Re:Ask YC: What was your first computer?
by DanielBMarkham on Wednesday October 17, 2007 @05:30PM
(#69274)
A PET 8K. I wrote my first contract program on an Apple II about the same time, so it was a tie.
We had one PET in the high school library. The other nerds and I used to fight over who could program it. There was a sign-up sheet but the rules weren't strictly enforced. One guy named Roland kept using teacher's notes to jump in line. So I wrote a program called "Kill Roland" that all the other kids loved. As I remember, little "R"s came down from the top of the screen and you maneuvered a gun to shoot them before they got to the bottom. Very simple stuff, but the game got so popular that Roland never came to the library anymore.
Mission accomplished.
I miss that little PET. I think I still remember the POKE statements used to control the screen. Geesh -- those brain cells should have been recycled a long time ago.
We had one PET in the high school library. The other nerds and I used to fight over who could program it. There was a sign-up sheet but the rules weren't strictly enforced. One guy named Roland kept using teacher's notes to jump in line. So I wrote a program called "Kill Roland" that all the other kids loved. As I remember, little "R"s came down from the top of the screen and you maneuvered a gun to shoot them before they got to the bottom. Very simple stuff, but the game got so popular that Roland never came to the library anymore.
Mission accomplished.
I miss that little PET. I think I still remember the POKE statements used to control the screen. Geesh -- those brain cells should have been recycled a long time ago.