A list of all my favourite computes, phones & games consoles I’ve mostly owned or used at school & college, in order of purchase / initial use …
Computers
Commodore PET (1977)
The Commodore PET was the first computer I learnt BASIC in the school computing club (1981)
The first program I wrote was an animated Christmas card as part of a school competition, I was quite proud of it. We were meant to showcase all of our programs at a public school event however I forgot to take the tape with me to school, I was truly gutted. I also mislaid the tape at home so have lost all those initial programs I wrote :(
BBC Micro Model B (1981)
I didn’t own this personally at home but used it in the school computing club
Commodore VIC-20 (1981)
I didn’t own this personally at home but used it in the school computing club
Oric-1 (1982)
I didn’t own this personally at home but used it in the school computing club
Dragon 32 (1982)
I didn’t own this personally at home but used it in the school computing club
Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k (1982)
The Spectrum 48k was my very first home computer and therefore was very special to me. It had a unique rubber keyboard. I used to spend hours on it writing BASIC programs & playing games.
I spent so long on the Spectrum one of my sisters suggested I should go to computing college which was absolutely the right decision for me, I never looked back.
Tomorrow’s World broadcast a computer program which I saved and loaded on the Spectrum, this was the first time I received anything remotely, I couldn’t understand how this was possible at the time, it took a few days for it to sink in !
Peripherals
- Alphacom 32 thermal printer
- Competition Pro joystick
- Kempston joystick interface
- Tape player/recorder
- I always wanted a ZX Microdrive but couldn’t afford it
Magazines
Commodore 64 (1982)
I was just blown away by this computer, it was the first time I appreciated the impact of Moore’s law
Peripherals
- Action Replay (Datel Electronics)
- This was pretty much the first peripheral I bought for a home computer, I was blown away that the computer could be extended and modified at the hardware level. I used this to save game state and hacking games typing in pokes & cheat codes etc.
- Commodore 64 Communications Modem (Compunet)
- This completely blew my mind as it was the first time I got online from home, to connect to other computer systems such as bulletin boards & Compunet.
- Compunet was also the first time I sent & received email, I remember I couldn’t wait to get home for school to see if I had any new email, seeing the envelope icon appearing & flashing next to a postbox was magical to me.
- My phone bill was ridiculous (£100s per month, and this was back in the 80s), to this day I still can’t believe I got away with spending so long and so much money on phone bills, my parents obviously thought it would be benefical for me and / or perhaps it kept me out of trouble.
- Come to think of it I was extremely lucky to have early access to many great computers & peripherals, at home & school :)
Apple IIe (1983)
My dad had one of these at home, although I only really used it to play a few games
IBM Personal Computer (1983)
We used the IBM Personal Computer at computing college to learn;
- Assembly language - low level programming
- Borland Turbo Pascal - programming language
- Lotus 1-2-3 - spreadsheet
- Microsoft MS-DOS - operating system
Data General Eclipse MV/15000 (1986)
As part of my first job as a computer operator (1992) I was responsible for operating the Data General MV/15000 mainframe computer & writing automation scripts. This has been one of my favourite jobs over the years as I had a lot of responsbility and had to do a lot of problem solving late into the evening, I learnt a lot. We didn’t have the internet or up-to-date manuals back then :)
Peripherals
- Kyocera Laser Printer
- I programmed using Page Description Language (PDL) to re-create a load of forms which we previously had to buy externally pre-printed, this saved us a lot of money.
Software
- AOS/VS II - Operating System
- CLI32 - developing automation scripts
- Micro Focus COBOL - developing reports
- Cyberscience CyberQuery / CyberScreen (CQCS) - building Business Intelligence & database solutions
Commodore Amiga 500, 600, 1200, 1500 (1987)
Another ground-breaking computer, the Amiga 500 was by far the best Christmas present I ever had. I subseqently purchased 3 further models below. This was the first computer I used which had a ‘windows’ system. The graphics & sound were game changing.
Peripherals
- A500-HD+ - hard drive
- Amiga 500 512KB RAM expansion
- Commodore 1084 Monitor
- Competition Pro Extra (clear) joystick
Sony Vaio Laptop, VGN-NR21S/S, 1.66GHz with 15.4 Inch Display (2007)
Inspiron 1545 : Intel Celeron Dual Core T3000 (2009)
Dell Studio Core2 DUO 4GIG (2009)
Dell Alienware M17x R5 3.4 i7, 24GB,256GB SSD (2013)
HP EliteBook 840 G3 i5-6200u,4GB,500GB HD (2016)
DELL PowerEdge™ T105 (2017)
HP Elitebook 840 G4 14" i5 7th gen SSD 256GB RAM 8GB (2018)
Dell OptiPlex 7070 MT (2019)
Apple MacBook Air M1 13.3" (2020)
Games Consoles
Binatone TV Master (1976)
I don’t remember the exact model (I was 5), however thin it was this one;