My first Computer

In 1986 or thereabouts I was interested in buying a computer. I knew absolutely nothing about computers and did not really need one especially since I did not know what they could do or not do. But I went shopping anyway. There were not a lot of places you could buy one. I went to Radio Shack which was one of the leaders in the computer infancy. They had one called a TRS computer, also known as the Trash computer. I thought What the heck? so I bought one and took it home and hooked it up expecting miracles to appear on the screen before me. What I saw was nothing. just a blank screen and hitting every key on the keyboard did nothing to change it. I concluded that there must be something wrong with the computer, It couldn't be me. So I took it back and to my surprise they took it back and gave me credit for it, no questions asked. I don't know how long I looked after that but I spotted a sign it the Shopping Mall across the street from Shillito's Department store that said "Computers". I went in and looked around. I don't remember the brand names they had then but they were all more than I was willing to pay. I spotted one on the counter that the salesman said he could give me a deal on as it was a floor model. It was a brand called Amstrad.

I had never heard of it but I later found out it was made in England. If I had known that I probably would not have bought it. I knew nothing about brand names. After a lot of thought I decided to buy it. It was the cheapest I could find and everyone knows I like to buy cheap. I took it home and set it up and you guessed it, I was staring at a blank screen. Unbeknownst (Is that a word) to me this computer did not have a hard drive, what's a hard drive? It also did not have an operating system, What's an operating system? As you can see I knew nothing about a computer. After what seemed like hours reading I learned to make a computer work you had to have an operating system which was stored on a 5 1/4" disk that you had to insert in the drive slot on the left called "A" slot. Then Reboot (Another technical term I had just learned) the computer. I did and it made a lot of noise like it was digesting some food or the disk I had just put in. The screen lit up and I thought now I was getting somewhere. But all I saw in front of me was the letter A:\ blinking off and on. Back to the manual where I learned that if you wanted the computer to actually do something you had to put in a program which was stored on another 5 1/4 disk called a "Floppy" (Another new term) in the drive on the right which was naturally called Slot "B". So I put one in that came with the computer and nothing happened. Back to the manual. It seems you have to type in B:\ and then hit the enter key to switch to the B:\ drive so I did that and "Nothing" a blank screen but this time I had a blinking B:\ staring at me instead of that horrible A:\. Back to the manual. It seems that each program you wish to run comes with a command line you have to type in to run the program. such as Start.exe, That .exe is the important part because that tells the computer to execute the program, at this point I felt like doing it to the computer, If you don't know the command line you can usually find it by typing in B:\Dir. This is known as a DOS command (Disk Operating System) and it will show you all the files on the disk, all you had to do is find one that ended in .exe or .com and then type that in and the program will start. I did not mean for this to be a computer lesson so I'll cut it short and maybe expound on it later. I also learned to install a Modem so I could log on to the internet, and a sound card card so I could hear stuff. I could probably write a book about my computer memories.