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| 27th Nov. 2004 | MY FIRST COMMODORE |
Ken Ross |
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What was your first Commodore?
This question was asked recently on the Homestead Commodore mailing list
and this was one of the results.
MY FIRST COMMODORE
It was the summer of 1989 & I was a mature student. I'd had very
little to do with computers so far in my life, apart from being exposed to stock control / ordering on an IBM at work back in 1985 and using an Amstrad WP
for a while at the students union. (translating as hijacking for
personal useage!)
By chance, I'd found that the Casio 730
could do calculations with formulas stored in its data bank & could
pass as a large display calculator, so I got one. As for that stuff at
the back of the manual - it looked too complex for me to consider attempting.
Then, one day, the maths teacher showed us BASIC & I grasped that was what
that stuff was.
A fellow mature, (but no so much as me), student had got a summer job
with the local council and I bumped into him by chance in a tatty shopping
mall, after I had done some minor business in the vicinity.
He knew I collected 'old electrics' in the form of 8 track cartridges and
he said, (in his words!), he could get this really old computer from work
that was being disposed of. I jumped at it & hey presto ~ a CBM 8032 system entered our flat, along with an 8050 drive, 4022 printer, C2N tape and assorted books etc. In short order I joined ICPUG, while collecting all the type-in programs for civil engineering I could find / xerox etc. The fellow mature student bought a new PC, but he couldn't get the type-in programs to work on his machine - and it was stolen within a short time of delivery. The 8 track cartridges are long gone - converted to CD via my Mac. The fellow student? ~ unknown ~ but he never got paid by the council & I doubt that he ever did get onto the council housing list. I never did get a job in civil engineering, but thanks to Commodore I've been down an interesting side road in life so far that I never envisaged existed in those far off days! The 8032 was christened Eliza, after I played with the game of the same name that came on a disk with the computer. She's still in service today, albeit with an expansion board fitted from an 8096SK I flirted with for a while, (but never named), before it expired on me in service. To this day still whenever I hear some Belinda Carlisle songs I can still feel those keys under my fingers as I typed in programs dealing with reactions on beams etc.
My Commodore systems lurk in the hallway, shoehorned into a unit ,
8096 ~ 8250 ~ 4040 ~ 4022 , with a few other Commodore items stowed away. Just recently, I've just started my first steps into Wheels 128. By chance I 'inherited' a Mac LCII a few years ago, but thats another story that leads up to this 7300. However, there should always be a Commodore in my life. Footnote: Thanks to the encouragement of Jonathan Cooley was my wife Maureen's returning to her art after many years! (She's starting to try & get drawing again as her movement is coming back now). So, even though there wasn't a direct Commodore connection - Comodore did play a part in changing her life. Ed: If anyone else has an interesting tale to tell of how they came into computing, especially if of the Commodore variety, then please drop me an e-mail with details. |
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