I was over in Steemit.Chat "general" talking to @renzoarg and a few others and we got on to the subject of old computers. It inspired me to reminisce about some of my favorites and to do a history for those Steemians who might not know about some of the older technology that preceded what they have today or grew up playing with.

The Early Days

Way way back before IBM Compatibles and Apple/Macs there were a plethora of computers and gaming systems. Some where amazing and way ahead of their time while others were absolute garbage.

One of the earliest computers I ever remember hearing about was the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Launched in 1982 and quickly becoming one of Europe's most popular computers it was equipped with a whopping 16 kilobytes of ram (base model). A little known fact the 48kb ram version of the computer actually had two 32k faulty chips with a bridge to select which half of the ram chip it used (the good half). Source!

Around the same time the Sinclair ZX Spectrum came out in Europe Commodore released the Vic 20 in the USA. It was a budget (low-end) computer designed to compete with other systems out at the time. It was also the first computer I ever owned and it sported a whopping 2400 baud cradle modem that you had to actually dial on your home phone then lay the receiver into the cradle when the modem on the other end picked up the line. It had no internal memory/storage and the only way to save anything was on Cassette Tapes....yea Audio Cassette's.

The Vic-20 was the first computer to sell over 1 million units and eventually they came out with floppy drives and other accessories for it. You could even buy a monitor (instead of using a TV). I started programming on this bad boy in December 1982 and by March of 1983 had managed to hack into AOL, Prodigy and Compuserve before they where anything more than Text-Only Bulletin Boards. Source!

Possibly the best Commodore computer ever made was the Amiga 500 which was later replaced by the Amiga 500+ then Amiga 600. In 1989 they offered a Batman Package that included a monitor, 1mb ram and a disk drive. It was superior in almost every way to other computers of the day. Source!

One of the greatest (IMHO) computers ever was the Colecovision Adam. It was the first mainstream computer to offer: A printer, Built in Storage, Hard Drives, Tape Drives, and a few people even managed to get their hands on CD Drives designed specifically for the Adam by Coleco. It would also play any software on disk, cassette or cartridge from Coleco, Atari, Commodore and others (assuming you had the optional input devices for those disks/cassettes/cartridges). I never owned one of these amazing but short lived computers, but a good friend of mine Patrick had one and we used to spend hours on it. Source!

The Atari 400/800 preceded the Vic-20, Adam and Amiga computers above and was the first computer on the market to feature a math co-processor. While it would run software and could be programmed it was for the most part a Gaming Console. The original Gaming Console IMHO. I owned numerous Atari systems over the years and I can honestly say that Atari invented the Pull-It-Out-And-Blow-On-It gaming technology. Source!

One of the first Mainstream IBM Compatible Computers on the market was the Radioshack Tandy 1000. Costing around $3,000 USD at launch for the full system with matching monitor it was a computing beast. It sported an Intel 8088 processor and ran on MS-DOS. Source!

The first truly "mainstream" gaming console was the Nintendo NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) and it brought about a gaming revolution world wide that is still going strong today. Originally released only in Japan under the name "Famicom" short for Family Computer it quickly spread around the Globe and by the mid 1990's was the most popular gaming system on the planet. Heralding the longest production cycle of any computer in history it was produced from 1983 until 2004 and is now back as the NES Classic Edition and is a mini version of the original that is preloaded with tons of games. Source!

Following on the NES' success worldwide Nintendo released the Super Nintendo (Nintendo Entertainment System 2) in 1990. Hardware wise it was very similar to the Apple IIGS and some of the games were even programmed on an Apple IIGS like "Wolfenstein". While it never reached the level of success of the NES it did eventually sell over 50 million units worldwide. Source!

Sega also jumped into the Gaming Console game in 1989 with the Sega Genesis (USA) or Sega Megadrive (Europe) it was an amazing system and was superior in every way to other consoles of the era. However, Sega made a couple major faux-pahs with the 32x and Sega CD and never recovered. Exiting the gaming console business for good in the mid 90's, after a last ditched effort to survive with the Genesis II which also bombed. Source!

Also arriving in 1989 was the world's first truly portable Video Game System - The Nintendo Game Boy. I will confess I have owned like 20 of these over the years. They rocked but had crappy displays that went out constantly. They where so cheap though that you would just throw them away and buy another one. The games lasted forever and they released like a gazillion games for the GB. Most of which you can still play today on the GameBoy Color, Gameboy Advanced and a dozen other iterations that have surfaced since the Game Boy was launched. Source!

Were it not for Sony's insistence on proprietary formats and locking their systems so tightly the Playstation Portable might have been the greatest hand held computer ever invented. Hitting the market worldwide in 2005 it was a powerhouse in your hands. Only rivaled my the Nokia N-Gage which was also a Smartphone as well as a computer and portable game console. The PSP has been upgraded or replaced numerous times and currently the PSP Vita and PSP Go are still in production. Source!

Last on the list of nostalgia is Nokia's N-Gage. I could never afford one of these bad boys when they where out and they where clunky and hardy to use as a phone....but they were freaking awesome. They came unlocked and ready for tinkerers and tweakers to hack and extend their capabilities and that is exactly what people did. There is still a huge market for these devices on Ebay & Amazon even today. Having only sold 3 million units they were pulled from the market before they ever reached their prime. Since Nokia quit making them there have been hundreds of add-ons and tweaks developed and thousands of new games and software. Source!

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