Similar experience, though I started with a Timex Sinclair. There was an accountant with his own shop that allowed to to play with his TRS80, and eventually I got enough money saved for my Commodore 64, and when I could I graduated to an Amiga 1000 - November '85, very soon after they came out. Along the way, I had also picked up a Tandy LT 1400, with dual floppies running DOS 3.something - I tried to save for the internal hard drive from a third party, but couldn't. I eventually sold the laptop to Microsoft for their compatibility labs - actually made money on the deal.
My first HD was a 30mbyte SCSI add-on for the Amiga, used, from a local Amiga dealer, and as soon as I got that, I started my BBS with my USR 2400 baud modem. Played around on Fidonet, too. Finally, the HD on the Amiga died, and I tried to resurrect the BBS on a 286, but it was never the same, so I abandoned it. In the meantime, I got a job on a helpdesk for a fairly large company, supporting their IBM mainframe. After some misadventures of varioius sorts, I graduated from that to working on Novell 3.11 serviing WfWg 3.1, then thankfully WfWg 3.11, and then NT 3.1, beta, then production. >From there, it's been mostly Windows work, but I've been lucky enough to be introduced to FreeBSD. Tried various linux distros, never felt comfortable with them - once I had FreeBSD in front of me I never looked back, and implement everything I can in it. On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 12:02 PM, Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sat, Nov 15, 2008 at 11:33 PM, Steve Pruitt > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> I started with a TRS-80 Mod I ... > > <GAZE TARGET=navel> > > First computer I ever spent serious time on was an Apple ][ (later > the //e). First "computer" I ever owned was a microprocessor learning > kit from Radio Shack; all it had for output was eight LEDs plus a > 7-segment. First "real computer" was a Tandy 1000 SL, featuring an 8 > MHz 8088 and 512 KB RAM (booting DOS from ROM, so cool at the time). > Never really did Win 3.x myself, but did run OS/2 Blue Spine for a > while. Eventually went to 9x for games. > > Most of my work experience was on (all rise) NetWare 3.11 (be > seated) and various *nix flavors, until Windows 2000. These days, > it's MS Windows and Linux as far as the eye can see. > > </GAZE> > > -- Ben > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ > ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
