Packrat genome project questions - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

31 Jan 2002

...
  How many people on this list still have their 1st
computer? 
 second? third?
 every computer you ever used/owned? 
I've still got mine (ZX81) - fired it up last Sunday in fact :-)

It wasn't the first machine I ever used though - a few years before
I got the ZX81 one of my cousins lent my dad his MK14 for the weekend,
and I spent most of one evening typing in the "lunar lander" program
and playing that... that was my first experience of a computer.

Since then I've had various machines - Spectrum (original 48K rubber
keyboard thing, Spectrum+, Spectrum+ 128K), QL, Dragon 32, Atari ST,
Memotech MTX512, Acorn Electron, BBC, BBC Master (4 of them!), C64,
Vic-20 - the usual UK "home micro" collection I suppose. 

I'm slowly accumulating machines that I've used a lot of in the past -
last week I got a VAXstation 3100 (the closest I'll come to owning an
11/785!), and I'm on the lookout for the following:
CBM 4032, Sun 3/60, Sun 4/110, Sparc IPC, HP9000/725, RS/6000, 
Apollo DN300. I know where I can get an IPC and the HP, but the
other Suns, the IBM and the Commodore so far remain elusive.

There are a bunch of others that I've used, but no way would I ever 
have room for them (eg Burroughs B5800(?), AT&T 3B2, PDP-11/24) :-)
As for all the PCs I've used or owned... nuff said. Although at
college I remember our hardware lecturer getting all excited about 
the new thing from IBM in the corner - a "personal computer" that seemed
very over-engineered and under-spec'd - 16K memory, odd "clicky"
keyboard, long-peristence phosphor mono (green) monitor, no disks
(cassette interface only!), ... we all thought it'd never catch on 
... how wrong is it possible to be :)

--
Al.