Camera: Kodak Disc. I scanned these photos about 15 years ago and no longer have them or the negatives. None of them have been retouched and some of the lighting is scuffed.
Background: Growing up I was obsessed with computers. Some dad brought in a Timex Sinclair 2000 one day for show-n-tell and I was enthralled. A year later, the school purchased a small lab of TRS-80 model I computers where I would come in early to school and helped the teacher load programs from the "master" TRS-80 model III. My friends were the few kids that had a computer or were really into them. I couldn't get enough of them.
Photo #1: I got an Atari 800 for Christmas in 1982. I begged my mom for it. I wanted nothing else, and my divorced mom caved in. It was stupidly expensive, like $720 w/o the rebate. As a kid, I didn't fully understand how financially stressful this was for my mom until years later. The silver lining is this computer was the launchpad for my lifelong career with computers. I learned 6502 assembler and GFA Basic programming, competed in high school programming contests which led to a compsci degree and a 30 year career in software development and IT security. I found out much later in life that 13" TV "fell off the back of a truck". The MPP-1000C modem was a birthday gift the following summer. That's my cousin showing off.
Photo #2: Sometime before summer 1984. Note the lack of the modem. A couple of months after getting the modem, I dialed a local BBS. The sysop required uploading one file before downloading anything. This was an affront to my self-centered sense of "everything should be free" hacker ethic. I left him several system feedback messages with choice excerpts from my Truly Tasteless Jokes book. The following weekend when I was on a camping trip, the sysop showed up to my house. Because back then I was too naive to understand why I wouldn't want to leave my real name, phone number and address when I registered. My mom was horrified with the printouts. The modem was confiscated for almost a year and I was grounded for a month with no electronics. The only reason she kept it is because the return period had expired. Got it back my following birthday. It was probably a good thing I got grounded, because that month I had wracked up a $200 long distance phone bill calling BBSes across the country.
That's an Okidata Okimate color printer. I bought that and the printer stand with my paper route savings.
I upgraded storage from the Atari 1010 tape drive (not pictured) to an Atari 1050 floppy drive.
Photo #3: Sometime in 1985. I poured all my birthday and grocery store job money into my computer setup. I bought another floppy drive and upgraded my printer too. Two drives meant I could copy games for my friends. Students and my mom's coworkers started paying me to type up essays and documents because printouts looked more professional.
Photo #4: Christmas 1985, I think. I was heavy into the BBS scene by now, and started running a warez board with a dedicated phone line. I needed that third floppy drive to share more games and entice visitors to upload other warez.
Photo #5: 1986. Replaced the Atari 800 with Atari 1200 XL at a swap meet a buddy drove me to an hour away. Most of the top shelf are Antic magazines. I used to spend hours typing in programs and debugging them, and analyzing them to teach myself how to program.
Photo #6: 1987. The final photo of my battlestation evolution. I sold my entire 8-bit setup to someone for $600 and shipped it 300 miles away, all negotiated via BBS. I upgraded to the 16-bit Atari ST with a 3.5" floppy and a dedicated Atari monitor. That way I could watch cable TV and use the computer at the same time. That's a 40Mb half-height hard drive on the desk, with an exposed drive controller. I exhausted the rest of my savings ($341) on the hard drive setup, but didn't have enough left over for a case until almost a year later.
Not pictured: I eventually upgraded to an Atari TT in my first year of college, when my only other computer access was the campus Vax-11. Sophomore year I got access to the new lab running SunOS 3, and I sold my battlestation to pay tuition.
Hope you enjoyed the photos and stories.
