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Computers I've Used

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My first "personal" computer! An Atari 400, in 1981. It came with 8 kilobytes of RAM and used an unreliable cassette recorder for storage. The first thing I did was to figure out how to hook up a real keyboard, which I did. That, and a 32 Kilobyte memory upgrade, made this unit almost as good as the much more expensive 800 model. I also added an external 5-1/4" disk drive (each disk held 88KB!)

I re-learned BASIC on this, OSS's BASIC A+, and also learned the Atari BASIC's graphics programming commands, 6502 assembly language to some extent, and FORTH.
The 1983 Epson QX-10, which ran an operating system called TPM, which was similar and mostly compatible with the then-popular CP/M. This baby had 256KB of RAM, which was four times more than most other PCs at the time. I used this computer extensively in the mid-eighties for programming in Pascal. The QX-10 also came with a completely-integrated graphic operating environment and suite of programs, collectively called "VALDOCS".
VALDOCS (VALuable DOCumentS) was written in FORTH by the team at Rising Star Industries, headed by Chris Rutkowski. This was one of the first telecommuting-based companies. The programmers were spread over a wide geographic area in California. It turned out to be one reason for their downfall--they didn't have enough in-person meetings to sort the bugs out!
VALDOCS, although brilliantly conceived, was always quite buggy. I was a beta tester for them, but even bugs that I reported were still in the release versions. I got pretty good at work-around solutions with my customers!
The much-ballyhooed VALDOCS 2 arrived about 18 months late, and it was an incredible dog for performance. Everyone loved the features added, but couldn't stand to actually use it. By that time, though, the sales momentum was lost to MS-DOS machines, so the project folded.
The QX-10 was very unusual for its day because the hardware was made in Japan, but all the software was from California. Other machines like Sanyo and NEC and Televideo (CP/M-based) all had software written in Japan, and boy, did it show!
QX-10s cost about $3000 in their day, which was more than I could spend, but I was both a salesperson and Service Manager at a computer store, and one of my customers had a fire that ruined his QX-10. The insurance company that wrote it off never collected the computer, so I thought I had nothing to lose by attempting to get it to work. I completely disassembled it (except for the two floppy disk drives) and put it all into a bathtub of water and Fantastic. I scrubbed everything down to get the smell and soot off and dried it all off and reassembled it, and it *almost* worked! I had to replace the video cable and one RAM chip, and the machine worked perfectly for years after!
The ivory-colored plastic was all burned and melted, though, so I painted it all flat black. I really liked the look! Here it is at my desk in the midst of a Pascal programming stint. Note the Hayes 1200 baud modem.
An Ananda Marga "sister" (nun) was so impressed with the "will to live" of this computer that she gave it a Sanskrit name: Aks'aya (invincible, imperishable)!
I sold about 80 of these beauties in the early '80s at a computer store in Vermont over a three-year period. I owned one for several years, and programmed in Pascal (Borland's first Turbo Pascal!) in CP/M mode on it, mostly to write a VALDOCS-based BBS program, which I used on my BBS for two years. RSI teased me that they might want to buy it, but never did.  I absolutely LOVED this computer! The sharp lime-green screen and the keyboard made it a joy to use. I gave this unit away years ago, but bought another one when I realized how much I missed it! It's factory-ivory, though, not black.
Not a computer, but a relic of this era -- a CP/M button from ComDex 84. CP/M was the main Operating System of the day. It originally stood for "Control Program/Monitor", although in later years it came to be called  "Control Program for Microcomputers".
The Timex-Sinclair ZX-81. The first PC for (just) under $100! It was virtually worthless due to reliability issues, but it was a landmark nonetheless. After a short stint of trying to actually use it, I hung it on my wall for decoration. It was later stolen from that spot! A zillion years later (actually about 20), a good friend gave me his for my collection. Thanks, Don!
In about 1986, I started using a Mac at work for graphics work such as desktop publishing, logo design, and PostScript programming. This is the platform on which I learned Photoshop and Illustrator. When I got one from a contractor (Advant) to do some programming on, my young kids liked it, too. I used it (running OS 9) until 1992 or so, and then had to ship it back as the job was finished. Sigh.