[geeks] Let's not get the age thing going again (was:Re[2]: [

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Tue, 9 Apr 2002, jmadjeski wrote:

> I remember sitting in front of that thing and copying, from a book on
> programming in basic, a little graphics program that woulg make this little
> guy appear on screen and wave his arms and legs, like he was dancing... or
> convulsing. I named him "IGGY". Okay, shut up, I was six!

Probably because you thought "Bojangles" was a stupid name. :)

(long story ahead)

I was born in late '79, and my parents got me a 99/4a for my third
birthday, I think (I was three when I got it--it was a big deal, so I
-think- it was a Christmas present).  My family taught me to read[0] some
time before then, and they thought a computer would make me smarter or
something.

I could read the source listings, but a decent bit of the prose was over
my head.  I also didn't type anything with over 30 lines or so for -quite-
a while, mainly because:
   1) If you have kids, you know about the attention-span of a 
      three-year-old.
   2) Tiny fingers don't type well, and I got frustrated pretty quickly.
   3) My parents got worried about my "typing gibberish on the screen" all
      day long.
   4) Munchman and Parsec kicked -so- much ass. :)

I remember having the computer until at least into Kindergarten.  Maybe
later.  It was a -really- flaky piece of equipment, and TI replaced mine
twice before they stopped supporting it (well, stopped supporting it
without a drive to their facility way up in the panhandle) for repair. The
last time it worked, I lifted it off the table for some reason (I think
one of my sister's crayolas rolled under it, or something equally
harmless), and it died.

That must've been '86 or so.

Then, in '88 I got a PC, a Tandy 1000 SL.  -That- POS was so slow that the
manuals couldn't help but poke fun at it.  It died within a week and got
returned (power supply went to hell).  I still have the DOS and Deskmate
floppies[1] for it.

I didn't touch a computer until '91 or so.  In '90, I was browsing a
Waldenbooks in Austin and ran across Que's _Using_BASIC_, and remembered
TI BASIC.  I looked through it and had to have it.

I spent the next year of more jotting source listings onto paper and
debugging them in my head.  I got yelled at a lot in class for this, but,
hell, what 6th grader actually -needs- American-level 6th-grade classes
(which is yet -another- rehashing of four-function arithmetic, the
absolute basics of algebra, memorizing the same useless historical dates,
and diagramming sentences--it gets -old- after four or five years).

My big break came in the 6th grade.  The school could tell that I was
bored in math class, so they offered to put me in a class with the 7th
graders across campus.  On my way there, I found one of the computer labs,
and the coach(!) in charge of it would let me play around on the Apple
II-clones and the Mac.  I spent about 15-30 minutes in there daily playing
with BASIC and cursing the differences between TI BASIC (which I had used
years ago), GW-BASIC (which was what my book taught), and Applesoft BASIC.

Isn't it weird how I can owe all my computer experience to my parents and
my elementary school, two groups of people that will -never- grok
computers, even as tools?  I swear, if this computing stuff ever makes me
comfortably weathly, I'm going to establish a scholarship back there in
the names of the three people at that school who really got all this to
come together.

I got a Packard Bell 486 in '92.  I would've gotten a Mac (as it was the
only GUI (aside from DeskMate) that I'd ever used), but they were -way-
too expensive back then.  The Packard Bell still runs[2].  It's my DOS
retro-gaming system. :)

It came with Windows 3.1, but I don't think I actually used Windows until
a year or more later.  I didn't have any Windows apps, I did my homework
in WP51, and all I had to -make- programs with were QuickBASIC and Turbo
Pascal, so I didn't have any use for it.  Even when I did use it, I did
use the mouse.  Mice still piss me off.

But yeah, I started off as a microcomputer weenie.  Probably still am one
at heart, so long as said microcomputer can run something vaguely
POSIXish, or at least DOS 5.0 with Turbo Pascal. :)

> From then on, anything that resembled the shape of IGGY was called IGGY.
> 
> *sniffle* misty watercolored meeem'rieeeees... of the waaaay we weeere...

I can't get my 99/4a to start up.  I looked for tech specs a while back to
see if I could possibly diagnose it, and failed.  I'm pretty sure the
failure is on the sytem board, instead of in the video modulator, though,
as turning the system on produces a very different variety of static on
the screen.

Getting it running again would be -sweeeet-.  Getting an expansion box
with all the toys (the telephone-coupler is a -mandatory- toy) would be
even sweeter.

--Jonathan
[0] Somewhere when I was -really- young, they got the idea that I was
    brilliant.  So, they pushed me, teaching me all they could at a very
    young age, and I -liked- it.  I don't think I'm all that brilliant,
    but I'm grateful for what they did.  Now, if only I hadn't fscked up
    my schooling/life as bad as I have so that I could try again to
    prove them right... frrrm.
[1] We got the "advanced" model with the 720k floppy drive.  The machine
    shipped with 5.25" discs.  The guy at RatShack gave us a compilation
    on 720k discs, and let us keep the 5.25" discs.  Pity that the
    programs on them won't run without the 1000SL's firmware.
[2] In its original configuration, plus a 4MB memory upgrade, a DX4
    Overdrive, and an SB16.