MY OLD COMPUTERS HISTORY

I was touched by the magic of computers first time in the early 80's when I saw
THE Commodore 64. I knew absolutely nothing about computers or computing but I was extremely excited to start my long (of course I didn't know that at the time) journey with them. Since that I have had hundreds of computers and game consoles and, amazingly, the magic is still there. In the beginning I was only interested in new computers. Now I am almost obsessed with old computers. I don't mind having a hobby like this, though. Some people put their money in booze, I put them in old computers. And I am even little proud of it.

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Six months later I got the Spectravideo 328. At first I had only the main unit with a tape player. My next device was the dot matrix printer, 605 expander with 80 columns, centronics and RS323 cards. In addition I had several programs and other computer related stuff such as magazines and joysticks.

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My third computer was Commodore 128. I used it only to play games. Programming with it seemed like it was too hard for me.

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As soon as I first saw Atari 520ST, I knew I had to have one! I read everything that had been written about it from the magazines and brochures. I convinced my parents that my whole life would depend on it. So I got my first Atari 520ST! I used Atari computers for couple of years. I only changed the model several times. Finally my last Atari was Atari MegaST. At the time I got a change to borrow my friend's PC computer, Nokia Mikromikko 3TT. How useless it felt!

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The world of computers changed and so did I. I sold my Atari MegaST and bought my first PC: AST Premium 286. This device (8 MHz, 1MB memory) with 14" color monitor was kind of pricey: 14 000 Finnish marks, that is 2,333 euros!

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Since that I have had several different PC computers and game consoles. Many years ago I started collecting old computers and almost anything related to them. At first I only wanted to get back all the devices I played with when I was younger. Pretty soon I realized that I had to have more than that. This silly hobby went beyond any reason or understanding long time ago and I don't know anymore why I keep doing this. Any ideas?

To be continued...