Nostalgia

[PMC]

What was your first computer / console?

We're sat in the office swapping stories on our first computers right now, mine was a Spectrum +2, another guy started out with a Vic 20 and one of the younger chaps had a Nintendo SNES.

My brother has an orginal Atari 2600 lurking in his attic somewhere too, complete with about 20 odd cartridges, joysticks / paddle controllers...  Must be at least 25 years old!

[PMC]

Oh crikey... I never used a ZX81, but I can imagine it taught you how to program.  I remember making all kinds of BASIC programs for my Speccy for graphics and stuff.  I'd spend hours typing in some code and then the thing would either fall over due to dodgy electrics on our house or the end result would be uninspiring in the extreme.

I seem to remember Spectrums were limited to 8 colours (with two per 8x8 pixel grid), tinny beepy sound and loading games by cassette.  It was very much the underdog, but most people seemed to have them.

Mates with C64s liked to show off and friends with rich parents bought Amstrad CPCs.  Those chaps who's parents had no idea bought them BBC Bs....  

[PMC]

While we're on the nostalgia thread, does anyone know where I can find some (Legal!) emulator programs for those old machines?

I've struggled to find a useable C64 emulator for my PC and on the Amiga side I've had good results from Magic64.  I found a great Amiga Speccy 128 emulator, but for some reason it now locks up whenever I attempt to load it, despite me having tried to reinstall it... A broken library file methinks.

[PMC]

@X-ray

During my very brief school career in Cape Town (circa 1987-88) I recall our school had several Spectrum 48K machines, some of which were modded with Saga keyboards.

I was dismayed one afternoon to discover several PCs being installed in our computer room.  I was quite amused when Mr De Jager (our IT teacher) explained that the large metal  box was mostly empty and the PCB was little bigger than that in our beloved Spectrums...