Keep this up and I’m going to pull out my old Apple Newton and grab a picture. First handheld PC 
5 Likes
Then I’d have to dig up a picture of the North Star computer built from a kit in 1976, complete with hardwood case.
3 Likes
you’ve all got me beat. My first PC was a 386 with just floppy drives (no hard drive) and a monochrome screen.
1 Like
My daughter just graduated high school and has never seen a floppy (or other kind of) diskette drive.
I’m pretty sure any kid younger than say 5 may never see or use a CD-ROM.
2 Likes
I had a Timex Sinclair 1000 too. I got it for Christmas with one program (Frogger, which was loaded using a cassette tape). I had Christmas again a few weeks later when my mother found the 16k module and the other 2 or 3 cassettes she meant to give me on Christmas day.
3 Likes
My families first was a 66mhz(with turbo to 110hrz) with maybe 64mg of RAM, a 1300MB HDD, and both 5 1/4 and 3 1/2" floppy drives. DOSShell and Win 3.0 It booted to DOS prompt not to windows or the dosshell.
1 Like
I wrote a simple game on my Timex Sinclair with the 16k module. I was a couple hours into writing it and it was coming along nicely until I bumped the module wiping out its memory before I had saved it to cassette tape. Lesson learned: back up your work regularly.
2 Likes
My first computer was a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1 with 16k memory, and a cheap cassette player for offline storage of programs. It had an older and presumably slower version of the Z-80 processor used in the TI graphing calculators now. An empty for loop could count to ~280 in one second, and that was impressive at the time {1980).
4 Likes
Do it, but let them help you. Awesome parent/child bonding time through hacking old technology…
4 Likes
I hated those damn cassette tapes. For some reason someone always changed the volume on me so i would have to try several times to load something.
1 Like
This thread is making me want to retrofit my old dead Commodore 64 to be the computer that I use to interact with my GF.
4 Likes
If only I liked playing emulated Super Mario with his remixed graphics.
1 Like
Sounds like my son…he changes out different sprites, backgrounds, text, names and such on his old games like GBA Pokemon. Hes facinated with old OS programs. He put linex and DOS on his DS…lol. Learned java when he was 9…
He wants to do ethical hacking for the government or private companies and game developement.
He’s 12…
10 Likes
Please encourage him in his desires…we all know what it’s like to be discouraged by our parents…well that’s just me talking…lol
1 Like
We homeschool so it gives me lots of opportunities to encourage him. 
He learns alot of real life applications. I run my own business and hes an employee as well. Gotta love child labor…lmao
7 Likes
I miss mine…
1 Like
I had a love/hate (but mostly hate) relationship with that 16k module. You had to press pretty hard on the membrane keyboard to type anything, but if you pressed too hard it would cause the 16k module to disconnect from the rest of the computer. I think that was around the time I learned to curse creatively.
2 Likes
Navy taught me that skill. There have been times I smacked my finger with a hammer and astounded myself with the influence pain, anger and adrenaline has on creative arrangement that was purely reflex.
4 Likes
I came across this awhile ago. I would love to see pictures of it if you actually do it. I really wish i still had my old C64.
http://www.pcgamer.com/how-to-build-a-modern-commodore-64-pc/
My husband goes on and on and on about Newtons. He was in baseball-card budget when they came out; but as an eleven-year-old he was already an Apple fanboy.
Cooled in recent years; but he’d still love a Newton.
For what?
Just to have.