My Personal Personal Computer History - 100th bLog Article

For my 100th bLog article, I thought I'd do something nostalgic and go back and outline my own history with personal computing.  When I started in the hobby 6 years ago I didn't know if it would be possible for me to collect the computers I'd previously owned but it has been possible, and I've written bLog articles about all but one machine, an omission which I will remedy in this article.

I started out with the VIC-20 that my Uncle gave me in the last 80s when he upgraded to the C64.  I've already written about my new VIC-20.  Since that article I've been able to get a Penultimate II Cartridge which has alot of fun games on it.  I've also found a good deal on a "PET Keys" VIC-20 and added that to the collection, so now I have a good running machine and a parts machine if needed.  When I was a kid I tinkered with the expansion port on my VIC-20 and ended up destroying the computer, at the time I didn't know how to repair computers so we were without a computer at home for a while, a gap in my Personal Computing resume.

Of course all throughout this time I used computers at school.  We had Apple II computers at school.  We had mostly Apple IIe but also a couple of IIgs machines.  I don't recall using a Mac during my High School years although there must have been a couple of them around in the early 90s.

After High School I moved to college at the Milwaukee School of Engineering.  When I first started school there I didn't have my own computer and was reliant on the computer labs.  At this point in time some of the programming courses were still being taught on DEC VAX hardware.  I think the school may have been running 11/780s.  One lab had VT220 terminals and another had 320s.  The school also had Macintosh labs and PC Labs for the students to use, but in my electrical engineering course we were encouraged to use PCs.  Shortly after I started school during my freshman year I got a Slimline Gateway 2000 486 PC, that would have been in 1993.  It was my first new computer.

After college I moved to Minneapolis for work.  I continued to use the 486 until 1999 when I got an Apple Power Macintosh G3 Blue and White.  I was starting to get into shooting and editing Digital Video as a hobby at that time and the G3 was a necessary tool for that hobby.  I paired the Mac with a 17" Sony Trinitron CRT, it was a great setup, although I do recall how painful it was to use the Puck Mouse.  I ended up buying an accessory to change the shape of the Puck Mouse and make it more ergonomic.

That machine worked well for quite a few years, I think we used it up till 2004 or 2005.  At that point we purchased a Power Mac G5.  This was the last of the Apple professional computer I purchased new.  I have re-acquired a 2005 dual processor G5 for my collection. This is a computer I have not blogged about before, so here's a picture of the setup...

We used the G5 till 2009 when I bought our first Intel Mac Mini. Since then we've used a string of Mac Mini machines, up to and including an M4 Mac Mini I bought earlier this year.  These are great value for money but I must admit this is not nearly as interesting.

Thanks for following along with my bLog!  The retro community is a really amazing group of people and I hope I can give back just a little bit here on the bLog by sharing about my experiences restoring computers regardless if they are nostalgic like the machines listed above or driven by my desire to learn about the history of technology.

What about you?  Let me know about your personal computing history in the comments below, or find my email address in my profile.  Did you have any of the same computers?  What are your "grail computers" for your collection and why?