In
1984 I got my first own computer, Salora Fellow. In another countries the same machine
was called to
Video Technology Laser 210 (manufactured in Hong Kong).
With Z80 CPU, 4 kB central memory, 16 kB additional
memory and a cassette driver it was a kinda piece of crap. But with that
rubbery keyboarded thing I learned basics of Basic. Maybe that was because there
were only few games to Salora Fellow (like Key Hunter, Tennis etc.).
Gee, I dreamed of Commodore 64 or at
least of Vic-20.
In 1986 one store, called the Musta Pörssi, offered 500 marks discount of Commodore 128, if they got the old computer. It was a very easy solution to give my old Fellow away for a reasonable cheap C=128! Then I got 128 kilos main memory, better keyboard, better Basic, better graphics, and possibility to play many interesting games, due to the fact that the machine was Commodore 64 compatible! It was heaven, but slow one because I had only a cassette driver (Besides the disk toaster aka drive of Commondore was not the fastest one, you probably know...). I learned more Basic and little assembler, but mostly I learned to play computer games.
PC time since 1986
My uncle, who has many times donate or loaned the money to my computers, he had purchased Commodore
PC in 1986, I think. I learned to use it (and played 'Night Mission' pinball)
little bit. At school I had been few times in a computer club and there were
AMC's CP/M computers. Then those PC's and CP/M's were so big, difficult and
scary. One have to learn some kind of DOS to use them, which was little bit odd for
a home computer user.
However, I got my first PC in 1987. It was Amstrad PC1512 (very
familiar model to the English people at least) with monochrome CGA display, 512
kB main memory, 8 MHz i8086 CPU and two disk drivers!! Then I got the first
graphic user interface, Digital Research's GEM (I had used Commondore's
GEOS earlier but I hadn't
had my own one). GEM was very easy to use and I was allowed to make pictures with
its GEM Paint, but I preferred to use Dos (version 3.20 on those days).
Amstrad PC1512 was very good machine to home users. There were even V.22
(1200 bps) modem with it, so I learned quickly to use several BBS's. Among
the others I used Huhtamäki box in Turku and Sunbox in Naantali. If I don't
remember wrong, Amstrad had an own box in Helsinki. In 1987 I got my first
printer too, which was Panasonic KX-P1592 matrix printer (160 chars per minute,
wide A3 printer, 9 pins). I still have that large and noisy printer somewhere stored I think. On those
days I learned Pascal and Logo too.
It was in 1988 I got new Amstrad model, PC1640 with Hercules monochrome display, 640 kB main memory and two disk drives. Soon my uncle bought 30 MB card hard disk (Mountain), which was very hard to configure, because I didn't know anything about harddisks and interleaves etc. That harddisk was quite slow, when I thought it now, but then it was a great improvement after disk drivers.
Soon I wanted color display to my computer (CGA with better Amstrad
graphics, 640x200 pixels and 16 colors) and in 1989 I bought EGA color
monitor. I remember that I thought whether to purchase a moped or a monitor, so I guess that
the nerdy side of me won :) Well, that was probably better solution, because I'm not
very good with engines stuff. Pictures was tremendous with the EGA monitor,
but unfortunately there were quite few
games to PC then fewer games that used EGA graphics (there were one chess game,
but I don't like chess). My first own pc game was Silent Service (purchased
from Akateeminen Kirjakauppa, Turku), which I traded quite soon for a classic,
Boulder Dash of my friend, Valtteri, who had Olivetti PC.
In 1989 or 1990 (So old times...I don't remember exactly years anymore :-)) I bought a used, but not useless Trifunic AT clone. Then I got 12 Mhz 80286 CPU, 1 MB main memory, 40 MB 40ms hard disk (which was partited from C: to I: to maximize speed!!!) and EGA color monitor. That was quite good tool to pleasure and work, although a mother card collapsed with quite expensive results. That AT was my computer long time, but I used my father's Trifunic 80386 PC clone couple of years as well.
Tired in 1991
About in 1991 I was tired of computers, because my own machine was rather old.
When I had gone to high school in 1989 my future dream was to go to some
University of technology or somewhere else to study computer science. But at
high school I realized that I liked history most (there was only one computer course then
and it was so basic that I quit it, and maths and physics, well I survived but didn't liked that much), so I went to study history in 1992. I
passed the test to computer science too, but I delayed that studying place
to 1994 because
I had to go to the Army in 1993. The Army time was very bad to my computer hobby,
although in the end of the service I had a chance to learn to use anti-tank missile
simulation and an early pocket-pc connected to it.
I even tired to read computer magazines and I didn't know anymore, what
happened in the computer world.
New enthusiasm
In Autumn 1994 I realised, that I had to do something and quickly, if I didn't
want to forgot all my computer skills. I didn't know almost anything about
the new trends, multimedia, Internet, virtual reality. I even hadn't Internet
account and I hated Windows!! So, I thought that history and computer
science could be combined somehow: I bought a new computer, got the Internet
account in Autumn 1994 and started to study computer science too in
Spring 1995. My new computer was the Morse 90 MHz Pentium PC clone with 16 MB main memory
420MB fast hard disk (Seagate, which was almost full soon), accelarated 2MB
graphic card (Matrox),
1.44MB disk driver, Sony CDU33A 2Xspeed CD-rom, Sound Blaster AWE sound card
and 14" color monitor. In Autumn 1995 I bought a new 1.2 Giga bytes harddisk
(Conner ide) and it worked, after few weeks installation! :-)
I had only V.22bis MNP-5 modem for a long time and you can imagine that the Net browsing
wasn't that nice with it, altough I could read emails and irc quite well with it :)
New modem (Easytel's Well AT-1414PC-V V.32bis Voice) and a new mouse
(Microsoft Mouse v.2.0) was purhased in January 1996. Then the netsurfing
was lot more fun! :-)) And Windows 95 was the first Windows system which really worked
for me. I installed even the Beta version of it.
I made the annual computer updating (:)) and bought 16 more Megs memory and
a new graphics adapter, Matrox Millennium 23rd August 1996.
Suprisingly, this time I managed
to install new stuff without complications (at least it seemed so ;)).
Pentium II Power
You can't update your old hardware for ever, so I bought a new Pentium II computer in March 1998, which is little bit
faster machine comparing to my first PC in 1986 :) Here are the pure technical
facts: <yawn>
PII 300MHz/64MB/ 8GB/Matrox Millennium II/Diamond Monster 3D/SB64value/17"Panasonic.
Updatings in March 1999: graphic cards switched to one Asus Riva TNT 16Mb model, due to the Monster breakdown.
I still have the PII at home, because I can use more poweful gadgets at work. I have managed to combine history and computers and even have a job to do that academically, which has been and still is very fun ;) And, I have a new Salora Fellow computer (my cousin's old machine) and lots of material of it, so you will probably see sooner or later some webpages of it here somewhere...