Did you have a home computer in the 1980s?

[wanderings]

We had a ZX81 which attached to the TV (I was also a child of the 80s): it could do programming and graphics. I quickly got better at using it than my parents, but it was not much good for word processing. It really helped me with maths.

Later we had an Amstrad PCW which was great for word processing, and programming (I loved using Logo to draw pictures), but not games. My mum didn't embrace the idea of using it to plan or draft a piece of writing - she would not type a word until she had it finalised on paper. It lasted a few years before it went wrong too often. I learned to type on it; my mum got me a book about how to touch type, and I got quite speedy with it. The manual for this computer was literally an inch thick (and on really thin paper), and written in a very longhand style - how things have changed!

Only Pong
Had first home computer in 1996 at the age of 30. Late bloomer!

My parents only got a computer when I started secondary school. That was 2005.

A friend's dad co-wrote a book on programming with commodore basic. I got a free VIC20 in return for testing the book before it got published. Subsequently got a C64 and a spectrum. I work in IT now and credit my career to being introduced to computers and programming at an early age.

My brother had a CPC464. Remember green screens?

What a palaver if your game took half an hour to load but didn't load properly. You'd have to retry and wait half an hour again! I loved playing a game where your character wanders about talking to other characters or picking stuff up do depending on what you did/said moved the game forward. I seemed to recall wandering around some woods rather a lot .

@Kleptronic

Texas Instruments ti 99/4A. Ah the memories. Whole afternoons spent typing in code in order to get a stick man walking across the screen. I'm a web developer, by the circuitous route of a Mac Classic II, an English degree and a Multimedia Arts postgrad.

I thought I was the only 1 who owned a ti 99/4A, I never found a cartridge for the stupid thing, thank you for being a unicorn also kleptronic

We had a Commodore 64. I learned a little Basic, so I could write very simple programmes.

I still remember having to type ",8,1" and then hitting the RETURN key every time I wanted to run a programme from a floppy disk.

ZX Spectrum. Loved it. Some great games (the original - and best version of - Lemmings, anyone). Taught myself Basic and Machine Code on it. Still feel massive nostalgia 40 years later.

No, mid 90s before we got one. I want to say 1995 or so? I remember we were so clueless that when it said it came with Workbench we thought that meant a free computer desk and were really, really confused that it wasn't! We didn't have internet on it for years though.

How many of you have still got these old computers? Commodore PET in loft somewhere here.

Still have my CPC6128 at my mum and dads place, along with all the peripherals and software.

Commodore 64. I was one of the poorer kids at school, one of only two kids in my year who was living in a council estate. My Mum blew her whole work bonus on it, as I was really into programming and she didn't want me to be disadvantaged (I ❤️ my mum). All my games were in tape, as I never managed to afford the disk drive.

We had an Amstrad pcw as well. My husband wrote his PhD on it.

I’ll never forget the day we finally got our Amstrad, we’d been waiting months for our parents to splash out. We got it home but found that it didn’t come with a fuse in the plug, it needed a 3 amp. None in the house and all the shops closed. So I decided to climb into the loft and go through stuff in search of a fuse. Found one eventually, was so excited I jumped for joy but forgot about the low ceiling in the attic.

Knocked myself clean out, huge gash on my head, claret everywhere ... my DM rushed me to hospital where I had to stay overnight whilst my brothers got stuck into the new computer at home.

I still have the lump on my head where I hit the ceiling

With our daisywheel printer, you were limited to printing the characters which were on the daisywheel (letters, numbers and punctuation), but I found ways to draw pictures using the underline _ and vertical bar | symbols. I also found ways to make one line print on top of another (change the line spacing to zero), and I could make interesting symbols that way.

With a manual typewriter, I also discovered that the full stop embossed the paper and left a raised bump on the other side, so I tried to write Braille. It was difficult, because the whole thing had to be written back to front. I didn't know anybody who was blind that I could test it on!

@Wishforsnow

Yes we had computers early 80's it always surprises me the some now don't think it was a thing until so much later

I knew they were about but we never had anything because my parents were a pair who always seemed to deny that computers even needed to exist and were mistrustful and scornful of them. They are in their eighties now and still very much the same, although have unexpectedly been persuaded to try and iPad during lockdown, with patchy results.

It was around the mid nineties when DH and I (in our own home) got our first home computer, although I had used them at work long before that. DH hadn't though. Believe it or not, at that time there were even still a few City of London offices that were not computerised, and he worked in one (probably the last of it's kind).

We had an Acorn Electron, which was replaced with a BBC B. I was always envious of the kids that had a Commodore 64 as they had all the best games available.

I waited so long loading games from a tape. It was the height of luxury when we got a floppy disc drive

@Frankley

How many of you have still got these old computers? Commodore PET in loft somewhere here.

My Dad still has the BBC Micro and last time I tested it, it was still working.

We had an Acorn electron and my grandparents had a Commodore 128.

Happy memories of loads of games - Hopper and Snapper on the Acorn then Treasure Island and Ant Farm on the C128

We had an Atari, BBC B, then Apple Macs at home in the eighties.
I became an IT Advisory Teacher for schools in my county in 1988 and drove round showing schools how to use BBCs and later Acorns in the classroom. I remember that we were very excited when a company told us they had produced software for the whole curriculum. It was - Hangman. Hangman for physics, chemistry, history etc. 😂
A lot of teachers were very enthusiastic, others not so much; nothing to do with age though, some of the oldest teachers were the most enthusiastic. You needed dedication and lots of patience to make it work.
Anyone remember Roamer, Logo, Pendown and the Concept Keyboard?
There were lots of (male) would be experts who would take control of keyboard and later the mouse, and try to tell everyone what do do. I used to make them teach with their hands behind their backs.
It was a fantastic job.

We had some sort of BBC with cassettes, and you had to type in various code to get it to work, usually involved 'run' or something! And like a pp, a game without graphics, you just told it what you wanted it to do! Don't remember our early computers too much, mainly remember my auntie giving me an electric typewriter and thinking it was amazing! 😂