The first computer I ever used was a Vector Graphics Vector 3 which ran CP/M. My Dad brought it home when I was six years old and I became immediately enamoured of this device for two reasons: it had a space game; and to load the game you had to enter “boot floppy” at the console. I thought that boot floppy was hilarious, it conjured images of clowns in my head, and as we all know; clowns are funny. So it was this OS command that set the ball rolling, that made me the geek that I am today.
The first computer that I owned personally was an Apple ][c, a gift from Santa for Christmas 1985. This was a great little machine, it had a 5.25″ floppy drive built in, a mouse and 128k RAM. Back then it was revolutionary that a few of my apps had a GUI (like a primitive Windows) instead of the old text-based display. The text based display was certainly there though, and I taught myself to code in AppleBasic, writing my own demos. I was first introduced to warez when a family friend, who worked at Apple, gave me a box of cracked games and some software that could crack any game. My status as a geek was locked in.
Since that Apple, I have owned 29 other computers: 24 PC’s (from 386 to AthlonXP), 3 Amiga 2000s, a Fairlight CVI and a Macintosh IISE. I don’t see an end to this progression any time soon. If I had saved the money that I have spent on computer hardware over the years, I would probably own a house by now. But what quality of life would I have had?