[crouton] Nathaniel Trost: Computing History 1: Genesis, early Apple years (1981-1987)

[crouton at lists.powerblogs.com]

Posted by Nathaniel Trost:
Computing History 1: Genesis, early Apple years (1981-1987)
http://crouton.powerblogs.com/archives/archive_2006_03_05-2006_03_11.shtml#=
1141594502


   I was probably doomed from the start. While I am very very thankful to
   have been born into the personal computer age, the evil little boxes
   have dominated my life more that just a little bit.
   My first exposure came at age five in the form of an Apple ][+. That
   was 1981. This will be the year I hit thirty. Twenty-five years in
   front of the keyboard, virtually the entirety of my life, at least the
   parts where I was self-aware enough to remember. I only have vague
   recollections of that era. My family lived in New Jersey in a house
   built on the edge of what could either be called a very steep hill or
   a very short cliff. The computer was in the basement. My involvement
   was limited to the odd bit of game playing and watching my father
   tinker with the machine. My vivid recollections are limited to two
   games: [1]Alien Typhoon, an superbly implemented Apple II ripoff of
   Galaxian and The Atomic Foo Blaster. The latter game was never sold on
   any shelf, but rather a creation of my father using one of the first
   examples of create-your-own-game software, a program called The Arcade
   Machine. In 1983, my father traded in the Apple ][+ for the newly
   released Apple //e. At this point in time, the only effect that had on
   my life is there was one particular Pac-Man clone that wasn=E2t
   compatible with the //e.
   I didn=E2t start my own earnest computer tinkering until I was older. In
   1984 my family moved to Naperville Illinois, in the Chicago suburbs. I
   was soon raiding the Nichols Library for BASIC programming books aimed
   at kids and typing in bits and pieces from [2]Nibble magazine. In
   retrospect at that point in time my own personal programming efforts
   were very rudimentary to say the last. I don=E2t think I ever learned
   the use of arrays, and I wasn=E2t even using GOSUB/RETURN but just GOTO
   all over the damn place. Needless to say, my own personally authored
   text adventure, which I originally titled =E2Sword=E2s Quest=E2 was the =
very
   definition of spaghetti code. And I had no clue about the concept of a
   text parser. Strangely this didn=E2t stop me from calling myself
   =E2Nateware=E2 with a business address in the =E2Basement Floor=E2 of my
   family home. In one of my nostalgia boxes I suspect I still have the
   giant advertiser info package Nibble sent me when I enquired. Whoops.
   I was getting a bit ahead of myself.
   I seem to recall making some stumbling attempts at assembly language
   around 1985/86 or so. I really wasn=E2t ready for that and didn=E2t get
   very far. My vivid memories from that era also involve games. I spent
   quite a few hours watching my dad play the original [3]Wizardry I,
   charting out dungeon maps on graph paper. The old Wizardry games still
   have some of the most classic boxes in all of computer gaming.
   Associations can be strange things, whenever I hear the songs =E2Boys of
   Summer=E2 by Don Henley or =E2Run to You=E2 by Bryan Adams I can recall
   watching my father make his way to Werdna sitting in front of the //e
   with the radio playing. The other memorable game from this time period
   was [4]Stellar 7, which both my father and myself spent many hours
   conquering. Stellar 7 was a game quite ahead of its time, both for the
   3D wireframe graphics and a great deal of strategy and depth in its
   action-oriented gameplay. It=E2s a rare case of such a game that still
   holds up well today, something that can be said of very few early 80s
   computer games.
   In mid-1986 I learned there was going to be a new Apple II model
   coming. I was excited. Very excited. I remember the teaser picture of
   a computer under wraps in the =E2Coming Next Month=E2 panel of the August
   1986 issue of A+ magazine. The next month passed very slowly. When I
   ripped the September issue out of the mailbox with the glorious cover
   shot of the new Apple IIGS I got nothing else done for the rest of the
   day. There were certain advantages to being homeschooled. The wait to
   get a IIGS was even harder, but finally, in May of 1987 the family //e
   was traded in for a bright shiny IIGS.
   The acquisition of the IIGS ushered in my own personal Golden Era of
   computing, when I was having lots of fun, really learned to program,
   got online, and started =E2going pro=E2 all before obtaining a drivers
   license. But that will be the next chapter.

References

   1. http://www.mobygames.com/game/alien-typhoon
   2. http://www.nibblemagazine.com/
   3. http://www.links.net/dox/warez/games/sir-tech/wizardry/
   4. http://hg101.classicgaming.gamespy.com/stellar7/stellar7.htm