4 Dec
2005
4 Dec
'05
11:39 a.m.
On Sun, 04 Dec 2005 01:51:46 -0600
Jim Battle <frustum at pacbell.net> wrote:
Jim Leonard wrote:
...
I coped by buying a Programmable Calculator. It was hopeless that
I would ever be able to afford a real computer (circia. 1977).
And I couldn't afford an HP. I got a Texas Instruments SR-56
(couldn't even afford an SR-52). Any program you entered into it
disappeared when you turned it off. But it met my needs for
awhile.
When you're 16 and broke (I had to go to a
friend's house to
use a 1200 baud modem when his Dad was out of the house -- "5
miles, uphill, both ways!"), you pirate.
Jim,
You misspelled a few of words there:
"you're" --> "I was"
"you pirate" --> "I pirated"
It is an easy mistake to make because spell checkers won't catch
it. Something that was undoubtedly true got needlessly turned
into a provably false statement.
What did I do when I was 16, broken, and smitten with computers?
I had a spiral
bound notebook where I wrote out BASIC programs, then rewrote
them, and rewrote them. Probably 1/3 of what I wrote ever got
typed into a computer, partly because the "computer lab" was
available to me for about 45 minutes of "face time" with the
computer per week. I wish I still had those notebooks to see
what I was up to back then (1978-1980).