Talk about a nostalgia journey!

I’m typing on this new computer of mine, which I bought about a week or so ago from the fine folks at Tiger Direct. (Free plug to you.  Next time you’ll have to pay for it.)  Anyway, it got me waxing nostalgic as to what was a supreme computer back when I was bragging about the technology I had.  Back at a time when memory was measured in kilobytes and hard drives in megabytes.  For your amusement, let me tell you about the computers I once owned back in the day.

Back in the day would mean about the mid-80s to early 90s.  The days when most people would shun anything that had an Intel processor and Microsoft-based operating systems.  DOS?  Fuck that.  Windows?  Hahaha!

Back then, Atari was my computer of choice.  Those old 8-bit machines were way ahead of their time, and despite some certain company whose owner would buy Atari, the old machine held up quite well.  Then I eventually got me one of those 16-bit machines. The ST was an impressive piece of power for an affordable price.  Let’s face it, what I eventually built myself up with didn’t cost me a great deal, back in 1992:

Atari 10404160STe (originally had 1MB of RAM, upgraded it to 4MB, and at an Atari convention even bought a replacement sticker to ensure that everyone knew it.)  Also had a pair of hard drives that gave me a total storage capacity of 210 MB.  Whoa!  Back then, that was killer.  Had both a color (SC1224) and monochrome (SM124) monitor, so I can brag about the killer 640 x 400 monochrome resolution.  Okay, then again, Super VGA graphic cards were available for those (ahem ahem) Intel machines, but still, we had those resolutions well before you did!

And to think, I used that trusty computer well beyond its shelf-life – right up until 1997, when I finally realized that this internet thing would probably be better suited for a machine that actually displayed more than 16 colors at a time at a resolution better than 320x200.  Pity I now have to live with one of those machines running that operating system.

Then again, wonder what would it be like to see Atari’s TOS on in Intel Core 2 Quad?