RETRO COMPUTING

Hi there and welcome to my retro computing pages. With these pages I want to relay some of my earlier experiences in computers and in doing so convey to you why i'm so caught up the Wonder and Majesty of these wonderful machines.

I was introduced to my first computer circa late 1982/early 1983. I would have been around eight or nine years old at that time.

DRAGON 32

That very first computer was the ubiquitous Dragon32 which is still fondly remembered to this day. The Dragon32 had the dubious honour of being built with the Microsoft Basic operating system. Software in those days was very thin on the ground and very quickly the computer publications of that time started putting basic programming listings in the magazines for its reader to type in themselves, by doing this I soon became fluent in programming the Basic language. Although I don't have my original machine, I do have a Dragon32 in my personal collection of aged & long since defunct computers.

Having used the Dragon for a while, I was hooked and then set out on a long road of discovery and wonderment in the world of the Microcomputer.

SINCLAIR SPECTRUM

My next computer was the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. I acquired that computer in early 1984 and I once again learnt the Basic programming language for that computer, later on I even tackled Hexadecimal and Machine-Code programming. One of my favourite tricks was to disassemble the current games to find all the cheat codes.

In the UK the Sinclair Spectrum, or the 'Speccy' as it was affectionately know was a very popular computer and saw sterling service for a number of years. It underwent a few significant facelift during its time. The original models available were the very early 16k version and the 48k version which was the most common. Around late 1985 saw the inception of the Specrum Plus which had an upgraded keyboard from the previous 'dead-flesh' one, this keyboard was more usable but was still very amateurish.

When Sinclair Research was bought out by AMSTRAD in 1986, the Spectrum almost became a clone of the CPC series of computers from Amstrad. The Plus2 model had a whole suite of clothing/keyboard and had a combined cassette player/recorder built in. Those upgrades made it resemble the CPC464 very closely. Later on another new model was released and was christened the Plus3, this particular model was very similar to the Plus2 but it sported an upgraded ram size of 128k and it included the famous Amstrad three-inch floppy disk drive. Although a very capable machine, the Plus3 never really took off, by this time the 16bit machines from Atari and Amiga had a stranglehold on the market and virtually killed off all the 8bit machines.

AMSTRAD SERIES

After having had my share of Sinclair Spectrums I then reluctantly upgraded to an Amstrad CPC6128. There were two models previous to this one but I didn't own any of those. Again I very quickly learnt the Locomotive Basic and became very adept at writing my own programs.

The Amstrad also gave me my first introduction to LOGO and CP/M. I remember back when I was in my four year at Junior school, while attending assembly of the whole school, everybody around me was stood up singing the morning Hymns and I was sat studying Logo programming. I was often reprimanded for ignoring my schoolwork and writing Basic Programmes during my classes. My teachers were not amused, but I often wonder wether It was just because I had a greater understanding of computers than them?

Apart from the wonderful programming languages, the Amstrad 6128 was the first computer I owned that made extensive use of Floppy discs. The Amstrad 6128 was a great computer for expansion and I expanded it that much that I eventually blew the Power Supply in the monitor and had to construct an external one to run everything.

I had a 9-pin Dot-Matrix printer, Sideways ROM extension packs that held 16 eprom's with the extra utilities like the Tasword Word Processor and the CP/m programming Languages. I also expanded it to take a pair of 5 1/4 Floppy disc drive to give yet further storage capacities. Just before I moved from that computer we even had a modem but for some reason that never got used? It was a 300baud one with an acoustic coupler!

ATARI 520STFM: 16 bit and upwards!

I got my first 16 bit machine in 1987 the hike-up in speed and sheer processing power really showed.

There were two main contenders for supremacy in the late 80's and they were the Commodore Amiga and the Atari ST series. The Amiga was primarily a games machine, the Atari excelled with Midi Music and most other serious applications. With my interest in Programming, naturally I went for the Atari.

The Atari wasn't as easily programmable as the other machines I had. It had a GUI (Graphical User Interface) called the Gemtop or STOS, and it was similar to the Microsoft Windows version 3. I never really got into programming on that computer but I did become quite conversant with word processing and database applications.

Again this machine was very amenable to upgrading and it went from having 520k of RAM to 4mb. I never did manage to use all of it but as you can appreciate, it's always good to have plenty of RAM.

We also expanded it by adding the Printer from the previous Amstrad computers, the DMP2000 and later a DMP3000. A second floppy drive was in order as was a pair of 5 1/4 floppy drives. A high resolution monitor came later.

AMSTRAD NC100 Laptop

The Amstrad NC100 Laptop was the last of the computers that I got that I could consider to be a home computer. The NC100 was released in 1992 but it didn't take off due to some stiff competition from such as Psion. It was and still remains a very useful little tool.

It includes a small 8 line built-in LCD display. The software included is a PIM (Personal Information Manager, Calendar, Diary, Calculator and Word Processor.

In addition to those it also includes Terminal software for talking to other computers and it has a modified version of BBC Basic for writing your own applications on the fly.

I still use the NC100 today and find it a nice throwback to times gone by.

PC's and beyond

Well, that was just a brief rundown of the 'Home Computers' that I had from 1982 to 1992. After those computers, I then progressed onto the PC's and from there it has been a non stop upgrading experience. The computers I am using now are a far cry from the old 16k 8bit computers I started on.

Although the latest Pentium class machines are very wonderful. It's still entertaining to review these older machines from time to time.

Mick Evans 1999-2001

  [email protected]

[email protected]