Mike Ormond's Blog

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I would've guessed that more people bought the Oric 1 than the Jupiter Ace (How many Forth junkies could there be?). But on reflection I'm probably wrong about that.

I never owned one either, although a friend did. I had an Acorn Atom then a BBC Micro B, both hacked to bits (electronic engineer brother). I'm sure I played Manic Minor and know it's history, but it was never one of my staples.

@Kevin - Forth, wow, that takes me back. I'm pretty sure Forth for the BBC was the only piece of software I actually bought; cracking software was my thing back then.

Nope, there are loads of us non-Sinclair owners out there. I just played on everyone else's Sinclair and had an Amstrad 464 with tape drive until it was time to get an Amiga.

I'm surprised there's not an Acorn Archimedes in that list of yours. :)

I never had a Specy. ZX80, Vic20, Acorn Electron, BBC B, Archimedes then the world of PC's took over - until my tried a Macbook pro

I also never had a specy, My computer history goes Dragon32, BBC Model B, then straight to PC with a 386DX40.

I was very much a Commodore man - VIC20, then Commodore64, then Amiga.  I wrote games for the VIC20 that ended up selling worldwide (finally justified the cost of buying it to my Mum!).  Machine code was my weapon of choice as it had (what seemed at the time!) amazing speed.

Darren.

Mike, I never had a Spectrum, and I also had an Oric 1.  Who would have thought that both Oric owners would one day work together?

I went: ZX81, Oric 1, C64, Amstrad CPC6128, Atari STFM, Atari STE.

If I'm honest, my heart still belongs to my old C64 though.  What a lovely machine that was.  Great games too.  I had the "1541" 5.25-inch floppy drive for it, which was an incredible piece of kit.  It connected via a serial link, and had its own CPU and 4k of RAM.  Dreadfully slow of course, even in its day :-)

Sorry, I'm rambling now...

I'm with Darren, Commodore man here too, no Specy for our household.  Started with a 64, then a 128 then up to an Amiga (500, then 500+, 2000, 1200 and SO many expansions).

Programming with BASIC on the 64 and 128, then on to a litle assembly and C++.

Finally on to PCs from there, where I switched to VB and haven't look back yet (although I wish I'd kept up with the C++)

Another Speccy owner here (rubber 48k, followed by +2) - I never owned another computer till I got a PC later in life, but I was exposed to various others through friends/school, including a Dragon (no idea what type), ZX81, C64, Amiga, BBC Master (school) and Archimedies (also school).

Then as the 'PC' era started it was various IBM PCs, an Amstrad PCW9512 (Logoscript and CP/M), then on to more 'normal' PCs that my dad used for DTP.

From my experiences you either went via the Speccy or the C64 (or Vic20), and then sometimes (if you was rich like) onto the Amiga or Atari. You're path seems very strange to me :)

Even though at the time I was a student for Ferranti who made the ULA, and could get them cheap, I didn't get one.

Compukit UK101 -> BBC B -> Archimedes -> PC

My UK101 is now in a museum in the West Country

Matt

At school I used a Xerox Sigma 9 (BASIC and APL), using dial-up on a ASR33 teletype, then a SWTPC6800 connected to an Olivetti teletype as well as a "glass terminal". The first machine I owned was a PC1211, followed by an HX20, Sinclair QL and a Tandy CoCo. My first PC was an ICL DRS M30, and then various 386/486/Pentium/Athlon machines. I estimate that my current machine is about 10,000 times as fast as the HX-20, and has more than 60,000 times as much RAM!

I think early exposure to the 6800 processor (SWTPC6800 and HX20) means that I will always prefer big-endian processors that  do not distinguish I/O space from main memory space.

Started with ZX81 then polytechnc called me and from then I spent too much time with grown up (for the time) computers such as Prime 500/750, HP3000 and DG MV8000 all of which have long since sailed away with thier operating systems in tow.

When I eventualy got a computer is was a Sinclair QL, which had £400 on the box but Dixons were selling for £149 with a thermal printer. I was earning about £6,500 at the time so it was stil quite expensive. First peripheral I got was a 1200/75 modem and my life on line started there with wild cat bulliten boards ! - happy days

I never had any Sinclair...

Started with a TI99/4A for which I had the whole set of expansion gear (and that introduced me to the beauty of programming in Basic)

Then moved on to an early PC competitor running 8086 (while the original IBM PC used a lower spec 8088)and running either MS-DOS or CP/M. It is so little known I have not found any reference on the Internet about it!!! It introduced me to the beauty of DB programming with Ashton Tate dBase II

From there... it is history with all generation of Intel Processors (I think I have not missed any iteration of them).

I also skipped the Speccy. I got a Dragon 32, without a tape drive, and so spent 6 months typing programs till whilst I saved for one, and hence I'm developing software almost 20 something years later.

I also patronised Laskys (and almost anywhere else that would let you near a keyboard in those days).

After the dragon, I saved up all my cash and bought a Commodore 128 - the week before the amiga came out. BarStewards, as the saying goes.

Like you I never owned a Spectrum but did own an Oric 1 (in fact I owned several of them, all 'liberated' from a warehouse fire in Feltham Trading Estate).  An insurance job no doubt

My neighbour had a Spectrum though (he had everything!), and Manic Miner was the first game I played on it

My micro history is:

ZX81

Oric 1's ..

CPC 464

CPC 6128

RML 380Z at school, Sharp MZ80K (wonderful beastie for which I had a proper Pascal compiler), a TRS-80 pocket computer (same as the sharp but with more memory - best calculator I ever owned) - at which point (Oct '82) I arrived at university so wasn't particularly interested in sinclair type toys any more... parents had a BBC B with the Torch add-on (on which I could therefore run TurboPascal) then at some point after that it was PCs all the way...

Partly a question of age I suspect. Played with most of the alternatives at one point or another!