Your Most Memorable Moment in Computing

[scuzzb494]

Strange but true that I have spent pretty much every minute of my private hours since 1992 in front of a computer. In truth I probably spent way too much time from 1981 to this day punching a keyboard of some form. What is more staggering is that I have pretty much spent every minute of every waking hour since 1995 in front of a computer. Not an issue when you enjoy computers that much... and I do. I kinda hope I will finally expire at a keyboard or computer screen. That would be my wish. And so in all those many years of working and playing on the computer what were my most memorable moments... I would kinda list them as these.

My first data base on the ZX81. The joy of asking a question and the computer giving me the answer from a data base that I created. That was classic, and something I had dreamed of being able to do long before I ever even had a computer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81

Second was finding out that there was more than one level to Manic Miner on the Spectrum 16K... Also getting the boot which meant infinite lives. That game kept me up for two weeks one Christmas in the early eighties.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manic_Miner

Third would be playing River Raid on my sisters Atari. I don’t think I have ever had that much fun playing a game. I had to wait for her to go out and then sneak in to play on the Woody.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Raid

Fourth would be creating a text based program using Mallard Basic and getting it to run a continuation program when it ran out of memory. It meant for the first time that my programs could be limitless in length.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mallard_BASIC

Fifth would be my switching on my beloved Amiga 1200 for the first time. Truly my only friend worth the name. From that moment nothing would ever be the same. A truly life changing event. Just a grey screen with Work and Workbench, but way more significant than any other opening computer screen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_1200

Sixth would be digitizing my first image using DPaint and then creating an animation from captured images. I had a Sony camera set up in front of a board and that is how I captured stuff and it served me fine. And again this kept me up till it got light and meant an endless supply of high density disks that I used with my special drive to save the creations. Very happy happy hours.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluxe_Paint

Seventh could have been playing Settlers, or creating the city ‘Flibble’ with Sim City or taking Walsall to the European Cup in Sensi, but I guess in truth it was being guided on the Amiga forums long after Commodore went pop to hook the Amiga into a PC network using Samba. This took me like forever, but it was like pure anarchy to get an Amiga recognised by a tin box. I had taken 1992 technology and shoe horned it into 2000 plus PCs and better I was able to use Broadband. I should think the entire population of this area heard me scream with joy that day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Settlers_(video_game)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensible_Soccer_(series)

http://sambaforamigaos.wordpress.com/classic-amiga-getting-started/


There have been many more memorable moments... like shedding a tear for the flower girl when she died in Final Fantasy; enduring the struggles of Lara in Tomb Raider; adventuring across Azeroth with my Silver Tabby as a mage in World of Warcraft or creating my dream of a large website to show off my love affair with computers... However, my greatest moment still is the one I am yet to have. There are no bounds to what I enjoy mucking around with computers. I can always find more interesting and fun things to do. And there is still so much that I have yet to do. I wish for only one thing and that is the chance to enjoy my hobby for many years to come.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_Raider

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft

I am never sure whether the computer community today really get the true joy of computers. The guys that I come across that profess to be experts are rather dull compared to the nerds that frequented the first Sinclair Exhibition I went to in Edinburgh in the early 80s. And the magazines today are nothing compared to the machine code rags that I bought from Smiths for the Spectrum. And in truth there has never been anything as wonderful as a half inch thick copy of CU Amiga or Amiga Format that kept me up reading until the very small hours. It was like taking a journey into Alice in Wonderland, an Aladdin’s Cave of gadgets, games, software, gizmos etc etc etc, and so colourful. More significantly I cannot get that excited by apps and ‘ithings’ cus they are bubble gum trivia compared to the trickery that was employed to get the Amiga to perform the endless miracles that it created. And yet there are still magical holes to delve into. You may have to dig a bit harder but they are still there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Format

Anyway those were my my most magical moments thus far. Maybe you all had the same. I guess so.....

I do not regret the night I went into my local pub and saw for the first time my very very first computer gaming machine playing ‘pong’. It was love at first sight. And I never recovered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong

[arttu80]

Strange but true that I have spent pretty much every minute of my private hours since 1992 in front of a computer.

Well, I had my Amiga and first computer in '92, so ahemm... My most memorable stuff is quite uninspiring to someone, but it was really big deal to me when I was able to play Gods and Swiv on my own Amiga and when I learned to edit startup-sequence to do some pretty neat stuff, thanks to my school friend who was deeper in Amiga than I was. He got his AGA -machine in '93 (using all his savings) which I envied quite badly... So now I've spoken, thank you.

[ajlwalker]

I'm not sure I can tie it down to a moment, but I can say for sure that 1989 till about 2000 was the most memorable time with computers. Amiga of course.

I have great affection for the C64 also, but the Amiga was just something else.

[Delta]

The day I was finally able to make a working ami-tcp connection script to get on the net!

[takemehomegrandma]

OK, here they come in more or less chronological order:

• When my parents enlisted me and my best friend in an evening computer programming course for children (on the C64) when I was 7 or 8 years old or so. It was really a dream coming true back then. It was my first contact with a computer in real life, back then computers were something mystical that most people only knew from SciFi litterature and movies. We programmed (very basic) Basic programs. And at the end, before going home, we got to play games, like Skramble (which was my favorite). Looking back, I was totally sold on computers after the first lesson. And from then on over the following years, I started to pick up some English by myself very early on by "reading" English computer magazines of the time, typing in code listings for various programs. I also learned math very early on thanks to this. Well, my #1 most memorable moment in computing, was when I was first introduced to the C64!
• When my dad gave me a Vic20 for Christmas that year. The split feelings between being grateful for the unexpected gift within my newly found interest, but on the other hand the disappointment that it wasn't the C64 I really wanted! (He probably got a good deal on some sale of old stock, and didn't know better. "It's a computer, right?")
• When I finally got the C64.
• When I got my first 1541 disk drive (that almost cost more than the actual C64 IIRC) and finally could level up from the "Datasette"!
• When got the feeling that I finally managed all aspects of the C64 in assembler/machine code. I think there was a book called "the C64 bible" or something like that (doubt it was its real name, but that's what we called it, I still have it in the garage somewhere), describing all its "registers"/addresses, things like interrupts etc. I did small demos with graphics, bouncing scrolls, music, etc.
• When I got my first Amiga, kind of late in the game. It was the A1200, just when it was released (I had many others later on, various models).
• When I first bought my Pegasos 1 (the first batch with April 1 (later replaced for an April 2) and MorphOS 1.0). That felt big, it was very exciting times! I had much expectations on MorphOS. Was kind of immature in the beginning though, but when it started reaching v1.3, v1.4 it had made real progress!
• When we were driving on the countryside and for some reason stopped at some garage sale. And I found three large cardboard boxes full of various C64 gear that I (when I was young) could only dream of. Three C64's of various age and models, 2 1541 diskdrives, 1 C128, a Commodore printer, a light pistol, various cartridges, hordes of disks and cassettes, joysticks, etc. All for ~$40! That weekend turned out to be quite fun! :)
• Seeing that MorphOS actually survived the Thendic crisis (could very well have died at those uncertain times AFAIK) and moved forward almost as nothing had happened (albeit slower perhaps, but also somewhat strengthened) and going into Mac PPC territory. I got myself a Mac Mini (besides my Peg2 G4, Peg2 G3, Peg1 April 2, and Efika 5k2).

I have also had several PC's during these years of course (couldn't really live without them, at least not professionally), but funny enough, I can't find anything about them to fit into "My Most Memorable Moments in Computing".

:)

[Iggy]

Hmm, most memorable huh?

1)Using Wang 2200 systems in High School.

2)Reading most of the original issues of Creative Computing.

3)Helping build a SWTPC SS50 system.

4)Working with Delmar Company to further our development of our PT68K OS-9 based systems in the '80s and '90s.

5)Encouraging Delmar's owner to adopt the G-Windows GUI.

6)Getting early release copies of Window 3.0 from visiting IBM engineers (and seeing the probable doom of our own enterprises in the making).

7)Finding another micro kernel OS using the obvious successor to the 68K processor (MorphOS).

[RobertB]

Powering up and using my first computer, the Commodore 64, back on August 4, 1983.

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
The Other Group of Amigoids
http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/
Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network
http://www.sccaners.org

[klx300r]

No doubt when I got my 2nd computer in 1984 and yes of course I speak of the mighty 64 :cool: my first computer was a Vic20 as it was much cheaper than the 64 at the time but it was bitter sweet when all my friends had the 64 so working 3 paper routes as a young teenager I finally saved enough to get my dream computer :-)

Good times indeed.

[agami]

- First computer (C64)
- Helping my friend make his first C64 game
- Having the Yugoslavian People's Army put me to the task of writing an AA targeting simulator (me and my big mouth).
- First Amiga (A500)
-  Getting an Amiga 1200 in early 1993. I think that one will stay with me  until the end, even after I've forgotten everyone's name.
- First PowerPC computer (PowerMac 7200). The 68k Macs are not that memorable.
- Putting a 3Dfx card in my PC and running GLQuake. Woah!
- My first web development job with Comalco in 1996.
-  My first laptop (Powerbook G3 - Lombard) in 1999. This 333Mhz machine  did video editing in Adobe Premier smoother than a Pentium III 800Mhz  Windows 98 box.
- Apple deciding to switch away from PowerPC to intel x86 (they're not all fond memories).

[B00tDisk]

Playing a Star Trek text adventure when I was 6 on a machine in my home town's university.  It might have been a PDP/8 - the output was in greenbar rather than on a screen - but I'll never know.

Debating the merits of a full blown computer versus a then similarly priced SpectraVideo Compumate for our Atari 2600.  The computer won out, I asked for and received a VIC-20 and datasette for Christmas.

Attempting to write a text adventure on the Vic (and failing).

Using random SYS codes on Scott Adams Adventures cartridges for the VIC and forcing all kinds of fun stuff to happen including finding a hidden cheat/hint file in the Adventureland cartridge.

Getting my C64 and programming sprites in BASIC.  Attempting to write a flight sim in same.

The day I got my A500.  512kb RAM?  all I'd ever need (until of course I needed more chip memory to do anything fun with, and it's been downhill from there).

I don't know about "memorable" but "horrifying" when I sold my A1200.  At the time it was my sole computer, so communicating with the buyer was thru email, using other folks' systems.  In the time it took me to box it up and send it he decided I was taking too long (it was about 1 week from putting it up, accepting his purchase, and getting it out the door - taking too long my ass).  So I said "Fine, %&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@! you, refuse the package and send it back".  It came back, and in the downtime a local buyer purchased it.  When it got here the HD was detached from the mounting bracket, the system wouldn't start...it was awful.  The buyer here was very patient and suggested I reseat everything including the 030 card.  I did, it started, he bought it.

Later, blowing up my 100mhz 486 I'd sold the Amiga for - and having a dear friend help me get it working again (well, I wound up with an 80mhz machine; the board for the '486 was dead and I guess whomever she got to fix it took the chip or it wouldn't work on the new board or whatever)...

Building my first system for pay for someone, realizing I had thousands of bucks of hardware on the dining room table and if I'd hooked something up wrong...poof.

Setting up a dos script to repair Win95's registry; for about 2 years my sole HD was a 170mb connor that had bad sectors on it.  Win 95 would run reliably for about...oh, a week, then it would start blue-screening.  So I set up a program on floppy that would, on startup:

- Mount my ZIP drive (which I wouldn't have bought if I'd had a lick of sense )
- Copy the registry to it
...then windows would start.

I had a rescue floppy that I'd put in if I started getting registry errors, and it would mount and copy the registry back.  I suffered like that for about a year...

A friend offering me a 500mb SCSI HD out of his SGI to replace my dying HD with, but I didn't have a SCSI controller, and even back then a lowly Adaptec AHA1542 was out of my price range.

[Kesa]

Playing doom for the first time  :destroy:

[Drummerboy]

Few quick facts i remember right now, without chronological order.

Playing Space Invaders, PARSEC and typing some Basic Programs in the Texas Instruments TI99

The first time typing in the C64 and loading some programs from the C=1541

First time typing Basic Programs in the Atari 600XL

The first time connecting the Atari 5200 and play Star Raiders

The first time conecting to any BBS from my C64 and Atari 8Bit on 300 bauds

The first time i played Test Drive, Defender of The Crown, International Karate and California Games in my C=64

The first time i played H.E.R.O in the Atari 2600

The night when came my first Amiga 1000

The first i played Test Drive II, Stunts Car Racing, Lotus Turbo Sprit, Barbarian Palace, Sensible Soccer, in Amiga

The first time when i start to use Sonix Amiga Music Soft.

The first time when a saw Graphic Web Browsing in my A1200, middel 90s.

[Drummerboy]

Some recents fact (i forgot)

Conecting Wifi via with my A1200

The first time using the 1541 Ultimate II in my C=128

First time using the SIO2SD in the Atari 800XL.

[nikos.rizos]

1) Amstrad CPC 6128 with green monitor way back in 1988

2) Seeing and listening to shadow of the beast I for the first time at an expo at launch.

3) Working for the first time with an AS/400

[ciento]

1. Playing Springster on Christmas eve for hours on Coco3, after returning a Nintendo
2. Logging on to Delphi on Coco3 modem pack
3. Opalvision photo edit on A3000
4. File transfer from CD32 to A500 using Twin
5. Slamtilt on CD32