My First Computer

Today there was an article on Digg (read it here) that sent me down memory lane. Despite it's title, "10 of the Ugliest Personal Computers Ever Made", it's actually just a collection of pictures from old computers, like the IBM ICS. Reading through the comments of this post, someone mentioned the TRS-80. I remembered that my first computer was a Tandy. I started searching the tubes for a picture of it, because it definitely didn't look like the TRS-80.

I finally found it. The Tandy 1000 - at least I'm pretty sure this is the one. The picture shown here is from an eBay ad. Purchased for at the DI by my grandma for $10.00. I was 14 years old..., which makes the year 1994, 10 years after the machine was actually created. Not top of the line by any means, at this time, I'm pretty sure Intel's 486 processor was out and about. Nevertheless, I made good use out of this machine. Despite not having a hard drive when purchased, my dad helped me put a 40MB drive inside the enclosure somehow. I messed around on it, playing old video games and etc, and eventually saved up to buy myself a copy of Power Basic, where I could continue my hobby of programming, which I did, and what I do for a living today is a direct result of this. BASIC was not my first programming language - the first was actually whatever language comes on a TI-82 calculator (maybe that's BASIC too, TI BASIC rings a bell).

I have no idea what happened to this computer of mine. It's gone. I'm having a hard time not buying this one off of eBay. Sentimental value and etc, you know what I mean? I wonder if I could somehow get Linux running on an 8088. I'm sure there's a port out there somewhere.