My Very First Computer

Repost

The very first computer I ever owned was a Radio Shack TRS-80 MC-10. I was quite pleased someone (not me) posted the video that follows about it.

I even bought the extra 16k ram module you see sticking up in the back of this picture.

I self taught myself to work with what was called "Microsoft Level III BASIC". A computer language to create small programs. I even managed to create for myself a small ledger program. It took days and days to define arrays, create counters, correctly call out multiple nested loops, etc.



The computer used a standard TV for a monitor. Unlike today's hard drives, a audio cassette tape recorder was used to store your own unique original program commands.


I quickly learned the FREAKIN' hard way to ALWAYS backup four or five copies. That was because 9 out of 10 times at least two of them would never load back into the computer. The reason being, tape speeds were not always reliable enough to reproduce the precise pitch of the audio signals. Believe me, there's nothing greater for testing one's patience then to experience a couple hundred hours of work going poof !

Talk about tedious.. Here's an example; 10 INPUT "ENTER TWO NUMBERS SEPARATED BY A COMMA:
20 LET S = N1 + N2
30 LET D = N1 - N2
40 LET P = N1 * N2
50 LET Q = N1 / N2
60 PRINT "THE SUM IS ", S
70 PRINT "THE DIFFERENCE IS ", D
80 PRINT "THE PRODUCT IS ", P
90 PRINT "THE QUOTIENT IS ", Q
100 ENDHere's what a run of that program looked like on the screen... ENTER TWO NUMBERS SEPARATED BY A COMMA:
4,2
THE SUM IS 6
THE DIFFERENCE IS 2
THE PRODUCT IS 8
THE QUOTIENT IS 2You wanted something fancier on the screen you could spend hours defining colors, positions on the screen, drawing lines, etc.

After that I did a bit of self taught C+ & C++ compiling, COBOL and Visual Basic before I decided to bag the idea that I'm not a programmer by any means. These were just four of around 50 major languages with about 2,500 sub language categories throughout history of computers.

By the way, I didn't buy a 'dot matrix' printer till a few years later


While I go for a aspirin for my headache, in just thinking back on this endeavor, have a look at the video that got me started down this 'Hobbit Hole' in the first place.

Radio Shack TRS-80 MC-10 Micro Color Computer review


I couldn't wait for Windows 1 to finally come out in 1985.
What an UPGRADE!

We've Come A Long Way Since Then...
For you young guppies, here's a video from the 'land down under' :-)