Usually when you do this with television cameras they all say all together breakfast, but we try and set up his file, okay
What was your first computer I?
liked a breakfast question better
I had a commodore 64 of course my first computer was an iBm mainframe at the Glasgow School's computer center in
1972-73
It was a BBC computer
And uh now she tell a lie. It wasn't it was a dragon 32 the first computer
I'm strad so ibm Pc-compatible. Oh, it was a 486 my first computer was a
ZX81 with One Kilobyte of Memory
You know I actually don't know what the first computer was that the first computer that I think I saw was an iBm
650 which is kind of a long
Time ago my first computer was an amiga Commodore. It was a nikon electron
16 K of ram. I guess technically a spectrum something where the first computer, sir Philips, Mi6?
Personally it was probably a very boring compaq PC in about 2003, but the first ones
I really got good with were probably an acorn archimedes in the early 90s my first computer
I ever used was called an elliot 903 it was a spectrum 48k
I think we had a BBC micro at school. It's up there. So there that's the first computer
I built yes, it was the Linux machine in
Trinity College in Dublin
calliphoridae
first computer was the Sinclair ZX81
That was actually mine
But the one that I had a lot of love for is the Nasco which is the first one. I ever touched yeah with a
Windows 3.1 on it my first computer was an amstrad
286 first computer
I ever used was a mainframe believe it or not my first interaction with the computer was the one at the local library
Everybody had 30 minutes of free use and free into dial-up internet access the first computer
I ever used was a commodore pet when I was about three and a half years old
It was a sort of toss-up between a very early
Pc. Running just MS-Dos. What's not windows?
but I think almost is exactly the same time I got a
Pc-based
Unix system my first PC was a vigilant 386 sx a lot more interesting first computer actually to the firm
I just said PC. Just out of habit someone will say the commodore 64 is a piece
Missing tell me about your commodore 64 them it was primarily spying games
We had the Commodore 64 data set
Which is a fascinating piece of tape record kit it also sprays things in order to read stuff on tape
I used it for playing games and
then
Actually because my dad run a small company at a time he thought this is really useful then he nicked it from me to use
It as this eventually computer in his company, so I didn't have it for you really annoying
Amiga 500 oh
Yeah, that's it. That was a good one good good games or not and then he was the 286 yes
I am old enough to A
originally programmed on punch cards
It was considered a bit barak even in those days, but that's how we did it we learned to program on Farfan
Using punch cards after that I went to university in Cambridge
And we programmed on PDP-8 so I was doing the maths degree numerical analysis is one of our courses
I was having my parents clear out their house a couple of months ago
because they were moving and
Found the Dragon 32 with the couple of games one of which was manic miner which think was as if the zX spectrum
But it's on a cassette a little trickier Chuck yeager
yes, it was the town hall the town hall computer, and I was at school and we
Wrote on bits of paper and sent them away and a week later. You know yeah. We ran it. It didn't work
You know a couple of words make sure you speaking the banana was a very tasty for breakfast today
That was what we should talk about isn't it what to eat for breakfast. No. What was your first computer?
I tell you what I've been to a dinner the other day with our external examiner's and
They were talking about what was the first computer they programmed on but but they're obviously
6070 years old yeah, I had no idea what they were talking about
the GG4 worden
flop or some fixes just
I wish they talked about a breakfast instead of what you have a breakfast to say tell me about first computer I use dirty limerick
my first computer was a
ZX81 with One Kilobyte of Memory
Which could just about plague-like Seon's until you got the memory upgrade which closed you 16 kilobytes?
And then you could play Pac-man, and that was about the state of it
But that's what I used to learn how to do basic programming and then I got aesthetic spectrum
Which I taught myself to programming assembler because basics to slow the keyboards were sort of fetishists dream rubber
Which got really sweaty under your fingertips and generally failed after about six months?
So there was entire separate industry involved in making knockoff keyboard replacements for Zelich spectrums
which you had to install yourself at home and
Just hope you didn't fry the internals with the static electricity because at the time no one knew that you were supposed to Earth yourself
So my first computer was an amiga Commodore it had 16 megabytes of Ram
And it took about five minutes to load a basic word processor. Yeah, sure it was shredded wheat with Milk. Sorry I?
You know I actually don't know what the first computer was it the first computer that I think I saw was an iBm
650 which is kind of a long
Time ago, and
the first one that I probably did anything with might have been an iBm 1620 which was a little on and
by the standards at the time and
An Ibm 7090 4 which was the big computer at the University of Toronto that actually was well?
I was an undergraduate so that would be 63 64
Mostly punch cards all I think it's possible that the 1620 used paper tape
I don't remember now at this point. So definitely the good old days
Crikey I guess technically a spectrum something other but I really got going with a commodore 64
And played plenty of games had polled on ataris as well
It kind of had that version of basic which wasn't quite the same as BBC basic
But it was almost BBC basic, and I had a BBC basic programming manual
this was back in 1986 when I was six years old, and I got really hooked at that age my dad wrote a
very simple program
for me to do maths and then I changed it a lot and
It had one of those nice cartridges that you could slot in
Yeah, that was brilliant. I loved programming basic on that. I think it was
Nine years old basically really for life though. It did not know although
I didn't ever begin a big gap in which I did not program at all my first computer
I ever used was called an elliott 903 and indeed. I have one in a spare room at my house
I spent a bit of time in my summer vacations as a student working for the company that
Made them and we use in building flight control systems for the nimrod and what is now called the tornado?
So I've memorized the instruction set of that machine
Programmer in my sleep still had these enormous
Floppy disks which are probably actually much smaller right because I was much smaller so a very special
What was your favorite game on it or program? Yeah, manic miner I did loads of basic
I don't know how big they were they were definitely bigger than the regular ones, but I remember them being like huge I
Walk around with them like this because I went back and the entire school
is smaller now than it was so
Rubber keys, that's all I remember
And how it was very hard to type?
First computer first computer was when I was very young talking late 80s. Which dates me which is?
unstrap the Ibm PC compatibl
Currently the exact numbers numbers 1512 that went ahead like that might be model number something like that the first
Computer that a lot of people around here the guys who work here at arm
Remember from Having had in their bedrooms and the ones that they learned to program on is the first one that I actually worked on
Producing actually part of so that was the BBC microcomputer
I came a little bit too late - for Commodore 64's and all that like they were still out there
But I was always always always
On PCs all the way through and it had a hardest it was about
20 megabytes of hard disk which was plenty you know
It played games sort of it. Had four whole colors. It's great
I worked for a competent Oulton C in Cambridge and these crazy nutters over the other side of town
Had this idea that they were going to build
Computers and they were going to put them in every home and every school and things like that, and it was obviously complete insanity
But we thought we'd help him out and they paid our bills
So why not was that get formal?
Did you know no said tighly home designed including anodizing the aluminium in the kitchen sink and things like that Susan?
I built that when I was at I think a Phd student at Cambridge and
I joined the Cambridge university process a group and
That was a society for students who built computers for fun
The real men built everything out of TTL and the wimps like me use these newfangled microprocessor things
So that's a microprocessor based computer, and yeah, I think we know where that went does it?
Yeah, it's sort of
In the long run have a career
Transforming impact funny yeah defining as a better word yes. Yes, that's right cost a relative fortune
unbelievably slow, but it was all mine not very fast not very powerful not much memory and but it did the job and
Then when I went to oxford to do my phd
We had some faster once again. They were linux were they were Unix actually sun workstations
and
Gradually over time then we've migrated up to larger and larger systems in the loft. We have one of those old ones
It's an a4 screen. That's green only
But I never did find out one that was
So you had a four. Oh six would you use it for Peter krogh a ball game game mainly had an Amiga as well for
Dynamite ducks and worms the original the Nass gone was a kick computer British machine
It was basically a kit form machine that you could buy the balls for and then put together yourself
No, two ness coms look the same. They're all different as na t based system, but it's just one that my uncle had
I just went around is one evening with my dad and used this computer
And he built it in a way was in a case like
Kegs very similar to that in a way
but it had metal cross stretch kind of linda so you can see in it and the cards had leds on and
The only things blinked as it was doing stuff
and
So yeah, yeah big time big time and I was completely blown away by it. I just remember is I mean I was only about
I've no
sight ish the drive home that night when you're a kid, and you're in that kind of half between asleep and awake just
Dreaming about that was shane and all the things I could potentially do with it and that just that that's the Most vivid
Dream I've ever remembered just the first time I saw and touched a computer some amazing
Zachary it was mostly games tried a little bit of programming didn't really take to it to start with and my parents have still got
It my brother got it out the first challenge was finding something you could plug it into for a screen because all the TVs have
Got at the right analog input anymore
So we ended up with a video recorder with the right analog input my brother had to go and make a cable
So that he could connect it then from the into the video recorder Via recorder Connects the TV?
So we could play out of it
and then my two kids
Got to see some games monte on the run in particular being loaded and then playing them the thing that confused them the most was
the idea that you put the tape in and waited for like ten minutes before you could play that this was a weird experience for
Me because you only got thirty minutes, and you had a lot of stuff you wanted to do on the internet
You would pre plan all of the things you wanted to do and it was basically trying to like batch process
So trying to optimize how you would use your connection
Working with other people so that you could like break up the things if you were trying to do some homework or something one person
Would use one website one person would use another to help with the caching
And then you kind of split up, and it was all the game was all about optimizing to get that 30 minutes of weekly confuse
Amstrad
1512 that sounds right
Because my mother's work
desktop and
I remember just going to play games
I couldn't even speak English at the time, and I was using windows in English, and that's how it started and
Just thinking like 20 meg's of lovers have one
two three meg's around something like they was was a 15 12 a
Yeah, um the some of them came with two floppy disks her
actual five a quarter-inch floppy disc holders this one had one of those name and
Crying out loud. I was young if I painted the mouse it was a miracle
It was Mike reporter Mike report Unix and of course it was on the old
Intel
80286 Chips which could just about run it, but I don't know if you
Recall the architecture of those things was abysmal because if you wrote a program
No, individual array or structuring it could be bigger than 64 K it still had
16-bit
Limitations in here in tennis even though it was nominally a 32-bit chip
That was all removed with the 80386 and 80486 but boy did I live with him under unix?
But now mine those were the days yeah
But it came to the mouse in this this being me about age one three four something like that
I I thought my foreground, so I painted the male's brown and amazingly it kept working and
What is was it running?
Then can you remember I was running that was running really early dos must wind us three something like that?
I'm not sure um it was certainly pre. Windows pre. Anything like that. I think we
Though we tried to get something called gen running on it, and I thought that was a computer after
Which it was never never the right thing, but yeah
It was command-line it what it wasn't too hard to understand
I think I might have a first bit of programming was batch files on that