Dave Plummer

I do.

I didn't own my first computer for a long time, but the first computer I ever used was a TRS-80 Model 1 Level 1 4K machine.

And I rode my bike in fifth or sixth grade, so I was about 11, to the local Radio Shack.

And, you know, they had the standard component stereo systems and everything else the Radio Shack had, but they had a stack of boxes that was labeled computer.

And so I was asking the people that worked there about it, and they said they just got it and they hadn't set it up yet.

And so I was rather precocious, and I figured, well, I'll set it up for you.

And they said, okay, have a shot.

Did you know what you were doing?

Absolutely not.

I mean, it's no worse than a component stereo.

The only thing is that Tandy and their infinite wisdom use the same five-pin DIN connector for power, video, and I think cassette, so they're all identical.

And if you plug them in wrong, you'd blow it up.

So I read the label and got it working and wound up playing with it and not knowing anything about computers.

So I'm typing English commands into it, and, you know, print 2 plus 2 works perfectly, yet...

More simple in English that you enter into a basic level one interpreter is not going to get you very far.

Yeah.

Didn't know any better.

And I still have an old full scap that I wrote in sixth grade of a program that's kind of a logically correct, but has no chance of working on any interpreter that existed at the time.

It took me a while to figure out what was actually going on with them.

But I rode my bike down there every Thursday and Saturday, and they had graciously let me use the machines.