> When my family went to the local mall I'd make a beeline for the Radio Shack and play w/ the various computers there until my parents pried me away.

Sounds like my childhood. Remember the Tandy TRS-80 CoCo? I do. :)

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EvanAnderson 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Absolutely! There would inevitably be a CoCo on display and that's the machine I'd play with.

A common BASIC program I'd write on new-to-me computers was a FOR/NEXT loop to print all the characters in the character set. I remember discovering the color semigraphics characters in the CoCo character set and being weirded-out. I'd never seen anything like that on any of the other machines I'd ever used.

I snared a CoCo2 a few years ago so I could re-live a few of those memories (and explore the machine with actual documentation).

	▲	thijson 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		My favorite part of that era was subscribing to Rainbow magazine. Every month when it arrived, reading it cover to cover a few times. I didn't have access to any dialup in those days, so this was my only window to the whole ecosystem. I remember a box of 5.25 inch floppies were horrendously expensive at Radio Shack, maybe it was just our store though, I grew up in a small town in Canada.
	▲	blooalien 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Ah, the nostalgia. Those early days of home computers were sure some amazing times. Possibilities were infinite. Who'da thunk that we'd carry freakin' supercomputers (compared to those early machines) around in our pockets someday? Not me. LOL!
	▲	Mountain_Skies 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		For any CoCo folks not already aware: https://colorcomputerarchive.com There are several other good sources out there too but it's a good start for anyone looking to relive the fun old days.

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ButlerianJihad 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The 8-Bit Guy develops and distributes games for vintage computer platforms, and you can download Quarx for the Tandy CoCo 1, 2, 3: https://www.the8bitguy.com/25753/petscii-robot-shareware-ava...

The complete version is also available there for purchase.