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silveradept[Welcome to December Days, where I natter on about things organized around a theme (sometimes very loosely), one a day, for 31 days. This year, we're taking a look back at some touchpoints along the way of my journey with computing and computing devices.]
What I didn't remember about this computer is that it's a luggable, which I have scheduled for later on in this series when I get to the luggable I do remember.
This is one of the other earliest memories of computers that I have, a computer on the dining room table, with a suite of games that is probably pretty familiar to people who grew up with BASIC as one of the beginning programming languages. And while all of my conscious memories of childhood are trying to wrangle Microsoft OSes, the early Kaypros for this time would have been loaded with CP/M, instead, an operating system that would eventually be pushed out by MS-DOS on most of the PC-compatibles that I worked with in my life. I mostly know of CP/M because it shows up at this hazy point of my life pretty frequently, and gets referenced in interesting places elsewhere. I also recognize many of the software programs that go along with the computer, such as WordStar and dBASE, even if I didn't end up using them much throughout my life. I know they were installed on a few different machines until, eventually, they were replaced by something else.
What I remember about the Kaypro, though, is that I didn't particularly like playing Hunt the Wumpus on it, because I couldn't figure out how to get the arrow shooting mechanic to work, or, if I did, I wouldn't actually hit the Wumpus and would instead either go into the room (and die) or find the bottomless pit room (and die). So it was either too scary or too frustrating for me at the time to enjoy playing the game.
And then, there was the other game that I distinctly remember. Ladder, apparently, was written for CP/M as a barrel jumping game much like Donkey Kong. Stephen Ostermiller has an extensive page on the game, including a Java port and elliot-nelson has ported the game to JavaScript for playing inside a compatible browser. There's also, apparently, a Turbo Pascal port of the game, which is another if those older languages that in pretty sure I saw on the spines of the books in the computer space, when the family computer got a dedicated space for itself. Small me, possibly sitting on the lap of a parent, tried to play this game, but much like Circus Atari in the previous entry, the coordination between the hand and the eye hadn't been fully developed to the point where I could do much in the more complex levels. The original game itself only had seven levels, which would seem like an easy enough thing to do, assuming you had gotten the rhythm of the rocks and the controls situated correctly, but there was a tricky mechanism to increase difficulty in the game, at least as I remember it, which was that after completing a new level, the player was dropped back down to the first level, and then had to complete all the levels that had been completed to that point before they would see the new level and try to complete it. So, by the time someone made it to the seventh level to attempt it, they'd already had to play through the first level seven times, the second six, and so forth. This is not actually true, at least in the recreations that I played, but they are just as charmingly frustrating as levels now as they would have been to my younger self, because the game is very quick to pick up on any keystroke, intended or otherwise, and if you linger a little long on your jump key, you might jump again and ruin what you were trying to carefully do. Not to mention the part where a lot of these levels require pixel perfect jumping to be able to advance to the next level or even the next part of a level. I didn't get very far in that game then, and I'm still not getting any farther now, with time and a little age on my side. (I did make it to level four in the recreation, which is farther than I did in the original, that's for certain.) It's the kind of ASCII game for people who feel that the limitations on movement imposed bythe hardware of the NES and earlier systems make a game quaintly challenging, rather than intenseley frustrating.
I don't remember doing anything other than trying to play games on that computer, probably because I wasn't really old enough to need it for other things at that time. There was still some amount of time before the ubiquity of the desktop computer for many, if not most, regular schooling and work tasks. Most of the systems that I have had in my life I have had for the purposes of playing games on, and, to lesser degrees, to learn and remember how computers get put together and what components can be replaced or upgraded without having to get an entirely new computer. It's been a privilege of my life to have multiple computers in the household, and to have multiple computers available for different purposes, and to have computers of my own to be able to learn, use, configure, and break (and restore), so that I could learn how to handle various things without it being the computer that everyone depended on getting broken. Most people in this era, I sspect, do not have those kinds of luxuries. Most laptops are not created with the ability to replace all of their componenets easily, most tablets and phones definitely are not user-servicable, and while the single-board computers are much better about being able to provide an environment that can get trashed and rebuilt easily, they lack the ability for their components to be replaced or upgraded. Desktop computers are more and more relics of a specific past between the time of the monopoly of mainframes and the monopolies of
systems on a chip, but it seems like people both young and old these days could use a user-serviceable device that there's no need to worry about things getting completely disrupted if the thing breaks or needs to have a configuration tweaked.
- CPU: 2.5 MHz Zilog Z80 microprocessor
- 64 kB of RAM
- Two single-sided 191-kilobyte 5¼-inch floppy disk drives (named A: and B:)
- 80-column, green monochrome, 9" CRT
- Input: Keyboard
What I didn't remember about this computer is that it's a luggable, which I have scheduled for later on in this series when I get to the luggable I do remember.
This is one of the other earliest memories of computers that I have, a computer on the dining room table, with a suite of games that is probably pretty familiar to people who grew up with BASIC as one of the beginning programming languages. And while all of my conscious memories of childhood are trying to wrangle Microsoft OSes, the early Kaypros for this time would have been loaded with CP/M, instead, an operating system that would eventually be pushed out by MS-DOS on most of the PC-compatibles that I worked with in my life. I mostly know of CP/M because it shows up at this hazy point of my life pretty frequently, and gets referenced in interesting places elsewhere. I also recognize many of the software programs that go along with the computer, such as WordStar and dBASE, even if I didn't end up using them much throughout my life. I know they were installed on a few different machines until, eventually, they were replaced by something else.
What I remember about the Kaypro, though, is that I didn't particularly like playing Hunt the Wumpus on it, because I couldn't figure out how to get the arrow shooting mechanic to work, or, if I did, I wouldn't actually hit the Wumpus and would instead either go into the room (and die) or find the bottomless pit room (and die). So it was either too scary or too frustrating for me at the time to enjoy playing the game.
And then, there was the other game that I distinctly remember. Ladder, apparently, was written for CP/M as a barrel jumping game much like Donkey Kong. Stephen Ostermiller has an extensive page on the game, including a Java port and elliot-nelson has ported the game to JavaScript for playing inside a compatible browser. There's also, apparently, a Turbo Pascal port of the game, which is another if those older languages that in pretty sure I saw on the spines of the books in the computer space, when the family computer got a dedicated space for itself. Small me, possibly sitting on the lap of a parent, tried to play this game, but much like Circus Atari in the previous entry, the coordination between the hand and the eye hadn't been fully developed to the point where I could do much in the more complex levels. The original game itself only had seven levels, which would seem like an easy enough thing to do, assuming you had gotten the rhythm of the rocks and the controls situated correctly, but there was a tricky mechanism to increase difficulty in the game, at least as I remember it, which was that after completing a new level, the player was dropped back down to the first level, and then had to complete all the levels that had been completed to that point before they would see the new level and try to complete it. So, by the time someone made it to the seventh level to attempt it, they'd already had to play through the first level seven times, the second six, and so forth. This is not actually true, at least in the recreations that I played, but they are just as charmingly frustrating as levels now as they would have been to my younger self, because the game is very quick to pick up on any keystroke, intended or otherwise, and if you linger a little long on your jump key, you might jump again and ruin what you were trying to carefully do. Not to mention the part where a lot of these levels require pixel perfect jumping to be able to advance to the next level or even the next part of a level. I didn't get very far in that game then, and I'm still not getting any farther now, with time and a little age on my side. (I did make it to level four in the recreation, which is farther than I did in the original, that's for certain.) It's the kind of ASCII game for people who feel that the limitations on movement imposed bythe hardware of the NES and earlier systems make a game quaintly challenging, rather than intenseley frustrating.
I don't remember doing anything other than trying to play games on that computer, probably because I wasn't really old enough to need it for other things at that time. There was still some amount of time before the ubiquity of the desktop computer for many, if not most, regular schooling and work tasks. Most of the systems that I have had in my life I have had for the purposes of playing games on, and, to lesser degrees, to learn and remember how computers get put together and what components can be replaced or upgraded without having to get an entirely new computer. It's been a privilege of my life to have multiple computers in the household, and to have multiple computers available for different purposes, and to have computers of my own to be able to learn, use, configure, and break (and restore), so that I could learn how to handle various things without it being the computer that everyone depended on getting broken. Most people in this era, I sspect, do not have those kinds of luxuries. Most laptops are not created with the ability to replace all of their componenets easily, most tablets and phones definitely are not user-servicable, and while the single-board computers are much better about being able to provide an environment that can get trashed and rebuilt easily, they lack the ability for their components to be replaced or upgraded. Desktop computers are more and more relics of a specific past between the time of the monopoly of mainframes and the monopolies of
systems on a chip, but it seems like people both young and old these days could use a user-serviceable device that there's no need to worry about things getting completely disrupted if the thing breaks or needs to have a configuration tweaked.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-03 03:12 pm (UTC)A friend of mine had either the Kaypro or an Osborne, I don't recall. I have no idea if he got any actual useful work out of it or if it was just a toy.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-03 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-03 09:38 pm (UTC)The first computer that I worked with was in the 7th or 8th grade. I was in a gifted group of students who had access to a Honeywell mainframe via a dialup terminal, this would have been around '75 or so. We weren't being taught any programming, that came a couple of years later in high school when they got TRS-80 Model 1s and we bought books on Basic and started doing things on our own. I kept telling my parents that all I wanted for Christmas was an Apple, with floppy drive and monitor, but they never bit. It wasn't until I was working in '83 or so that I bought my Model 100. Wikipedia says the 24k version sold for $1400 then, the equivalent of $3600 now!
no subject
Date: 2021-12-04 02:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-04 02:58 am (UTC)Minimum wage was $3.35 an hour in 1983. I assure you that I was not working 40 hours a week at Flying Buffalo Games. I probably put it on a credit card, and some of that debt was probably still on it when I filed for bankruptcy later.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-04 06:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-04 05:17 pm (UTC)That Model 100 was extremely useful, I must say. Powered by 4xAA batteries, I rigged up a 6v lantern battery on a 4' cable and carried it in a briefcase, used it to take notes in class. I was reading some reviews about it Thursday or Friday, and apparently it was very popular with reporters. One reviewer said that he was writing his review of it while flying at 30,000'. It had the absolute best keyboard of computers of its time and for many years to come.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-04 07:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-04 08:07 pm (UTC)Keep in mind there were two different series. The TRS-80 Model 1 and 3 were the ones commonly called the Trash-80s. And they were a lot better than most people acknowledged. The Model 100 was designed by Kyocera - I don't know who designed the M1 and 3 - and it was a very slick and tight design. Take a look at the Wikipedia entry for the 100, it was a very different beast. Built-in text editor that they called a word processor because it did automatic word wrap, Basic programming language, a ROM slot for additional stuff, internal 300 baud modem, LCD display good for 40 columns and 7 lines with an add'l row for function key assignments. And a full-sized keyboard which, as I said, was extremely good not only for its time but for now. I think people called them Trash because it was a handy mnemonic, Tandy Radio Shack. Stupid branding, they should have made it RST to avoid that. Very bad marketing decision. Let's face it: in the late '70s/early '80s no computers were super-reliable and frequent reboots were very common. The TRS-80s were no better or worse than anyone else. Now, the Model 1 did have a problem: they were not FCC compliant which led to a recall - too much RF emission.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-05 06:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-05 06:09 am (UTC)I don't know if the problem was the power supply or shielding in the main chassis. It was fixed, I recall.