I have to correct myself, it was 4:30 a.m. when I posted to this thread...
My very first computer was actually a Commodore 64. I had completely forgotten that one.
My older brother purchased a Vic-20 in 1986. About a month or so later, the Commodore dealer was running a promotion of some kind where they were refunding the full purchase price of your Vic, provided you applied the $$$ towards a C-64. My brother promptly took them up on the offer and brought home a new C-64. After owning it for a little while, he decided that what he really needed was a dedicated games machine. He went out and bought a new Atari 2600, and offered the 64 to me for a mere $150.00--a bargain at the time as the 64 was selling for around 300.00. Even back then I was a cheapskate, so I couldnt pass up that bargain. After owning it for about two weeks, I decided that I didn't have the time to learn how to make it do anything useful, and didn't wish to spend the big bucks to buy the extra stuff that would be needed (printer, disk drive, etc.). A 1541 drive was about $500.00 at the time. After owning the 64 for about two weeks, I re-sold it to one of my mechanics at my garage.
By 1991, I was now disabled and had a lot of extra time on my hands, so I spent a lot of time doing volunteer work. One of the places I volunteered a lot was at my children's school, as a classroom aide. My daughter's first grade classroom had a small TRS-80 network set up, which consisted of a Model 4 for a file server, a Network 4 controller, and about 8 Model 1 's as workstations. One of the things the teacher asked me to do was to go over and help the children on the computers. Well, DUH! I had no idea how to do anything with it. Fortunatly, I was assisted by a helpful 6 year old, who showed me how to bring up the system, and to download a program to the Mod-1s. I WAS DOING REAL COMPUTING!
Shortly after this first experience, I was at the local AmVets second-hand store where I turned up a Model 1 with lots of extra goodies, manualage, disk drives, printer, everything. I convinced my wife that we had to spend the $35.00 for it because it was something the kids could use. I brought it home, hooked everything up, and--nothing! It didn't work. I later figured out there was something wrong with the Expansion Interface, but at that time I didn't know that. I thought all I needed was some floppy disks for it, so a trip to the computer store and I came home with a brand-new box of disks. I proceded to put one in the disk drive and--nothing! Little did I know that the disk had to actually have SOFTWARE on it. I did manage to figger out how to hook up the Mod-1 without the expansion, and spent some time playing around with BASIC. I was hooked! I started to read everything computer-related that I could lay my hands on. I learned that the computer needed software, and set out to find some. That is when I learned how old and obsolete my Mod-1 was. You couldn't buy any software for it. (This was in 1991). I continued to learn all that I could and after a little while, I turned up a Kaypro II at the Salvation Army. Having learned from my prior experience, I went home and began to call around to see if software for it was available. One of the local computer stores directed me to another store that might be able to help me out. They specialised in older (obsolete) machines. I called them up and ascertained that they could (probably) provide me with software. I flew back to the Sally, hoping that the Kaypro was still there. It was, but they had it priced at $36.00 and I didn't want to spend that much, not knowing if it worked or not. I convinced the manager to sell it to me for half-price, $18.00. I then took it across town to Discount Computers, where I met my soon-to-be best friend, mentor, and fellow collector, Mark Stone. Even then, he was into collecting old computers. He was very informative, and taught me a lot in that first of many conversations. I left a couple of hours later, armed with bootdisks, WordStar, dBaseII, Basic-80, and some other programs which slip my mind at the moment. I was also armed with a basic knowlege of CP/M and how to use it. I left with an appreciation of old computers, and a love for my "new" Kaypro II. I still have it, and prolly always will. It was my first "real" computer...
--T
My grandfather (my "other" grandfather who used to design parts for those big old computers which filled several rooms) used to write programs for me. I then learnt to program that when I was 5 years old (1986) and I still have all his and my programs on the original blank casette that came with the computer 
