The emphasis should be on "our" in the title: I think they mean Portugal's first involvement, which was around 1984. If you took "our" to mean Earth, then other PCs predate the ZX Spectrum and these.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Computer_2048

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pjmlp 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Indeed, I was part of this generation, the first real computer I got, by opposition to build your own kits from electronic stores, was the Timex 2068 from that same factory.

Only recently I got to understand Timex spotlight in USA was long gone, while in the Iberian Penisula it was still all over the place, alongside ZX Spectrums and some MSX models.

I never knew anyone with a C64 back then.

Then the next computing wave was mostly Amiga, there were some people with Sam Coupe, until Windows 3.1 came to be, which is when I left my dear Timex 2068 into PC land, buying on credit, hardly anyone could afford paying on the spot.

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xcf_seetan 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Hi I also was part of this generation. My first was a Sinclair ZX81 with 1 kb ram :)

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pjmlp 4 hours ago | parent [-]

And a double deck tape player, also made into your collection?

That was eventually the next step, for the school trading ground activities.

Not that the Portuguese shops had any original stuff anyway, I bought several games with clear copied covers in black and white, without manuals.

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xcf_seetan 3 hours ago | parent [-]

For the ZX81 there was almost none programs! I could get a chess and a flight simulator (1kb Ram), the rest i used to get from printed magazines. But for later with the Spectrum the double deck tape player was a must! We would go to the local shop and buy one game, when home, duplicate it then return it saying that it didn't load well. want another and pick a different one and so on...

	▲	pjmlp 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ah yes, my circle also did that approach with local shops.

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anthk 35 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

The iberian peninsula was all about the ZX because pirating tapes was the norm. Also, saving custom software in tapes was cheap and producing the games in tapes, the same; they could even fight piracy by selling the games in newspaper kiosks at a very cheap price.

Similar on how the Play Station spread about the country: burning CD's and modding the PSX was trivial.

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pjmlp 29 minutes ago | parent [-]

Yeah, one reason why I grew up bilingual, besides having grandparents close to Badajoz, was the amount of Speccy stuff in games and magazines that we got from the other side of the border, because why bother with translations. :)

Microhobby, Micromania, Solo Programadores (this one came later in 32 bits days), are some I still remember the names.

La Abadía del Crimen, Sir Fred, Livingstone Supongo, Game Over, and such.

	▲	anthk 16 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		And Aventuras AD; but TBH most modern games written for the ZX in Spanish (especially text adventures) are many times better than "La edad de oro del software español" (The golden age of the Spanish software).

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empressplay 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Of course there was the 'holy trinity' of the TRS-80, PET and Apple II in 1977. But even with Sinclair, the ZX80 / ZX81 came before the Spectrum.

https://cybernews.com/editorial/the-1977-trinity-and-other-e...

	▲	anthk 33 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		And before the Apple II, the Apple I and Kim-I. As a sokoban lover I'd love one for the Apple I or the Kim-I over serial, but the 1K RAM limit looks tiny. But you can always create several tapes/ROMs with different level sets...