| ▲ | WillAdams 6 hours ago | |
For a summer program, I, along with some other kids and a teacher were supposed to build a robot --- since none of us know how to solder, we instead used the money to purchase a computer, modify a nice Rubbermaid trash can and a lazy susan and some drawer slides to hold it along w/ a few accessories (notably a Cognivox voice recognition unit), calling it CTC-1 (Computerized Trash Can mark 1) --- an Apple ][ was selected over the other options (a TRS-80 Model III and an Atari 800 were the other possibilities). Bought a copy of _Apple Machine Language_ by Don and Kurt Inman, and did BASIC programming (having previously started w/ whatever BASIC was on the HP 3000 at the local college where a gifted and talented summer program allowed access. Then, there were rumours in _Byte Magazine_ that Apple was making a new computer, and one day, in the copy of _Newsweek_ in the high school library there was a _16-page_ advertisement (which I pulled out and kept w/ my _MacWorld_ magazines --- had a full run of the first couple of years, but I'm getting ahead of myself....) Graduated, enlisted, began training, then on leave at home that Christmas took out a huge loan and bought basically one of every Mac related thing in the store, including the bag to carry everything in (excepting the ImageWriter printer) --- used it for years, eventually getting HyperCard, playing _The Manhole_ (Where Alice would have gone if Alice had had HyperCard, a precursor to the game _Myst_) as well as buying a copy of _Through the Looking Glass_, the only game Apple ever made. Got out and went to college studying graphic design, using a variety of Windows computers (drove all the way to the state capitol to buy a copy of Adobe Type Manager for Windows 3.0), and then was gifted a NeXT Cube by my brother-in-law. Also bought a Newton MessagePad 110 and used it w/ the NeXT using a serial link to transfer data. And, I bought an NCR-3125 running Go Corp.'s PenPoint, which had a Wacom EMR stylus which paired well w/ the Wacom ArtZ tablet connected to the Cube. A copy of OPENSTEP 4.2 for the Cube was the last thing I bought from Apple until I bought a copy of Mac OS X Public Beta. A thing which I hoped for, for a while was that they would use the NeXTBus and make a motherboard for the NeXT Cube which would run contemporary software.... A great way to vicariously experience all this is to read: https://folklore.org/0-index.html there's even a story on the game: | ||