Now I'm feeling old. My first machine was a TRS-80 (loved that cassette tape storage) with BASIC programming, but my first program (the one that got me hooked) was in BASIC on a SIGMA-6 mainframe. This bad-boy was my interface of choice:

Paper tape storage, 300 baud comm rate, typewriter speed output. Now THAT's computing!

-F

You are all wimps! Try debugging this baby:

Feh. Totaly unfair. The original coders are all dead and left no documentation!

But at least the media is more stable than what we use now...

and this is how a computer will look like in the future - the future of that time (i wonder what do they thought the wheel will be for, playing need4speed?). just read the text:

Documentation? Documentation!!??

Sheesh...

"Use the source, Luke"

The t/s 1000 was my first computer as well; I got it at Kmart, paying extra for the 16k extension--more memory! I thought it was cool that I didn't have to type in goto but could just hit one key. But loading programs with a cassette player was a drag--sometimes you had to try over and over to get the program to load. It worked better on the Timex 2068, a COLOR computer I got later.

It wasn't bad with no Internet--there was a thriving BBS community. When the Internet rose, those pillars of the community,BBS sysops, faded back into obscurity.

Here was mine http://oldcomputers.net/atari400.html . This page says max memory was 48 K, but actually that is in error. the only way to expand this from the original 8K was to piggy back RAM chips on top of the built in ones with the address line bent up and wire wrapped to the original address chip. You could get a whopping 32 K that way.

I learned basic on this, and managed to produce a passable slot machine app.