What was your very first computer ... ?

@ThePerfectUsername Sinclair?

Yep. At age 30 I was probably the oldest whizz kid in captivity at the time. :-) @Nimbus

@ThePerfectUsername 😛

@ThePerfectUsername yus me too

How excited were you when the announced the new 16k Spectrum then eh? I used to love writing machine code for that thing. Come to think of it the Z80 processor was probably the last one I ever knew from start to finish. Amazing little things. @SW-User

@ThePerfectUsername I had a 48k, played a lot of games on it and learned the basics of machine code (so to speak). That was when I was 13 or so, so I was just getting started on the learning curve and I didn't have the math for some stuff. The C64 that came next was much more capable and it had a floppy drive, but 6502 machine code was so shitty after the Z80.

The 6502 was a lot more efficient processor than the Z80 but I'd never have admitted it to BBC owners at the time. Such snobs they were and just because Beebs were faster. Phah. I eventually followed the Amstrad line through their CPC 512/6128 and their PC before I cottoned on that I could save huge amounts of money and get better machines by assembling my own PCs. Happy days eh. 😁 @SW-User

@ThePerfectUsername The Z80 had a much richer instruction set, though, and more registers, which was very helpful for early teenage me who didn't know how to use the zero page properly or iterate through more than 256 things. Next up was 68000 assembly which was wallowing in luxury by comparison to either.

I was a huge fan of the Apple Mac which I'm pretty sure used to use the 68000 processor but I could never have afforded one which is probably the main reason I went the PC route in the first place. I think the long promised Sinclair QL was to have a 68000 too but the wait for that + the dongle-shambles when it did eventually arrive put me off Sinclair products for good. @SW-User