Computing History 1: Genesis, early Apple years (1981-1987)
I was probably doomed from the start. While I am very very thankful to have been born into the personal computer age, the evil little boxes have dominated my life more that just a little bit.
My first exposure came at age five in the form of an Apple ][+. That was 1981. This will be the year I hit thirty. Twenty-five years in front of the keyboard, virtually the entirety of my life, at least the parts where I was self-aware enough to remember. I only have vague recollections of that era. My family lived in New Jersey in a house built on the edge of what could either be called a very steep hill or a very short cliff. The computer was in the basement. My involvement was limited to the odd bit of game playing and watching my father tinker with the machine. My vivid recollections are limited to two games: Alien Typhoon, an superbly implemented Apple II ripoff of Galaxian and The Atomic Foo Blaster. The latter game was never sold on any shelf, but rather a creation of my father using one of the first examples of create-your-own-game software, a program called The Arcade Machine. In 1983, my father traded in the Apple ][+ for the newly released Apple //e. At this point in time, the only effect that had on my life is there was one particular Pac-Man clone that wasn’t compatible with the //e.
I didn’t start my own earnest computer tinkering until I was older. In 1984 my family moved to Naperville Illinois, in the Chicago suburbs. I was soon raiding the Nichols Library for BASIC programming books aimed at kids and typing in bits and pieces from Nibble magazine. In retrospect at that point in time my own personal programming efforts were very rudimentary to say the last. I don’t think I ever learned the use of arrays, and I wasn’t even using GOSUB/RETURN but just GOTO all over the damn place. Needless to say, my own personally authored text adventure, which I originally titled “Sword’s Quest” was the very definition of spaghetti code. And I had no clue about the concept of a text parser. Strangely this didn’t stop me from calling myself “Nateware” with a business address in the “Basement Floor” of my family home. In one of my nostalgia boxes I suspect I still have the giant advertiser info package Nibble sent me when I enquired. Whoops. I was getting a bit ahead of myself.
I seem to recall making some stumbling attempts at assembly language around 1985/86 or so. I really wasn’t ready for that and didn’t get very far. My vivid memories from that era also involve games. I spent quite a few hours watching my dad play the original Wizardry I, charting out dungeon maps on graph paper. The old Wizardry games still have some of the most classic boxes in all of computer gaming. Associations can be strange things, whenever I hear the songs “Boys of Summer” by Don Henley or “Run to You” by Bryan Adams I can recall watching my father make his way to Werdna sitting in front of the //e with the radio playing. The other memorable game from this time period was Stellar 7, which both my father and myself spent many hours conquering. Stellar 7 was a game quite ahead of its time, both for the 3D wireframe graphics and a great deal of strategy and depth in its action-oriented gameplay. It’s a rare case of such a game that still holds up well today, something that can be said of very few early 80s computer games.
In mid-1986 I learned there was going to be a new Apple II model coming. I was excited. Very excited. I remember the teaser picture of a computer under wraps in the ‘Coming Next Month’ panel of the August 1986 issue of A+ magazine. The next month passed very slowly. When I ripped the September issue out of the mailbox with the glorious cover shot of the new Apple IIGS I got nothing else done for the rest of the day. There were certain advantages to being homeschooled. The wait to get a IIGS was even harder, but finally, in May of 1987 the family //e was traded in for a bright shiny IIGS.
The acquisition of the IIGS ushered in my own personal Golden Era of computing, when I was having lots of fun, really learned to program, got online, and started ‘going pro’ all before obtaining a drivers license. But that will be the next chapter.
My first exposure came at age five in the form of an Apple ][+. That was 1981. This will be the year I hit thirty. Twenty-five years in front of the keyboard, virtually the entirety of my life, at least the parts where I was self-aware enough to remember. I only have vague recollections of that era. My family lived in New Jersey in a house built on the edge of what could either be called a very steep hill or a very short cliff. The computer was in the basement. My involvement was limited to the odd bit of game playing and watching my father tinker with the machine. My vivid recollections are limited to two games: Alien Typhoon, an superbly implemented Apple II ripoff of Galaxian and The Atomic Foo Blaster. The latter game was never sold on any shelf, but rather a creation of my father using one of the first examples of create-your-own-game software, a program called The Arcade Machine. In 1983, my father traded in the Apple ][+ for the newly released Apple //e. At this point in time, the only effect that had on my life is there was one particular Pac-Man clone that wasn’t compatible with the //e.
I didn’t start my own earnest computer tinkering until I was older. In 1984 my family moved to Naperville Illinois, in the Chicago suburbs. I was soon raiding the Nichols Library for BASIC programming books aimed at kids and typing in bits and pieces from Nibble magazine. In retrospect at that point in time my own personal programming efforts were very rudimentary to say the last. I don’t think I ever learned the use of arrays, and I wasn’t even using GOSUB/RETURN but just GOTO all over the damn place. Needless to say, my own personally authored text adventure, which I originally titled “Sword’s Quest” was the very definition of spaghetti code. And I had no clue about the concept of a text parser. Strangely this didn’t stop me from calling myself “Nateware” with a business address in the “Basement Floor” of my family home. In one of my nostalgia boxes I suspect I still have the giant advertiser info package Nibble sent me when I enquired. Whoops. I was getting a bit ahead of myself.
I seem to recall making some stumbling attempts at assembly language around 1985/86 or so. I really wasn’t ready for that and didn’t get very far. My vivid memories from that era also involve games. I spent quite a few hours watching my dad play the original Wizardry I, charting out dungeon maps on graph paper. The old Wizardry games still have some of the most classic boxes in all of computer gaming. Associations can be strange things, whenever I hear the songs “Boys of Summer” by Don Henley or “Run to You” by Bryan Adams I can recall watching my father make his way to Werdna sitting in front of the //e with the radio playing. The other memorable game from this time period was Stellar 7, which both my father and myself spent many hours conquering. Stellar 7 was a game quite ahead of its time, both for the 3D wireframe graphics and a great deal of strategy and depth in its action-oriented gameplay. It’s a rare case of such a game that still holds up well today, something that can be said of very few early 80s computer games.
In mid-1986 I learned there was going to be a new Apple II model coming. I was excited. Very excited. I remember the teaser picture of a computer under wraps in the ‘Coming Next Month’ panel of the August 1986 issue of A+ magazine. The next month passed very slowly. When I ripped the September issue out of the mailbox with the glorious cover shot of the new Apple IIGS I got nothing else done for the rest of the day. There were certain advantages to being homeschooled. The wait to get a IIGS was even harder, but finally, in May of 1987 the family //e was traded in for a bright shiny IIGS.
The acquisition of the IIGS ushered in my own personal Golden Era of computing, when I was having lots of fun, really learned to program, got online, and started ‘going pro’ all before obtaining a drivers license. But that will be the next chapter.
Posted by Nathaniel Trost on
Sunday March 5, 2006 at 12:35pm