Oldest Technologies

1: The thrilling sense of novelty

As I recall, the very first computer I ever saw was my friend Patrick's Apple II in what was probably 1978, when I was seven years old. At the time, the only computer I had really heard of was the Eniac, which to my mind existed purely in the realm of scientists and engineers.

Suddenly out of the blue here was a living, breathing (so it seemed) computer in my friend's home. Even though Patrick told me his Dad had spent over a thousand bucks on the Apple, seeing it live brought technology front-and-center to my mind -- actual people could own actual computers! They might be as expensive as cars, but you could really go out and buy one. A whole world of possibilities became available; who knew what doors might open? This was quite likely one of the elements that propelled me toward a career in IT.

2: The first computer in my house

It wasn't long before I pestered my beleaguered parents into buying a computer, the next year. Rather than opt for the pricy Apple, they chose an Atari 400 for about half the cost. It had a keyboard and a slot for inserting computer cartridges, and it let you play games using attached controllers (joysticks). You could hook up a tape recorder to play and save games from cassettes, believe it or not. My parents had the foresight to buy a Basic computing cartridge (along with several games), which I used to get started writing elementary programs that I saved to tape (more on that below).

You can still buy an Atari 400 on eBay, as a matter of fact. The cost is about a tenth of what it once was (not factoring in the difference between 1979 and 2013 dollars), so if you've got $54.99 lying around, this baby can be yours!

3: Eagerly awaiting upgrades

In 1986 my family progressed from the Atari 400 to the Radio Shack Tandy 1000 SX with an 8088-2 CPU. This was a big deal, since it had two floppy disk drives! It also meant I could use DOS and access/save files more readily. To improve the situation even further, my Dad upgraded the memory in the Tandy to the maximum amount (640K), turning it into a veritable workhorse for its time. I even took it off to college a few years later.

4: Getting online at home for the first time

I'll admit it: I didn't get in on the bulletin board (BBS) craze despite being a tech aficionado. I never had a modem while living with my parents, nor would it have been a possibility, since my Mom was a diehard phone talker. So when the Internet came along and started getting big in 1992, it was like deja vu all over again. We got Internet access at my hospital job for research purposes via a text-based interface, but I recall finding a game where you could talk to a dragon (with the purpose of convincing it not to eat you). Rather than having access to one computer, suddenly I had access to hundreds or more using Archie and Gopher. I would stay after work using the Internet to explore the landscape and see what it held. Even dry public medical data was compelling, since I might be reading it on a Chicago or Montreal server.

5: Dream caster

Remember when Sega was in the hardware business? It seems like forever ago, but the company was at one point a leader in the video-game console market. Their 16-bit offering, the Sega Genesis, blazed a trail among home-based video-game consoles. Notable games for the system included Altered Beast, Sonic the Hedgehog and — who could forget — Mortal Kombat, which Sega controversially decided to carry uncensored while Nintendo forced the game's developers to turn blood into sweat for the Super NES version. The follow-up consoles to the Genesis suffered, however. The 32-bit effort, the Sega Saturn, received a so-so reception in the U.S.; likewise for its 128-bit product, the Sega Dreamcast, which was released in 1998. 

But the Dreamcast developed a niche, even after Sega officially discontinued support for the product and pulled out of the hardware business completely in 2001. A recent example of the cult following it has achieved came this year when the LulzSec hackers gave the Dreamcast a shout out on Twitter after Sega suffered a security breach: “@Sega - contact us. We want to help you destroy the hackers that attacked you. We love the Dreamcast, these people are going down.”