My First Mac
First Mac Short Stories
2000.06.22
Sometimes a story is great, but just not long enough for an article all it's own. So this week we're sharing some Macintosh short stories.
MacPlusGuy
I've been a Macintosh user since birth. I can back that up, too. My first memories of a computer are sitting in front of my Macintosh 512 while my mom taught me that I had to wait until the Happy Mac arrived on the screen to insert a disk.
I remember playing MacFootball with my dad (one of the few games we've played together), Crystal Quest, and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. I also remember this little newsletter I threw together at the age of 4 on MacWrite, and of course the venerable game "Boxes."
I kinda let my life take it's course until I viewed the film "Pirates of Silicon Valley" last summer. Then I got out the 512 again, and ended up acquiring three more classic Macs and an Apple ][gs. My life pretty much revolves around Macintosh, and I often get ridiculed for wearing my Apple logo T-shirt to school.
I'm a computer nerd. I know it. I have four computers in my room older than I am! Macintosh computers rule!
Mac user at Three
I still remember my first Mac. It was a Mac SE FDHD with a 68030 accelerator and System 6.0.8. Then I saw the world in black and white. My Dad would bring it home at night. I was 3 years old.
I loved it. I drew lines on it. I think it had Canvas 2 or something like that. On the Christmas of 1994, the Performa line was introduced. I was 5. My Dad got us a Performa 575 with 8 MB of memory. I got his SE. I was amazed when the 575 booted up the first time - seeing the Apple logo in color was so neat. We got AOL. When we connected at 2400 baud, it would take an hour to get to a website.
Then in 1999 I saw the new iMacs. I wanted one so bad. The Christmas of '99 came. It started out that I didn't get anything good. My parents surprised me - they got me an iMac 350/64 MB/6 GB.
I'm 10 years old, I've been using Macs for 7 years, and I'm hooked for life!
My first Mac was and is an SE/30. I stumbled into it because my daughter, bless her heart, wanted to get on the internet. We tried to use a hand-me-down 486, but problems with Windows 95 rendered it useless for the task. (Two Microsofts? Aaagh!) Then, in what may have been divine inspiration, I decided to give her my P150+ so she could use it to surf the web, while I would look for a used Apple computer.
I had always wanted a compact Mac but couldn't afford one when I first started buying computers way back in the mid-80s. So I settled for an XT with dual 5.25" floppies and a black and white CGA screen. Running Digital Research's GEM helped it to work "almost" like a Mac.
Over the years I kept upgrading my PC, but I stuck with GEM until the early 90's, when I discovered OS/2 (my computers have always been Windowless). That was what I was happily using when my daughter decided she would have to have access to the Internet or wither away.
When that happened, my wife suggested that perhaps the computer I always wanted was within reach. I found Low End Mac and took their advice on a compact Mac. I began looking for an SE/30 and quickly found one with 4 MB of memory and an 80 MB hard drive running System 7.1 for $40. A few upgrades later, and it now has an additional 28 MB of memory, an NEC CD-ROM drive, and a Motorola modem. (I still haven't figured out how to make the modem and Eudora Mail Pro 3.0 to work together, but someday I promise I will) I also picked up a copy of System 7.1, CorelWorks 3.0, and PageMaker 3.0.
Needless to say, I am still "Brand X" free. Some of my friends think I am crazy.
Don't I miss all them pretty colors? Not really. I have a black and white laser printer.
What about the internet? Truth was, I never really used it much.
Mostly I write and do a little light desktop publishing. My SE/30 has proven more than capable, and it even works with my old HP LaserJet IIP+ thanks to PowerPrint! Others have pointed out that I am not compatible! Indeed I am not. Never really have been (I can't count how many times people have said to me, OS Who?). Speaking of which, I have a whole lot of OS/2 software available cheap....
From one very happy Mac user to all the others, stand firm!