ROMiniscing

All this tinkering has got me misty for the late 70s machines of my child hood. I thought I'd share my timeline for those of you for whom this may resonate.

It all started with pulling machines apart at every opportunity and a fascination with my fathers Odhner mechanical adding machine.

My first electronic project the crystal radio

Then I saved up enough for a modular kit from my piece work paper route

The first micro computer I coveted the mini scamp, a binary input machine.

Next fascination was the Drean 6800, a hex machine code input machine with TV screen RF connection

RCA COSMAC, this wasnt easily available in OZ  but had a cool case and was quite polished

It was about now that a rich bastard brought along a Trash80 to CUBs (baby scouts in OZ) to show off. This was a polished beast compared to the machines I had been looking at. But it certainly had me browsing the catalogues and stores.

The Sinclair really wanted one of these. I think it was Daid Reid electronics in York st Sydney that had these

Then the Dick Smith Super 80 single board Z80 machine

The real dream the Microbee I was very jealous of my best friend James who had one of these and built his own language and compiler. Tape drives were the storage of the day.

The first computer I actually owner IBMXT 8086. Bought this in 3rd year Uni during engineering degree. I was was fortunate that my sister worked for an IBM sales company so I got this with Colour screen and whopping 10MD hard drive for $1500 AUD. This was better that the machines at uni.