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Re: Why home computers used to be considered a part of the family...

And a couple more magazine ads - fairly long copy and all you had to do was clip the coupon, send your money and wait (what seemed like forever in the case of the Spectrum)

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/266627240409385745/

https://twitter.com/SWRetroComp/stat...172352/photo/1

The electric three-wheeled vehicle that pre-dated Tesla...

Hi Trevor,

You and I must be of a similar "vintage"... and we seem to have had similar experiences!

I also used to buy magazines and books, to type in the programs... So I could have games to play! (I couldn't afford to buy the games myself, at the beginning, so typing in programs from magazines was what I did!)

Yes... that's how I learned to program in BASIC too...

I was here in Australia, so we got influences from both the USA and the UK. We bought a Commodore-64 (a US computer), but I saw all the ads for the ZX Spectrum, the ZX-81, the BBC Micro, the Amstrad, etc. (Those were all British-made home computers, for those who may not know... :) )

Few would know this, but there was also an Australian home computer manufactured back in those days (the 1980s)... the Microbee.

(It's amazing to me that Alan Sugar - who hosts the UK version of "The Apprentice" - is the guy who was behind the Amstrad computer! I'd only known his name associated with computers... He's had an amazing business history, when I read more about it a few years ago...)

The other guy I'll mention is Clive Sinclair... (who was behind the ZX Spectrum, the ZX-80 and ZX-81 home computers, and others)... He was a great British inventor, I'd compare him to James Dyson nowadays (though of course, they were/are innovating in different areas).

This is Clive Sinclair's C5... a pre-Tesla three-wheeled electric vehicle, which came out in 1985...

He was amazingly prolific in his heyday...!

Thanks for the trip down memory lane... Those were some great days... :)

Best wishes,

Dien

Quote:

Originally Posted by trevord92 (Post 43153)

Thanks Dien - interesting flashbacks.

The real fun (of course) was typing in the program listings from the magazines and hoping things saved to cassette before something crashed. That and adapting Basic for a different computer (hmm - wonder how I got started in programming!)

One weekly computer magazine here in UK had a one page cartoon advert on the back, partly created by Mel Croucher who wrote this very readable book about one of his games.

Different times indeed!

Re: The electric three-wheeled vehicle that pre-dated Tesla...

Hi Dien

Thanks for those memories - agree we're likely similar vintage (I'm mid 60's age)

First computer - apart from using the main frame at uni - was a Video Genie (Tandy TRS80 clone) so none of the UK magazines had listings to type in directly for it, hence learning Basic.

Been on the web since Mosaic was the go-to browser (eek!) and learned HTML from trial and error plus about the only tutorial website around in the mid 90's

Long form copy works on the web, even if Google is the only thing to read the whole page.

Amstrad were in "hi fi" before the computer days - I owned one of those turntables and, of course, Alan Sugar has hosted the Apprentice in your neck of the woods as well as UK.

Clive Sinclair's company made calculators before computers (and radios before them) and eventually his electric trike. I remember our maths teacher being upset because one of our class had just bought a scientific calculator for a quarter the price the teacher had paid for his 4 function calculator (add, subtract, multiply, divide).

Fun times!