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Civility in critiquing the ideas of others is no vice. Rudeness in defending your own ideas is no virtue.


Thu 29 May 2014, 11:13 PM
I saw Kathy Brown's post about how Ant Pruitt asked whether we remember our first computer. Or at least the first one we ever used. I remember mine, and how I eventually managed to kill it.
 
Back in 1978, my school bought a computer that I am fairly sure was a Commodore Pet that looked something like the image below. That is, I don't remember much about what it looked like, but I remember that my good friend, Jeff, and I were the only ones remotely interested. We learned to do some things on it, simple programming and such. There were no games or anything we didn't write ourselves, but we could make it do some math and very, very simple ascii graphics. It was in a little room and we spent quite a bit of time in there. 
 
Eventually, Jeff got a TRS-80 kit and we played with that at his house. Nobody ever paid any attention to the little computer downstairs, and the last day of school before we graduated, we decided to open it up and see how the insides worked. After playing for a bit, we managed to fry the display, so we closed it up and left it. I have no idea how long before anybody even noticed that it didn't work anymore.
 

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