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186
 
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Thanks to all of those people who have contributed to this particular part of Micro Mart's forum. Life has been rather hectic for me of late, but hopefully normality will resume which will mean that I can spend more of my time contributing here :-)
Anyway, I want to encourage more reader interaction in the Retro Mart column, so the hot topic for October is your earliest computing memories.
For me, it's the Texas TI99/4a, which my Mum would program from those games books published back then. I remember trying my hand at copying one, but as I was very young, I only typed in one page and didn't realise that the game wouldn't work unless I typed in all four or five pages. Then, some time later, I think it was Christmas 1986, we got a Commodore 64 under the tree. The first games that we loaded were Alf in the Colour Cave, a simple educational game from America, and Beech Head II. I remember being amazed at the fact that there was music playing while the game was loading :-) and then the speech in the games, cries of "Medic!" still resonate in my memory to this day.
Anyone care to pitch in ;-)
Regards,
Shaun.
http://www.commodorecomputerclub.co.uk
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Pentium
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Ah, way back in the mists of time (going by my memory - I'm 24) we had an Amstrad CPC set up in the dining room, on a dangerously creaky table in the corner. I remember Beach Head and Terramex among many others. AA was the best, often got free full games on the covertapes. Elite featured on one of them.
Got an emulator and images of some of the favourites, some Dizzy games in there too.
'Come down from your swell co-ops, you general partners and merger lawyers! It's the Third World down there! Puerto Ricans, West Indians, Haitians, Dominicans, Cubans, Colombians, Hondurans, Koreans, Chinese, Thais, Vietnamese, Ecuadorians, Panamanians, Filipinos, Albanians, Senegalese and Afro-Americans! Go visit the frontiers, you gutless wonders!'
Tom Wolfe, Bonfire Of The Vanities
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Pentium
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Hi peeps!  My earliest and fondliest computer memory dates back to 1981. At the tender age of 16 years, I managed to get hold of one of the ZX81 kits via an advert and discount voucher in Sinclair User. I paid the princely sum of £30 and received a big cardboard box containing a plastic case, a stick-on membrane keyboard, an unpopulated PCB, and a bag of components. Having been a keen electronics enthusiast from the age of 12, this was the ultimate in excitement for me at that time. Happily, it worked fine and kept me happy until the Spectrum 48K came out the following year. Unfortunately, I had to sell the ZX81 to afford the Speccy. The Spectrum then 'grew' a custom-made steel case, full-size keyboard, internal 3.5" floppy drive and controller, parallel printer port, joystick port, enhanced pseudo-stereo sound, improved tape loading circuitry, and a custom internal toroidal power supply with external dry lead-acid battery backup. The Speccy still lives and gets dragged out a couple of times a year to blow away the cobwebs for an old-school retro gaming session. PC Spectrum emulators are very good, but it's not the same as the real thing. Oh, happy days!  Cheers, Slipstreem. 
System specs: "Phoenix" - Intel C2D E4500 overclocked to 3GHz with ACF7Pro HSF on Volt-modded ASRock 775Dual-VSTA mobo (modded BIOS rev 3.10A and VNB=1.65, Vagp=1.8), 2x1GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2-800 RAM (3.0,3,3,8,1T @546MHz), Sapphire ATI HD3870 512MB GDDR4 PCIe graphics card overclocked to 850MHz GPU & 2.4GHz RAM. Powered by Hiper Type-M 580W PSU. Guess who likes overclocking on a budget. 
MP3 Encoding for Audiophiles
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186
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Last Login: 06/08/2008 23:06:55
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| My first computer was a Commodore 16 I learned to program it right down to machine level, which is more than I can say for a modern PC Very fond memories.
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Pentium
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Going back a bit here...
I remember my first home console being the Atari 2600, I was a whizz at pacman and centipede.
Then when i was at primary school I used basic to write a program to make a robotic turtle holding a pen draw shapes.
Then we got a Commodore 64 (Flimbo's quest and Dizzy's fast food on cartidges... memories...) and I wrote a very, very basic version of pong with no score , two bats and a ball, took me 8 hours to write and I lost it in a crash after 30mins of playing.
Then the usual progressing until my first full IBM Compatible PC, a 486-dx2-66, (by AST, remember them?), then sys building etc...
alive and radgy!
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386
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Hi shaun i had a TI too rather a rare machine, god only knows why my mother bought it ,non of my mates had one and all used to come over to play the games. Parsec is about the only one i can remember. Mind you cant remember what i had for brekky!!
INTEL E8400 at 4Ghz!! , Asus P5K Premium, BFG 8800GT, 2GB CrucialBallistics Tracer 8500, Antec 1000w Quattro psu, 2x Zalman fan controllers modified. Dual waterloop DDC Ultra pumps-Thermochill rad PA120.3, BlackIce stealth 120.2, XSPC Bay Res'sx2,EK blocks on GPU,CPU,Mosfetts,NB&SB.ACRayan BlackfireFans, LianLi V2000 customised powder coated white and lazer cut design.
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286
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| The BBC and BBCB were my first experiences, at boarding school. Used to think I was clever typing: 10 PRINT "Charlie is the greatest" (or some other important information)
20 GOTO 10 ...and leaving it on as many screens as I could! Then I found out how to do it with flashing colours which was even cooler! Aqua Attack was my favourite game, but as mentioned in another thread, got us into trouble for being a 'keybasher' game. Went to my friends house one exiat (weekend holiday), and he had an Acorn, with a game called Bandits at Three O'clock. It was two player and you flew a little bi-plane around the screen trying to shoot the other guy. Fantastic, played it for hours! Then I remember being introduced to the Atari 2600... well... what a peice of kit that was! Me and my brother used to love playing Return of the Jedi... I could go on for hours with this retro stuff. Must mean I'm old or something!!!
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Pentium
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The plane game sounds like Sopwith (think that was the name).
'Come down from your swell co-ops, you general partners and merger lawyers! It's the Third World down there! Puerto Ricans, West Indians, Haitians, Dominicans, Cubans, Colombians, Hondurans, Koreans, Chinese, Thais, Vietnamese, Ecuadorians, Panamanians, Filipinos, Albanians, Senegalese and Afro-Americans! Go visit the frontiers, you gutless wonders!'
Tom Wolfe, Bonfire Of The Vanities
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