My (first-ever) tech toys

The image above shows a shelf at the Ata Computer Museum, featuring some of the first computers, game console, and devices I ever used.

My first computer was a Spectravideo 328, which has its own page under the RETRO_STUFF menu.

My second computer was a Commodore 128, which came with a disk drive and a joystick. I mostly used the machine in 64 mode to play C64 games. Back then, I also used the GEOS operating system.

My third machine was an Atari 520ST, equipped with two disk drives and a monochrome Atari monitor. With the Atari, I also mainly played games and used various programs. I had an Atari MegaST as my last non-PC based computer.

My first PC was an AST Premium 286, which had 1MB of memory and a 14″ color monitor. Honestly, I have to say that moving to the PC and DOS world was almost enough to make me cry after being used to a graphical user interface and using a mouse. But because of work, I had no choice but to make the switch.

My first gaming console was the Soundic Soundicvision SD-200 (the top-right image on the right side). I remember getting it just a short while before I got my first computer, a Spectravideo. Because of that, the Soundic ended up on the shelf very quickly. My first ’real’ gaming console was the Nintendo NES, which I brought back from a trip to the USA. The TV color system in the US was different from Finland’s, so the picture was in black and white, but we played it anyway until I managed to get a Finnish version.

As I recall, I had some kind of printer for my Commodore 128, though I’m not entirely sure. What I am certain of, however, is that my first PC printer was a Citizen Swift 24 dot matrix printer. The Swift even featured a color printing option.

In the late 90s, I got my first PDA, a 3COM Palm III. I even had a fancy belt pouch for it, custom-made by a cobbler. The device was quite the ”tech toy,” to be honest. Many things would have been faster to handle with pen and paper, but since I had a PDA, I felt compelled to use it. Later on, I also used various HP iPAQ and Nokia Communicator devices, but I’ll save those for another time.

The first and only ’retro-era’ smart calculator I ever had was the Casio FX-750P. While I was in the army, I used it to write various small programs—one of which was a timer for raising and lowering targets on the shooting range. Instead of having to keep an eye on a watch, the program would signal: ’targets up’… ’targets down’…

Last but not least, as the first ’techno-toy,’ I present the Paradox software. I have a love-hate relationship with this particular program. I had to use it for my first real systems project when I built a label management system for my workplace at the time. Paradox was used to manage address data and print it out on a dot-matrix printer. The task wasn’t easy for a young man, but against the odds, I managed to create a fully functional system.

There are plenty of other ’first tech toy’ experiences, but I’m saving those for a book I’ll publish someday. It will be filled with countless comic mishaps from the early days of the computer age—like the time I had to set up my own online banking id because the bank teller didn’t know how… but more on those later…..

Just as a recap…

Category        Device        Key Memory
First Computer Spectravideo 328 The starting point.
First PC AST Premium 286 1MB RAM, 14″ Color Monitor.
First Console Soundicvision SD-200 Quickly replaced by the NES.
First PDA 3COM Palm III Custom leather pouch included!
First Printer Citizen Swift 24 24-pin dot matrix with color.
1. Spectravideo SVI-328

  • Release Year: 1983

  • Processor: Zilog Z80A

  • Memory: 64 KB RAM, 32 KB ROM

  • Graphics: Texas Instruments TMS9918 (16 colors, resolution $256 \times 192$)

  • Context: This was the predecessor to the MSX standard. While not fully MSX-compatible without an adapter, it shared much of the same architecture. It was highly popular in Finland due to its excellent keyboard and expansion capabilities.

2. Commodore 128 (C128)

  • Release Year: 1985

  • Processor: 8502 (C128 mode) / Z80 (CP/M mode) / 6510 (C64 mode)

  • Memory: 128 KB RAM (expandable to 640 KB)

  • Special Features: Three computers in one. It featured a 80-column display mode for business use and was the last 8-bit powerhouse from Commodore before the Amiga took over.

  • GEOS: The museum notes GEOS as a significant ”Graphical Environment Operating System” that brought a Mac-like interface to these 8-bit machines.

3. Atari 520ST / Mega ST

  • Processor: Motorola 68000

  • Memory: 512 KB (520ST) / 1–4 MB (Mega ST)

  • Operating System: TOS (The Operating System) with GEM interface.

  • Context: Known as ”Jackintosh” (after Jack Tramiel), it was famous for its built-in MIDI ports. The Mega ST was the professional version, featuring a detached keyboard and an internal expansion bus, often used in desktop publishing.

4. AST Premium 286

  • Processor: Intel 80286

  • Memory: Typically shipped with 1 MB RAM.

  • Context: AST was a premium ”clone” manufacturer. The museum highlights this era as the transition where ”AT-compatible” PCs began to outperform home computers in office environments, despite the steep learning curve of MS-DOS compared to the Atari/Amiga GUI.

5. Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)

  • Release Year: 1983 (Japan), 1986 (Finland/Europe)

  • Processor: Ricoh 2A03 (8-bit)

  • Context: The museum notes the regional lockout (PAL vs. NTSC). As you experienced, an American NTSC console on a Finnish PAL TV usually resulted in a black-and-white image due to the difference in color encoding frequencies.

6. Citizen Swift 24

  • Type: 24-pin Dot Matrix Printer

  • Features: Known for ”Letter Quality” (LQ) text. The ”Swift” series was popular in the early 90s for its reliability and the optional color kit (a motorized ribbon swapper) that allowed for basic color graphics in DOS/Windows 3.1.

7. Palm III (3COM)

  • Release Year: 1998

  • Processor: Motorola DragonBall

  • Memory: 2 MB

  • OS: Palm OS 3.0

  • Context: This was the definitive ”organizer” that popularized the Graffiti handwriting recognition system.

8. Casio FX-750P

  • Type: Programmable Pocket Computer

  • Language: BASIC

  • Memory: 8 KB (expandable)

  • Context: These were essentially tiny computers in a calculator form factor. They were highly prized by engineers and, as you noted, military personnel for automating repetitive calculations or timing tasks.

9. Paradox (Software)

  • Developer: Ansa Software / Borland

  • Context: A relational database management system for DOS. It was famous for its ”Query By Example” (QBE) visual interface, which was revolutionary at the time, though configuring it for specific tasks like label printing on dot-matrix printers required significant technical effort.