Nice little article and sounds quite accurate. I went from my 800XL to an Atari ST and stayed mainly comptuer based until I got a Sony Playstation. I did have a PC as well (think it was a 386 SX-16) and that was used for college work ilke word processing, spreadhseets, DTP. It even had a mighty 20mb hard drive. The kind you had to type "park" for to shut down the heads before you turned off the computer.
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Not old. Vintage. :)
Most liked posts in thread: Christmas 1984: The last hurrah for 8-bit home computers
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Lots and lots and lots of really great memories sparked there from Tim and Al's response.
84 was still magical for me - seeking a replacement for my ZX81 and dismissing the Speccy - wanting an Elk, the baby Beeb to finish my computer studies on - fed-up waiting - and so grabbed the lovely red and black brand new Oric Atmos 48K in Feb 84!
It wasn't long after that that I got my 800XL in a Dixons "meltdown" sale and then a Beeb the following Christmas when I'd started work.
The market was saturated and by god you could bag some bargains, eg. Mattel Aquarius - christ, virtually giving it away at £30-40.
Around 87/88 I got my ST but didn't have the love affair that you did, Al, sorry to say. A few of my mates had got an Amiga and I became envious of its qualities so jumped ship and bought my first Commodore.
After that, like you say, the beige boxes came in and I recall too using a 386 box at work (Radius Systems who were a Texas Instruments dealer) and then my mate Meds actually made me a 486 DX66 with 4mb RAM and a ruddy 20mb h/d. It had no sound at first though and only a 5.25" floppy drive. He then upgraded it for me with some of his spare cards and so it was back then... you'd progress on to a x2 speed CD ROM, x16 speed, reader and writer etc etc and Soundblaster compatible sound card etc. The 1990s and the PC clones were the new kids on the block and they promised serious workplace power for the home office...
Fraid the ol 8bits and 16bits got put away in the cupboard... for another day
Great days, guys, and lovely to hear from you Tim - all the very best to one and all and hope to see you on here from time to time, mate.
