My first computer was a Model III with 48K of RAM, two single-sided floppy drives, a cassette drive (we had two games on cassette: Frogger and Sword of Roshon (

My first computer was a Model III with 48K of RAM, two single-sided floppy drives, a cassette drive (we had two games on cassette: Frogger and Sword of Roshon (a text adventure that I never beat). We also had a word processor (but no printer) and another text adventure called Xenos (I eventually found this game again and beat it in an emulator. It was so satisfying!). My dad bought the computer used for our family in 1984 because he thought I would like it. It also came with a book called Getting Started with TRS-80 BASIC. It was really simple and well-written, with some amusing illustrations, so I was hooked almost instantly. I asked my parents to subscribe to Family Computing (a magazine at the time) because in each issue, they included a BASIC program that was usually a game of some sort. So I would spend a few hours typing the program into the computer from the magazine, then another hour or two fixing the SYNTAX ERROR IN LINE XXXX errors that inevitably came up when I tried to run it. But then I would be rewarded with a game that I would usually play for about 20 minutes before getting bored with it and waiting for another issue of the magazine.