This picture of my first computer - my first "real" computer, not counting a dedicated word processor - the Radio Shack Model 100, from Progressive Review, which notes its four AA batteries would keep it running for 20 hours. That screen is 40 characters wide (a standard typewriter line is 80 characters) and four lines deep. The best thing about the Model 100 was its bulletproof, 300-baud modem which would connect to just about anything, even over an acoustical coupler. But 300 baud - 30 characters per second - although state of the art in 1979, was so slow that when I downloaded text files from CompuServe I could read them as they came in. Downloading one megabyte, a pretty small file by today's standards, would have taken nine hours and cost, at the prevailing $6.00/hour rate, $54.
10.08.2007
Woohoo!
This picture of my first computer - my first "real" computer, not counting a dedicated word processor - the Radio Shack Model 100, from Progressive Review, which notes its four AA batteries would keep it running for 20 hours. That screen is 40 characters wide (a standard typewriter line is 80 characters) and four lines deep. The best thing about the Model 100 was its bulletproof, 300-baud modem which would connect to just about anything, even over an acoustical coupler. But 300 baud - 30 characters per second - although state of the art in 1979, was so slow that when I downloaded text files from CompuServe I could read them as they came in. Downloading one megabyte, a pretty small file by today's standards, would have taken nine hours and cost, at the prevailing $6.00/hour rate, $54.
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My first computer was a Sinclair imported from England. Later they were to become Timex.
It was "assemble yourself" and had a pounds sign in place of a dollar sign.
Not very useful, actually so I upgraded to a Commodore 64. Now that was a computer.
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