[fireman15]

I can’t tell you how many days I spent typing in programs from books and magazines and saving them to cassette tapes for that TI-99/4A. I of course spent a lot of time working on what I thought at the time were important programs in TI-Basic and Extended Basic.

Of course, I ditched the TI and bought a Commodore 64 when they became available with a disk drive for a reasonable price. But I still have a TI expansion box that originally cost a small fortune. And then I ditched the Commodore 64 after I put together my first IBM PC Compatible computer. But fear not... I have always had a lot of storage space, so I still have a huge collection of vintage hardware.

[Myrddin]

I still have a Vic-20. Purchased mostly as a gaming box for the kids. By 1993, I had networked PCs in the house with coax based Ethernet. When "doom" was released as a networked game, I modified it to include "pink bunny" characters before letting my sons play the networked version. They enjoyed it. I was using the networked machines as a software development platform for work.

I was really wanting a hard disk for the old H-8 computer, but just as I was ready to buy the drive and XEBEC controller, my clutch needed replacing. It never came to be.

[Myrddin]

I still have a Vic-20 around. It was purchased mostly for the kids to play video games. By the time I had PCs in each room and networked with coax based Ethernet, it was time to "up the game". There was a networked version of Doom available. I'm not a gamer, but I modified the code to change characters to things like pink bunnies before letting my sons play. They laughed a lot. That was nominally 1985.

While the kids were playing Doom on networked PCs at the house, I was getting work done on a TRS-80 Model 16 running Xenix. E-mail in 1983 was based on UUCP. My Xenix box was part of a nationwide network of UNIX style boxes. I put my first internet connection up in 1985 using a Xenix port of Phil Karn's amateur radio oriented "net" code. UCSD hosted my connection. It was very primitive. Telnet.FTP. Simple sendmail with internet style user@host e-mail addresses.