My first computer was a Commodore 64, purchased in 1985..

I learned to program on that one, but I actually learned beginning programming at a teachers' workshop, on the Radio Shack TRS 80, back in 1980. It had only 1/4 K of memory. We didn't try to save our programs until the last class session. It was on a tape machine, and VERY slow. I took a series of free workshops for teachers on various old computers, and did some programming in different languages at that time.

The Commodore 64 datasette was also extremely slow, but the computer I bought came with a disk drive. After awhile, I bought a C128 from a teacher who was selling hers. Over the years, I picked up several used C64 and C128 computers and accessories at garage sales, etc. Some were given to me. I used to have about 3 dozen of them along with miscelleous hardware parts. I had used the parts to repair some of the non-working C-64s. For example, I would use 2 non-working computers to make one that did work. I still have a collection of them in my garage, although I got rid of the non-working computers and hardware parts, and donated some of the good computers.

I also have several Apple lle computers in the garage, plus an autographed (by The Woz) Apple 11GS in my attic. Several years ago, I gave away my IBM PCjr computers, Commodore Amigas, and Ataris. I still have an original Macintosh in my basement, that my school got rid of. And I have an older Mac in my attic. I also have an old IBM PC in my attic, which runs the original software on low-density 5 1/4" disks. I used it some time ago to check out an old QB demo program to see how it used to run at the original speed.

I have a lot of old Commodore software, books, and magazines. It's taking up a lot of space in my house and I may have to get rid of some of the excess. I haven't actually used those computers in years, although I keep an enhanced C-128 computer in my attic. I still want to be able to run the programs and files I created so long ago.