A Love Letter to the Home Computer

My ongoing adventures in nostalgia

At some point in 1989, a nine-year old me became obsessed with owning a computer. I don’t exactly know where the idea came from, but knowing myself, I’d say the influence likely came from movie blockbusters of the day. My family owned a VHS¹ copy of the 1982 sci-fi breakthrough Tron. and I was gobsmacked with The Last Starfighter. I can almost guarantee, however, that the driving force behind my 8-bit urges² was from 1983’s Wargames, starring Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy.

In Wargames, we see a young computer hacker attempting to access various systems, first changing his school grades and later attempting to access video games online. What he discovers instead is a US military wargaming system. No spoilers here, but please go check this movie out if you have not seen it. Wargames is thought to have normalized a number of modern tech concepts into American life…and it’s just super fun.

Regardless of the influence, I knew I needed to get my hands on a computer. Being the younger of two children in a blue-collar family, buying a new home computer would be impossible. In the early 1980s, a new Apple computer cost around $1200, which is over $5000 in today money. This was not an option in my house. So, I did what any decent nine-year old would do…I hit the newspapers. I scoured the local papers for weeks, searching in the classified ads section for anyone who might be selling their computer. Many, many of these used computers were still too expensive, but finally I found one that was more reasonable, and I convinced my Dad to call and inquire about it.

I don’t remember a lot of the details of what happened next, but I distinctly recall riding in our family car to go look at this computer. I recall flashes of being in someone’s living room, with the parts of the computer strewn across a desk. It was old and worn, but it was a complete computer. Somehow, my parents found a way to afford to let me bring her home.

When it came home, I think my parents honestly had no idea what to do with the thing. They let me set it up on my tiny child’s desk in my room. The computer itself, yellowed and scratched, took up about 140% of the desk space, and the monitor weighed roughly 75 pounds. The printer sat precariously perched spanning the edge of the desk and over onto the window sill, as there simply was no room for it. I pulled up an old stool alongside my desk, just to hold the external disk drive.

Let’s run through the specs of this classic, shall we?

Computer: Apple ][+ (read “Apple 2+”) One line of the 1977 holy trinity of computers³, The Apple ][+ was the second model in the Apple II series, which sold over 6 million units from 1977 to 1993. The Apple ][+ itself sold over 380,000 units between 1979-1982.

Key features of the Apple ][+:

• 48k of RAM

• No lowercase functionality (that’s right, folks)

• No Caps Lock

Peripherals:

• Apple Disk II: External, 5 1/4” floppy drive which connected to the computer via the Disk II controller card

• Monitor: Don’t recall the brand, but research suggests something similar to the Philips Monitor 80. This engineering feat was stacked with an orange-only phosphor screen.

• Dot-matrix Printer: I can’t recall the brand. I can recall it was bigger than the computer and monitor combined. The paper for a dot-matrix printer was all on one spool, and each page was connected to the next with perforated pages…so basically a ream of one, long page. If you know, you know.

• Mouse: I didn’t have one. I specifically remember not having one and never getting one for this computer, although they were available.

Software: (floppy disks stacked inside an old shoebox)

• AppleWriter: A fairly advanced (for its time) word processor

• PrintShop: By far my favorite utility, as I was able to custom make banners and birthday cards with my dot-matrix printer…when it worked

• Games:

  • Advanced Blackjack

  • Adventure (absolutely classic text-based game)

  • Burgertime

  • Chuck Yeager’s Advanced Flight Trainer (Remember, no joystick, no mouse. I flew all of Chuck’s planes with the arrow keys.)

  • Ghostbusters (I was most excited about this game, but it only worked 15% of the time, with no idea why)

  • Oregon Trail

  • Other Software: I had roughly a dozen or more additional programs which never worked, and I have no clue why

I was in love.

Once my Dad saw what I was able to do with my new-to-me computer, I think he was genuinely intrigued. When a few years later we moved into a new house, it coincided with an upgrade to our first, official home computer.

In the late 1980s and into the early 1990s, PCs began to take off, and though still expensive, it became more affordable (and thus more common) for families to own one. My parent’s had very close friends, a couple named Ron and Joan. Ron and Joan were the coolest. Their kids were grown, and they were a bit older than my parents. With kids out of the house, Ron and Joan filled their lives with some amazing hobbies. One example was when they bought a 1977 Chevrolet Corvette and spent several years restoring it, eventually turning it into a show car which won many awards. (I’ll never forget my mom’s editorial comments about them spending $3,000 on a custom yellow paint job for the Corvette).

One of Ron and Joan’s other hobbies was cool technology, namely cameras and computers. One night, they had us over for dinner, and Ron showed off his brand new i386 computer. The i386 (and its many other names) was a breakthrough in home computing thanks to Intel’s 80386 chipset. Companies like Compaq Computers and Dell released their own PCs with the Intel chip inside.

I remember being completely blown away by Ron’s PC. First, he had Windows 95, which was a game-changing operating system. More exciting still were the games. He had Tank Wars, which allowed two opponents to battle each other with tanks, controlling the angle and velocity of the attack. After showing us the games, Ron teased us by asking us to sit and wait for the computer to “go to sleep.” After a few minutes of waiting, his PC would go idle, and a moving display popped up, called a “Screensaver.” This screensaver displayed animated fish “swimming” in an aquarium. I’m not exactly sure why, but this absolutely blew our minds. My Dad was smitten and a new PC showed up at our house not long after.

It was at this point that our computer became a truly home computer. It sat in our family room, along with our television. When as a pre-teen I did school research using our Encarta Encyclopedia, my parents were there, watching Cheers, and The Wonder Years. When I played “Aces of the Pacific,” with my Logitech joystick, my Dad would be in and out, watching me play while cooking dinner. The computer was a family device. We all enjoyed using it for games, writing and work. Once the internet started to take shape, we had the added complication of fighting over the one phone line in our house.

In the days of the 386, 486 and later Pentium computers, it was both necessary and encouraged to tweak and upgrade your computer to keep up with the technology. I liken our family computer in the 1990s to a classic hot rod. As the graphics and sound in new games and other programs dramatically improved each year, we would need to upgrade our systems with new sound cards, graphics cards and other peripherals. We were constantly popping the top⁴ on the PC, installing and removing cards, running cables, and so on. It was very hands on. You learned about how computers worked without having to study them. In my case, it became a collaborative hobby with my Dad.

I can’t quite recall when all of this changed for me personally, but certainly by 2005 when I bought my first iMac. By this time, the idea of building up your own PC had started to become more niche. As Apple started to take over more and more market share, by default people were tinkering with their computers less. I am no expert in Apple history or tech, but certainly they have a design ethos that is less about tinkering and more about refined, finished products. Don’t take me the wrong way…I love my MacBook Pro. I can’t ever see myself moving away from Apple, as I generally favor their approach to technology and security. That said, I do think something has been lost along the way. A curiosity and eagerness to tinker. The ability to swap out parts, change things around and learn in the process.

And I think I am just a really nostalgic guy.

Likewise, the idea that the personal computer has evolved from residing in family rooms and into disparate devices in disparate rooms never really dawned on me (or perhaps wasn’t relevant to me) until recently. When it came time to introduce my son more formally to computers and the internet, it suddenly became a real issue for our family. All parents develop an approach to screens, whether intentional or not. I make no judgement here, as our approach is very much a work in progress. That said, when we knew it was time to have a shared computer, a family computer, I knew that there was something right and special for my family by embracing the concept of a home computer.

Who knows, maybe we can find an old PC in the newspaper and let my son learn Flight Simulator with just the keyboard?

1. VHS: Video Home System. A cassette-based home entertainment platform. Movies were recorded onto magnetic tape spooled inside the cassette. For extra fun, read the very real battle between VHS and Betamax now known as the “format wars.”

2. I must be honest and wager that just as much of my computer desire was based on the movie Weird Science.

3. Known as the “1977 Trinity” of computers, the Apple II, the Tandy TRS-80 and the Commodore PET.

4. In those days, many PCs were setup to lay lengthwise, with the PC monitor often sitting on top of the system, such as in the picture above.