3 ms·

In the summer of 1987 I mowed yards 7 days a week, 4-6 hours per day to earn enough money to buy an Amstrad PC 1512. I was 10 years old and when I finally got t

In the summer of 1987 I mowed yards 7 days a week, 4-6 hours per day to earn enough money to buy an Amstrad PC 1512. I was 10 years old and when I finally got to unbox it and power it up, it was the most exciting thing that ever happened to me.

flavor8 6y ago
GEM desktop, digger, ribbit, and all the rest? Did you have dual floppy drives or one?
- heyflyguy 6y ago
  Dual floppies and let me tell you that 6 months down the road I was upset with that decision. Loading any games took 4 floppies and 20 minutes.
petercooper 6y ago
I almost think there's some sort of article/podcast/something in this as I've heard so many similar stories from that era. For me it was sweeping yards and doing chores to save up to buy Visual Basic for DOS. Not the best use of my money it turned out.. :-D
- jacquesm 6y ago
  For me endless (and I really mean endless, especially on days with rain) news paper routes.
gquiniou 6y ago
My parents bought one to do their accounting but never used it. I was a bit frustrated because all my friends had CPC 6168 and were constantly trading games. At this time the PC games were a lot less common (and more expensive) it pushed me to start programming with GEM Basic.
- tialaramex 6y ago
  I'm guessing you meant a CPC 6128 ? There are some really fun games for that machine but it's just at the edge of useful for a bunch more things, it has a real disk drive, but the disks are expensive and capacity is low. It's technically just about capable of using a hard disk, but that's crazy expensive. It can run a real operating system (CP/M) but not very well because it needs a hard disk you don't have or constant disk swapping. Or like many 8-bit home computers it boots into a BASIC environment that has a bunch of clever tricks but ultimately dead ends. The 128kbytes of RAM are bank switched, so it's better than a 64kbyte machine but not as much better as you'd hope. On the family VIC-20 I basically reached the limits of what was practical to do with it. I ran out of RAM, my programs became too slow and unwieldy to use. I never got there with the CPC 6128 but I could certainly feel where the limits were, closer than you'd like, and it often caused me not to set off in a particular direction knowing I'd soon run into a wall anyway. I wrote some simple assembly language but never tried to run a real high level language (other than the built-in BASIC). Whereas on my 486sx25 and subsequent machines it was only ever a matter of time and money, so that was always on me.
agumonkey 6y ago
My father brought one one day. I sadly made nothing out of it, and struggled to install double dragon. One anecdote though... my parents knew people who's son was 20~ and quite into computers. One day he brought us a thing called Works, that he used to manage VHS labels with. It was all innocent but years later I realized this was the first encounter with piracy :) I still have the mouse somewhere.
dmje 6y ago
CPC464 for me. Colour! Built in tape deck! I lost years to Elite. Loved it. Haven’t been as engrossed in a computer game before or since...

flavor8 6y ago

GEM desktop, digger, ribbit, and all the rest? Did you have dual floppy drives or one?

heyflyguy 6y ago
Dual floppies and let me tell you that 6 months down the road I was upset with that decision. Loading any games took 4 floppies and 20 minutes.

petercooper 6y ago

I almost think there's some sort of article/podcast/something in this as I've heard so many similar stories from that era. For me it was sweeping yards and doing chores to save up to buy Visual Basic for DOS. Not the best use of my money it turned out.. :-D

jacquesm 6y ago
For me endless (and I really mean endless, especially on days with rain) news paper routes.

gquiniou 6y ago

My parents bought one to do their accounting but never used it. I was a bit frustrated because all my friends had CPC 6168 and were constantly trading games. At this time the PC games were a lot less common (and more expensive) it pushed me to start programming with GEM Basic.

tialaramex 6y ago
I'm guessing you meant a CPC 6128 ? There are some really fun games for that machine but it's just at the edge of useful for a bunch more things, it has a real disk drive, but the disks are expensive and capacity is low. It's technically just about capable of using a hard disk, but that's crazy expensive. It can run a real operating system (CP/M) but not very well because it needs a hard disk you don't have or constant disk swapping. Or like many 8-bit home computers it boots into a BASIC environment that has a bunch of clever tricks but ultimately dead ends. The 128kbytes of RAM are bank switched, so it's better than a 64kbyte machine but not as much better as you'd hope. On the family VIC-20 I basically reached the limits of what was practical to do with it. I ran out of RAM, my programs became too slow and unwieldy to use. I never got there with the CPC 6128 but I could certainly feel where the limits were, closer than you'd like, and it often caused me not to set off in a particular direction knowing I'd soon run into a wall anyway. I wrote some simple assembly language but never tried to run a real high level language (other than the built-in BASIC). Whereas on my 486sx25 and subsequent machines it was only ever a matter of time and money, so that was always on me.

agumonkey 6y ago

My father brought one one day. I sadly made nothing out of it, and struggled to install double dragon. One anecdote though... my parents knew people who's son was 20~ and quite into computers. One day he brought us a thing called Works, that he used to manage VHS labels with. It was all innocent but years later I realized this was the first encounter with piracy :) I still have the mouse somewhere.

dmje 6y ago

CPC464 for me. Colour! Built in tape deck! I lost years to Elite. Loved it. Haven’t been as engrossed in a computer game before or since...