My First Computer
It was a long time ago now that I bought and used my first computer. This was a Dick Smith System-80 (known as a Video Genie in the UK) , which was an Imitation TRS-80. This must have been about 1980 though I always thought it was 1979. Anyway, I bought one, and a portable B&W TV (by Sharp - I still have it and the TV part still works) to use as a monitor.
The image was always small and wavy, but good enough to use. So much so that I bought and used any number of programs for it, including Lazy Writer, Alien Taxi, an editor/assembler and a host of others. It wasn't long before I had the computer modified either. A local (for Perth) electronics store added arrow/cursor keys, sound, a joystick port (which used an Atari joystick) and an (official) expander box which added memory and the ability to chain and read four floppy drives (each with a massive 100kb of storage) and a dot matrix printer.
I also installed extra video ram which, when used the right software would redefine the graphics characters. You needed that because you were limited to a screen 64 characters by 16 lines in size. Each character position could either be an ASCII character or a 2x3 element grid giving you a 128x48 resolution. You could set elements (turn them white) or unset them (turn them black). Here's what it looked like (a screen from the subLogic Flight Simulator which I used to play:
Primitive, eh? And yet I played the most fabulous games on my System-80! I guess one had to use one's imagination, and yet they were really fun. I remember hooking two of these together using external cassette drive cables (it used TRS-DOS, not MS-DOS) and playing a version of battleship (it worked, mostly)! I especially loved Alien Taxi and Sea Dragon (and check out these videos of actual games!).
I kept and used my System-80 until I shelved it for an MSX computer called a Spectravideo (but that's another story). Them were the days!