John S wrote:



Mine was a home built single board kit that I bought at a hamfest. Then I
really moved up to a Radio Shack TRS80. I ran up some huge phone bills
downloading programs from the University of Michigan at 300 baud.

Back then, I considered it a hobby. Today it is my career.




Regards
John S

I would rather be boating!

My first "computer" was a Texas Instruments TI-4 or something like that.
It was a small unit in a black case and you programmed it in some form
of rudimentary TI-Basic. After several hours of programming and
de-bugging you could hook it up to a television (through the RF
modulator) and watch little stick figures walk around on the screen. I
played with it for a couple of weeks until my son (now 30 years old)
decided it was a bank and dropped a penny into one of the ventilation
slots.

After that I also had a Radio Shack Trash 80. It was actually fairly
advanced for it's time. Next came the IBM compatible model prior to the
release of the 286. I have forgotten what it's nomenclature was - 8106
or 8196 or something like that. It could actually run the first flight
simulator program - the airplane was a little cross flying over a basic
map of the US.

It's really amazing, when you think about it, to consider the advances
made in the past 20 - 30 years.

Eisboch