Or

When I Thought That 'Floppy Disk' Was A Medical Complaint!!

It All Started With This Little Beauty!!

I used to be an avid fan of arcade games such as Space Invaders, Galaxians & Asteroids etc. these machines started to pop up in pubs, clubs & games arcades. The machines were brilliant and oh so addictive, then when these games transferred over to the home console...well I was hooked!! I just had to have one of these consoles....

An Early Coleco Console & An Atari Console With Games

My first machine was an obscure machine that could only play about five variations of 'pong' where all you had was a couple of 'bats' and a 'ball' in glorious black & white, Wow!! I then upgraded to several of these machines including the Coleco console pictured above. I then went on to an Atari machine that was the forerunner of machines like the Psx & Nintendo 64. This console was great, the Space Invaders game was identical to the pub machines that I loved without the need for an endless supply of coins!! My fave game on the Atari machine was a game called 'Circus' where you had to move a see-saw contraption across the bottom of the screen and vault clowns up to burst balloons, a cross between 'Pong' and 'Breakout'. Other games I owned for the Atari machine were, 'Space Invaders' (of course), 'Galaxians' & 'Superman'. The consoles were great but home computing was starting to appear on the scene so I decided to jump up to a machine that would not only get me interested in computing but also allow me to play games!!

The Atari Machine & Circus Screenshot

I decided to get a 'real' computer which was a rubber keyed Sinclair Spectrum with a massive 48k of memory!! I was supposed to use this computer to get into the real side of things such as programming, word-processing, spreadsheets etc. but I just happen to load up a game called 'Manic Miner' and I was hooked. Followed by such classics as 'Jet Set Willy', 'Scuba Dive', 'Chuckie Egg' etc. etc. I could not get down to any real computing because of Miner Willy and his pals. I upgraded my Speccy to the Spectrum Plus which really just replaced the rubber keyboard and case with a more solid plastic case with a much better keyboard, but 48k of memory was just not enough for me so I stepped up to massive 128k (Wow!!) version of the Speccy. The worst thing about the Sinclair Spectrum was loading the programs / games which were on cassette tape, who can remember sitting watching those hypnotic multi-coloured loading stripes flashing around a loading screen for minutes on end which seemed like hours only for the screen to go white at the end with the infamous loading error report nine times out of ten!!

The Sinclair Spectrum Collection

I then decided to upgrade to a Commodore Amiga, firstly the 500+ and then the 1200, this was more like it, a decent machine at last and with this machine I was introduced to such things as a 'hard-drive', 'floppy-disk' & 'mouse' and ultra fast loading of stuff. This though was still not  enough for me because software and magazines for the Amiga scene were soon becoming rare in favour of the PC, and so  after about a year I stepped up to the world of the PC. These too though keep getting better and better and in the years since I joined the PC revolution I have had two machines, so rather than keep upgrading my PC. I decided to have a go at building my own which is my present machine - A Pentium II machine, now I just keep upgrading new hardware stuff into that. Even now the Pentium II is classed as 'slow' compared to the new super fast processors but to keep up with the technology you need plenty of money and so for now my trusty old Pentium II will suffice. Hands up all those people who like me upgraded from the Spectrum & Amiga to a PC and one of the first programs bought was an emulator so you could emulate a Spectrum & Amiga on your PC!! Even though I have a PC version of 'Manic Miner' I still load up my Spectrum Emulator just to see Miner Willy as he used to be all those years ago.

The Commodore Amiga 600 & 1200

Even though I really do a lot of serious stuff on the P.C. I still like to play a game or two, my fave type of game is the 'Tomb Raider' sort, a bit of action plus a bit of brain work. I have completed all the 'Tomb Raider' series - 1, 2, 3, & 4, & The Lost Artefact and I have completed Lara's latest - Tomb Raider Chronicles, I also managed to find all 36 secret roses which enabled the 'Special Features', a few storyboards and a picture gallery, wow!! was it all worth it. I have also completed the 'Duke Nukem' series and 'The Nomad Soul' , 'Quake II' & Indiana Jones And The Infernal Machine , Unreal , Half-Life, Half Life - Blue Shift & Soldier Of Fortune. I also enjoy 'Football' & Pool \ Snooker games. My illness prevents me from working so I have a lot of time on my hands and my PC has really helped me cope with things and it is much easier and less painful to type than use pen & paper even if I am just a one fingered typist because of arthritic fingers. (If you are stuck or need help in completing any of the above titles drop me a line and I'll try and help)

Manic Miner PC (by Jason Brooks)

2003...A lot has changed since writing the above, I am now using a home-built Pentium 4 machine with 512Mb of RAM, it has a 3D Prophet Graphics Card and two hard-drives, one a massive 80gb & the other a 40gb. A CD Rom and Dvd writer are also installed. It is a far cry from the days of my little 48k Spectrum but I am as interested in computing these days as I was way back when it all started with games like 'Pong' & Space Invaders!!

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2009...It is impossible to keep up with the technology of today, no sooner do I upgrade my PC to something decent when it is once again out of date. With my hands about knackered through the ravages of Rheumatoid Arthritis I have decided it is too painful to continue building and upgrading my own PC so instead I have invested in a Dell Dimension 9200 with all the whistles and bells needed to cope with the software of today. No doubt this will be outdated before I finish writing this but it does the job for me and this computer lark is getting far too expensive.

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The Ideal PC!!

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Remember when........

A computer was something on TV from
a science fiction show of note
a window was something you hated to clean
and ram was the cousin of a goat

Meg was the name of my girlfriend
and gig was a job for the nights
now they all mean different things
and that really mega bytes

An application was for employment
a program was a TV show
a cursor used profanity
a keyboard was a piano

Memory was something that you lost with age
a CD was a bank account
and if you had a 3 1/2" floppy
you hoped nobody found out

Compress was something you did to the garbage
not something you did to a file
and if you unzipped anything in public
you'd be in jail for a while

Log on was adding wood to the fire
hard drive was a long trip on the road
a mouse pad was where a mouse lived
and a backup happened to your commode

Cut you did with a pocket knife
paste you did with glue
a web was a spider's home
and a virus was the flu

I guess I'll stick to my pad and paper
and the memory in my head
I hear nobody's been killed in a computer crash
but when it happens they wish they were dead.
 

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Computer Jargon!!

486 - The average IQ needed to understand a P.C. state - of - the - art computer you can't afford.

Obsolete - Any computer you own.

Microsecond - The time it takes for your State - of - the - art computer to become obsolete.

Syntax Error - "Hello, I want to buy a computer and money is no object.

GUI (pronounced "gooey") - What your computer becomes after spilling your coffee on it.

Computer Chip - Any starchy food stuff consumed in mass quantities while programming.

Keyboard - The standard way to generate computer errors.

Mouse - An advanced input device to make computer errors easier to generate.

Floppy - The state of your wallet after purchasing a computer.

Hard Drive- The sales technique employed by most computer salesmen.

Portable Computer - A device invented to force business men to work at home, on vacation and on business trips.

Disk Crash - A typical computer response to any critical deadline.

Power User - Anyone who can format a disk from DOS.

System Update - A quick method of trashing ALL of your current software.

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My Spell Checker!!

Last Updated: 19th December, 2009