How did you get started?

On Tue, 8 Apr 1997, Paul E Coad wrote: When I was young, I got my first computer, which was the Aquarius I mentioned before. I sold this along with my Atari 2600 with about 50 games to fund the purchase of my first Apple ][+. I wish I was enlightened back then because I would have found some other way to make the money. After a while I wanted to get an Apple ][e, but I couldn't get myself to sell my ][+. I'd had too much fun with it. So in spite of the bitching from my parents, I bought a ][e and kept my ][+. Which was really cool because now I had two apples and I could have two different things going on each one. It was really handy when I was hacking up code or cracking copy protection and such. Then my high school computer science teacher wanted to sell me his souped-up //e, which I bought, so now I had three apples. He also threw in a Soroc dumb terminal, which I think was what piqued my interested of old stuff. There was this big old teletype terminal in our classroom that I asked if I could have but he had no authority to give it to me (it was never used for anything) so he gave me the terminal instead. Then through some maneuvering I can't remember, I ended up trading with friends and acquired a commodore 64 and a TI-99/4a. These weren't particularly old back then (this was around 1987). I also got a Timex-Sinclair ZX-81 from my brother that he had traded from his friend who built it. Then in around 1989 I acquired some California Computer Systems S-100 CP/M machines. Huge, 30-lbs a piece units. There was a dual 8-inch disk drive unit, then the processor unit. My mom thought I was crazy to be hauling this shit home. She'd always be telling me to sell some of it. But I brought it into my bedroom and set it up and programmed a small adventure game on it. I got this system from a classmate in a community college course I was taking. He gave several away that he rescued from a school he taught at. Later on a couple of the people who got a system decided they didn't want theirs anymore and so they gave them to me. Then one day I was at a swap meet looking for carthridges for a 2600 I had picked up. I found the mother lode. There was this crusty guy selling all sorts of old early- to mid-80s systems like commodores, ataris, colecovisions, etc. I went spastic. After I recovered I went to the guy and offered $5 for each unit he had, and HE GLADLY ACCEPTED! He'd been wanting to get rid of this "junk" forever. So I ended up with about five Vic20s, an Atari 400, an Atari 800, a Commodore CBM (CP/M), a Colecovision, numerous Atari 2600 consoles (of different types), a Timex Sinclair ZX-81, a TRS-80 Color Computer 2, a TRS-80 mini-color computer, some other TRS-80 junk, and miscellaneous joystick controllers and game carts that he threw in. All told I paid him $120 for a trunk load of ol computers and stuff. I was stoked. And the best part is, 95 percent of the stuff worked, even though some of it had been sitting in the rain and sun for years. The day I got them it was raining, and some stuff was wet when I brought it home. But I opened the wet ones up and dried them off and they worked! The only thing that was totally dead was one of the colecovisions. The Commodore CBM and the Color Computer 2 had blown fuses, which are easily replaced (although I have yet to do so). Since then I acquired an Apple Lisa from an old boss, and Apple III from a friend and maybe one or two others that I am forgetting now. I haven't gotten anything new in quite a while but since joining this discussion group I've gotten the bug bad. I'm going to start hitting the flea markets in my area again. Me too. I keep old manuals and the like no matter how mundane. Sam ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass