Ooo I had a Sinclair ZX spectrum and was able to upgrade to the Spectrum+ with the proper keyboard.
I got Ghostbusters for Xmas, and also loved playing Dizzy, the little egg platform game.

I also remember typing loads and loads of pages of code in to make a duck hunt game that was totally sh1te....... and also typing loads in once only to get a powercut near the end grrrrrrrr.

I had one of these. Spectravideo SVI-728.



I have a theory that people of the generation who used these kinds of home computer are probably more technically capable than any other generation. All that 10 print "Hello World!" 20 goto 10 stuff! There was nothing like it before and nothing since!

lol Oh I remember it well...after pages and pages of numbers dot dashes semi colons...and go to's you ended up with a stick man walking across the screen, but it did teach us a lot

I suspect as we had to put some work into producing any kind of usable result, it might make our generation more open to the fact that a computer is not an appliance but a tool! I commented in detail on this theory of mine here.

Which in a way, is funny! If you think about it modern PCs are even less like an appliance than those old home computers. Those you just plugged in and switched on. Then the typing or loading from tape began. But you certainly couldn't take the case apart and swap components etc. like you can in nearly all modern machines! Oh sure, with a PC you can just turn it on and start working but as I mentioned in my blog if you don't appreciate you're working with a tool that needs adjusting and maintaining it is going to stop working properly sooner rather than later!

[QUOTE=rich c;1788022]I suspect as we had to put some work into producing any kind of usable result, it might make our generation more open to the fact that a computer is not an appliance but a tool! I commented in detail on this theory of mine here.

Which in a way, is funny! If you think about it modern PCs are even less like an appliance than those old home computers. Those you just plugged in and switched on. Then the typing or loading from tape began. But you certainly couldn't take the case apart and swap components etc. like you can in nearly all modern machines! Oh sure, with a PC you can just turn it on and start working but as I mentioned in my blog if you don't appreciate you're working with a tool that needs adjusting and maintaining it is going to stop working properly sooner rather than later![/QUOTE]

You can say that again. I got my first computer, as I said, to keep up with my son. He overtook me in about 10 secs flat (this was in the 70's) I can't tell you how many people come to him now to repair, update etc their computers And a lot of them laughed when I got my first Amstrad! "what do you want that for? they will never take off in the home, yea offices will use them and big companies, but I can't see what there for in a house!" how wrong were they

x

Reminds me of the fella who allegedly stated there was a market for 5 computers in the entire world... Um...

Mind you, that quote seems to be disputed.

That's Wikepedia for you!!!

Have only just seen this thread and, erm, how do I confess this......... I still have my first computer!

It's a BBC Model B from 1984, it's still in it's polystyrene box and has the original welcome tape, also boxed, i have lots of other copied games - pac man, donkey kong, monsters, asteroid etc - on tape and on the mahoosive 5 3/4 floppies.

I have a couple of very early word processing packages including a copy of the first attempt of one by a small company called microsoft.

Oh and I have a daisywheel printer that can wake the dead.

Occasionally when i am feeling very nostalgic i will get it all set up in front of the TV and play silly games!