[NTLK] OT: was C64 on app store? now Is IBM evil?

[Matt Howe]

Wow, they say everyone has a twin but this is spooky!

I started with a Timex/Sinclair 1000, learned TS Basic and Z80 assembly.
Modified and added on to the TS1000's I had the 16k memory expansion,
printer, Parrot speech synthesizer and a full keyboard. I had also tapped
into the circuit board so I could drive a CCTV monitor rather than a TV.
Then, I bought an Atari 600XL. Later I got a memory expansion and floppy
drive for it. I got in to modifying the Atari's I had an 800XL with a memory
modification giving it 256k of memory. I had a 130XE Atari drives, Indus
drives, all kinds of stuff. I built my own ring detector (my Atari modem
didn't have one) that triggered the joystick port when the phone rang. I
wrote my own BBS software and ran an Atari BBS for awhile. In my PC days I
started in clones and then on to building my own. I learned PowerBasic, then
Visual Basic and assembly and now I'm moving into .Net. I still have all of
my TS1000 stuff, all of my Atari stuff, a fully functioning Apple IIc with
monitor and double disk drives, A Kaypro portable (looks like a portable
sewing machine) and a couple of Zenith 8088 laptops with dual 720 k floppies
and no hard drive.

Matt (Ducky) Howe
Owner of a MP2000U and an Emate
SantaMatt at Gmail.com (Nokia N770)
matthowe at comcast.net (Desktop)
http://home.comcast.net/~mhowe41/
http://SantaMatt.blogspot.com

Forrest wrote:
<snip>
Wow...another Atari user! I started out with a Timex/Sinclair 1000 with the
2K expansion pack (membrane keyboard, black and white display
adapter)..along the way I also had a TI 99/4A (I remember one of the most
annoying things was the key just to the right of the "+/-" one...if you
accidentally held down SHIFT and hit that key when you meant to hit the
"+/-" one, you wiped out the entire RAM...GRRRR!), and after that I got an
800XL, then two 1050  5 1/4" drives, a 1030 modem, and various printers and
other stuff....Later on I added a 600XL, and I also found an 800 (the
behemoth that once sold for $1000!)...I still have all of them, and AFAIK
they still work (in storage right now).
I learned BASIC on that Timex/Sinclair...then Atari BASIC. Soon I was
writing software in 6502 machine language...there's some memories.
I also have several Data General laptops (from around 1984)...they were
truly portable (although they weighed ~35 lbs each!), but the first ones
didn't have hard drives nor backlit screens. The later Model 2T's did have
hard drives, and one featured an amber screen which sucked up large amounts
of power. In fact, so much so that it required a separate external battery
(most were built-in)...the AC power brick was literally almost the size of a
brick. It featured a full line of business tools (well, for its time), but
(as mentioned in the discussion) couldn't break into IBM's huge business
share.
<snip>