Retrocomputing

I remember growing up always taking things apart to explore what made it tick.  My Uncle Paul saw the engineering wheels spinning in my head and made it possible for me to get an oscilloscope and lots of various electronics.  I was gifted some of those "exploring electronics" kits from RadioShack.  

We moved to New York and my parents bought me a Texas Instruments TI 99/4a computer.  I picked up a magazine about that computer and my eyes were opened up to the world of programming.   I then spent summers with my friend Phillip, typing in programs from magazines (games such as Snake, and Tetris) to play them and save them to cassette tape.

Later, my father bought an Apple ][+ computer, and an Epson MX-80 dot-matrix printer, and a NEC green screen (see above title picture).   I learned how to program in BASIC, wrote various programs, and incorporated my ability into my grade school science projects (flower pollination by bees), and my childhood weekend play with my friends (GI-Joe) by using programs I had written earlier to act as top-secret computers that we had to break into and get the secret plans and maps.  A lot of fun!

I acquired a lot of software and games, and even upgraded the computer to an Apple //e (enhanced) with whopping 128K (80-col expansion card) and newer ROMs for additional characters and capabilities.  I also purchased a SAM Card (Software Automated Mouth), plugged into slot 4 and it was great fun having the computer speak and sing and just play around with the primitive digital audio to analog capabilities. 

Middle school through high school.. you could find me in the computer or science labs.  When I created a program in Turbo Pascal that took questionnaires from people who paid $1 and added them to a homegrown database and then used a homegrown algorithm to play cupid and match people up (there top 10 matches).  Entered into programming contests and won a couple for our school.