet browsing, programming, using the terminal a lot. Battery didn't die but was swollen at some point so I removed it, then the AC adaptor died. So ended the computer I found so durable and resilient that at some point I gave the nickname of "Bruce Willis : all beaten-up in the end but still delivering".
Yes, yes, "It's a PC". Ok, got it in 2008, still working today. It survived to anything I threw at it for years. Now the backlight is tired but the screen is still legible. Currently running Haiku OS (the successor of BeOS).
Boring PC for the 21th century basic consumer use.
Double boot Windows 10 and Linux MX.
I'm getting tired and depressed with computers. Also, I'm more and more leaning to the "analog side of the geek" and spend more on a fountain pen than on a phone or a computer.