Computers I Have Known, a Love Story (Premium)

While scanning in thousands of my old paper-based photos, I’ve come across people, places, and events that I’ve long forgotten. I’ve also come across many pictures of the computers I’ve owned over the years. I thought you might enjoy some of these.

I don’t have pictures of all of the computers I’ve owned or used, at least not yet, and certainly not the very earliest ones. My love affair with computers began in the early 1980s, when I would linger over the Commodore VIC-20 in Sears and imagine the games that I could create with the machine. (I have very specific memories of a Star Wars space battle game that wouldn’t be realized by professional video game designers until the Battlefront series many decades later. So I guess my imagination was just a bit ahead of what the technology was actually capable of.)

The computer I really wanted, of course, was the Commodore 64, which was first released in 1982. But that was initially more expensive—$600, if I remember correctly—than my parents would entertain. But we had gotten an Intellivision video game system, so I was able to convince them a year or two later to purchase a peripheral that forever guarantees I have the best-ever “first computer” story: My first computer was the Entertainment Computer System (ECS), an Intellivision add-on that turned the console into a real computer. It cost $150, plus the cost of some cables from Radio Shack to connect it a tape recorder for storage.

The ECS was pretty amazing, despite its obvious limitations, and you could use the character sprites and other graphics from any cartridge you plugged into the console in your own BASIC programs and games. So this was also my first experience with programming.

I did eventually get a Commodore 64 and outfitted it, over time, with a plotter printer, a cassette drive, and a 1541 disk drive; the display was a normal color TV. In time, I replaced it with a Commodore 64C and 1541C. After those were destroyed in a house fire in 1987, I wanted to buy an Amiga, but the local dealer didn’t have a payment plan, and I didn’t have any real credit cards. So I bought an incredibly expensive Apple IIGS system—$3300, I believe, at some crazy interest rate that was likely around 28 percent—that I then spent thousands more on trying to make it more like the Amiga. (I re-taught myself Pascal on this machine.) I finally sold it and bought a used Amiga 500 with a genlock, which I then spent thousands on via various upgrades. Right before me moved to Arizona I “upgraded” that to an Amiga 600—really a downgrade—because I couldn’t afford an Amiga 1200.

Once we got to Arizona, where we had moved so I could go back to school, I had to choose between Mac and PC so that I could take programming classes. The PC was the obvious choice, despite my disdain for Windows and Microsoft, and I finally built my first PC, which was based on an AMD 386SX chipset. Suffice to say, I was underwhelmed by the quality of most of the PC games of the day. The big exception being Wolfenstein 3D, Id’s classic shooter. And then DOOM happened. And then Quake. And well, here we are.

Let’s take an incomplete stroll down memory lane.

DEC VT180

Out of date when my high school purchased them, the DEC VT180 was my first formal experience with programming, thanks to BASIC and Pascal classes that I took in my junior and senior years. This is from Spring 1985.

Commodore 64C

Here it is, with the 1541C disk drive, in July 1987.

Apple IIGS

This shot, from May 1990, shows my Apple IIGS set up in our first apartment less than a month before we were married. Note the three drives, the Apple Writer printer, and the amazing and color-coded Bose speakers.

Amiga 500

I haven’t yet come across any good pictures of my (eventually heavily-modified) Amiga 500 yet, but I know they exist. Here’s one picture, from September 1990, of me and my brother playing what I believe is Jordan vs. Bird: One on One in that same apartment.

Amiga 600 and IBM PS/1

I also don’t yet have any good pictures of my Amiga 600 or my wife’s first PC, an IBM PS/1 that we bought at Sears, though I know they’re out there somewhere too. But here they are packed up in February 1993 for our move to Arizona.

Commodore stock

My parents bought me Commodore shares for Christmas in 1993. The company filed for bankruptcy four months later.

My first PC

I believe I’ve published this photo before, but that’s my first PC on the floor on an apartment in Phoenix. This is where I wrote my first book, about Visual Basic 3.0, while listening to The Offspring’s Smash on a continual loop on CD. I still think of VB when I hear that music.

Dell Dimension tower

The first PC I purchased pre-built was a Dell tower, which you can see here in November 1996 in our apartment in Phoenix. There’s a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard hiding behind the chair, our first (HP) laser printer, which lasted for many, many years, and my brown Microsoft MVP clock. Plus a little ottoman on the desk for our cats to nap on. The furniture was excellent, from a place called Copenhagen Imports.

Co-located Dell PowerEdge 2100/200

I worked for a San Francisco-area startup in the mid-1990s, and we had a Dell PowerEdge 2100/200 server running Windows NT 4.0 Workstation in a co-location facility in San Jose, California. I used this server and Microsoft’s Active Server Pages (ASP) to create some of the first dynamic websites in the world (yes, really) and I later wrote books about it.

Toshiba Satellite Pro 490XCDT

This is the first laptop I ever purchased for myself (used), a Toshiba Satellite Pro 490XCDT. It had a swappable drive/battery and a nice docking station and lasted for many, many years. Here it is in July 2000.

Home office 2001

Here’s my home office from May 2001. This is our first house in Dedham. That black and silver box in the back is a Dell digital media receiver.

Software collection

I used to be a software collector. Here’s a lot of it, from April 2003. You can see many DOS, OS/2, and Windows versions in there, plus other software and my published books.

iMac and PCs, 2003

Here’s my home office setup from August 2003. That’s an iMac on the left, which I bought to work on a book for the education market. And a Dell tower that was my primary PC. Note the ergonomic keyboards all around. And that that early HP laser printer was still working.

PDC 2003

For PDC 2003, I am using some kind of ThinkPad. Maybe a T40 or similar.

Gaming on the PC

Before the Xbox 360, my son Mark would play video games (Unreal Tournament, etc.) on secondary PCs in my office. This is from March 2004.

WinHEC 2004

In May 2004, I traveled to WinHEC with a ginormous 15-inch Dell laptop, which I loved despite its bulk.

Here I am at Brian Livingston’s house, my co-author on Windows Vista Secrets, which at the time was just Longhorn Secrets.

Home office, 2005

Same office, different orientation. Bose speakers, again. A newer laser printer, this time a Dell.

Home office, home swap 2007

In 2007, we did a home swap in Paris, and here’s my home office from when I was getting ready from the trip.

And then the PCs I brought with me, a review-unit Lenovo ThinkPad T61 and an Apple MacBook.

Home swap 2008

In 2008, we swapped homes with a family outside of Dublin, Ireland. I brought a 15-inch Lenovo SL500 (I think) laptop and a (black) Apple MacBook on the trip. Plus you can see my iPhone there, which I assume was an iPhone 3G. (I still own the first iPhone, from 2007.)

Toshiba netbooks

Netbooks were never powerful enough for me, though I always appreciated them for their small size and portability. But they were perfect for the kids. So we got a Toshiba N200 netbook for each of them, as you can see from this homeswap photo from 2009, on a train somewhere in The Netherlands or Belgium.

Windows 7 launch

In October 2009, I spoke at the Windows 7 launch in The Hauge, The Netherlands. Here I am preparing at the Microsoft office there, and then onstage. That’s a ThinkPad X-series with an optional, larger battery.

Dell Dimension

In 2009, I had this low-profile Dell Dimension, which I used briefly in a dual-display setup with Windows 7. This is from November 2009.

Note the use of Windows 7 Secrets as a display stand. 🙂

Home swap 2012

I brought a Samsung Series 9 Ultrabook to our home swap in 2012, in a village outside of Rouen, France. This is a 13-inch review unit, but I liked it so much I bought the first-ever PC sold from the Microsoft Store in Boston a month later, a 15-inch version that I still own. Note the ergonomic Microsoft mouse.

That’s all … for now

I suspect that I’ll have more of these as I continue scanning, but those are the highlights so far.