First computer: Sinclair PC200

Newly Digital is a collection of first time computer use stories:

I've asked 11 people to write about their early experiences with computing technology and post their essays on their weblogs. Some have written about their first computers or learning to program. Others wrote about their first experiences with the Internet or a budding computer technology. Some stories are short and some span several printed pages.

I'm happy to contribute.

In 1988/9, my Dad brought home a Sinclair PC200, presumably to do work on, but more importantly I hoped, to let me play with. I was 5 or 6 at the time, so my favourite productivity applications were Castle (a supersimple roguelike), Tetris, Blockout (3D tetris!), Sopwith, Bedlam and Symphony. Yes, Lotus Symphony. I enjoyed typing symphony on the DOS command line at high speed - a simple pleasure. I enjoyed moving the cursor around the spreadsheet, selecting shapes and maybe even entering stuff into the cells! I remember it in glorious black and green, as the 16 colour CGA monitor enforced. I'm now using a display several orders of magnitude more advanced, but my terminal windows are still green on black.

The machine came with an awful joystick, and a stiff mouse. Yes, a mouse... to use GEM! I never did though. My DOS expertise was limited to launching programs. I don't think I even knew how to change directories - the machine had no hard drive, and floppies were so small there was rarely a need for subdirectories to change into.

The hardware was: 8086 at 8Mhz and 512K RAM. I remember getting issue 8 of PC Format, which had a demo of Titus the Fox on it. The demo just about ran, with blippy sound and 4-bit graphics. The concept of 'platform game' was totally new to me, so I loved it. I actually bought the game, but of course, the full version required 640K RAM. Never mind though; in those days they'd let you take software back. I also had Fantasy World Dizzy bought for me, but that didn't work either. By then, the machine was getting old, so we bought an Amiga 1200, and exchanged Dizzy for the Amiga version. Life was good.

The only remaining firsts were: programming a gambling game in AMOS on the Amiga in 1993, and using the internet on a Mac in 1994.