Of the ones in the article, I had two -- a TRS-80 and a KIM-1. The TRS-80 died and went to garbage dump Heaven. Still have the KIM, which at one time was connected to a KSR-35 teletype (with paper tape reader & punch) in my basement.

Also still have several oldies not on the list -- an Apple II+ (clone), a Kaypro 4-84, Morrow MD-3, Sinclair ZX81, several Timex/Sinclair TS1000s, a Timex/Sinclair 2068 with Spectrum romswitch and a microcontroller, the name of which I can't remember.

Not to leave out my first computer: http://www.morgus.com/elf/ an RCA 1802 COSMAC Elf, built from a construction article in Popular (or was it Radio) Electronics in the mid-70s...

Thanks SPOT for making me feel sooooo old.
That was like looking at my resume!
I also can't believe they didn't include the Timex Sinclair on the list (with it's wonderful membrane keyboard and 1k Space Invaders game).

I recently saw a PET with the 'chicklet' keyboard on a TV show. I forget the name of the show, but it is on cable with Micahel Keaton centering around the CIA back in the 60's (or something like that). I only caught a little bit of it and what stood out for me was the PET computer in the background. I jumped up and down pointing at the screen... :)

Mike, in college I programmed on an IBM 1401 (1971). The only reason we used it was to learn how to program in machine code. It was not very big (maybe 5'x6'). I remember that it had 4k of memory. I worked for Goodyear in 1972 and they had the 1419 check sorter because they owned the Goodyear Bank.

Have 3 of these. Worked with 4 others. The TRS80 Model 100 I have still works! 8 rows, 40 characters per. Uses 8 AA batteries. ( I worked with Tandy and got to do pre-release testing on the Model 100 and Model III)

Best I can do is to say that my present keyboard sits upon the filled in gap that I cut away on my desk, many years ago, to accept my Commodore 64 keyboard. Loved that machine. Pity they went broke. Couldn't stand playing games on it though. I thought that stuff was for Morons. However, many of these so called Morons later went on to become whizz kids of the industry. Now let me see. One of those games, (may have been called Froggo), where an animated frog jumped onto objects in the pond. The gamer had to manipulate it somehow so that it didn't fall nto the water. I always thought that I was too clever by half to play such mindless games, yet here I am, 25 years later, still scatching my head over computer technololgy and it's progammes.

The first time I saw Visicalc was on a Commodore 64, I liked so much that I got a copy for my apple III business computer. It ran like a slug on apple III running pascal. The apple III was as bad as the lisa but 1/3 the price ( I guess that was a deal !)
It had 128K when the apple II had 48k , but soon became useless when apple II was upgradeable to 256k.

I had a eprom burner from a third party vender of commodore 64 that would burn a eprom of the ram at whatever point you were at in a program or game. Then you could put the eprom in a cartridge and instantly be at that location in the program when you turn the commodore 64 on , talk about fast booting !!!!

Ahhh, the RCA 1802 COSMAC Elf was a blast. I built it too at the time, and remember having spent many many hours inputting on a hex keyboard, just like yours, the machine code for the 2K BIOS I wrote, then going to sleep with exhaustion and happy dreams after everything worked. The next morning I was awakened by the noise from my wife vacuuming the room where my COSMAC was located.

Of course that room had only one power outlet, so she pulled the plug that was there and plugged in the vacuum cleaner instead.

So my next project quickly became a modem for storing data (backups) on a portable cassette recorder, using different tones for "0" and "1"....

The amazing throughput was 300 baud or just under 30 characters per second...

2102s were static 256x1 RAM chips if I remember correctly, great because with only eight of those you had a quarter of a kilobyte... :O).

So you had RAM? WOW, that was hot at the time, most of us had to make do with CCD memory with serial output of each scanline to the CRT.

I got Matrox' first video card (module) ever, named the 1632SL for its incredible ability to display 16 lines of 32 characters. Great crisp characters showing on a Motorola OEM display with no case (for easy access to the High Voltage :O).

Boy, those airline terminals were good, weren't they!

At my school, we managed to beg a bunch of bank terminals from Olivetti.

The keyboard feel was totally awesome. When you pressed a key just a little bit, a built-in electromagnet pulled the key down the rest of the way automatically, which resulted in very fast and pleasant typing.

Totally decadent (hexadecadent? :O)

I miss my Kaypro II, not listed in the article. I loved my little Radio Shack Color Computer.

I was impressed with the Lisa. It died for lack of appreciation for what it really was.

My first computer was a H8 computer that I build from Heathkit. It took 2 weeks to build. Had a Hex keypad that I had to stick paper stickers on for numbering keys. There was a demo that you keyed in after you built the system that said your H8 is running 7 segment display chips so you can imagine how it look. Took about a month and half to get the 40 character width 12 line terminal to working (2 weeks to build and month touble shooting.

It was 1982 & the Apple ][ for me, with an optional 16KB add-in board AND an optional programming ROM board (had the Apple BASIC that came on the ][+ vs. the Integer BASIC on the ][). Very stylin' with a floppy drive, too!

Anyone else out there manually type in assembly code from Nibble magazine?

One thing that still amazes me about the Apple ][ is how they could coax recognizable sound out of that crappy speaker. Anyone remember Castle Wolfenstein? Achtung!

Brian

got this in an e-mail today. :)