Timex Sinclair 1000
My first computers were the Texas Instruments 99/4 and /4A . I bought mine as an adult friend was an engineer at TI and my first computer mentor who also offered me the employee discount. Sadly, though the first 16-bit home computers, these were probably the most proprietary, shackled, and closed home computers in the universe. I wrote many an Extended Basic program with them, but I longed for a bit more open of a box to play with. I was an early reader of Byte and Computer Shopper magazines (back when they were far more interesting in the early 1980s. I always had a hankering for CP/M computers, but those were sadly far beyond my means as a teenager. When I saw some of the amazing things being done with the Timex/Sinclair 1000 , always considered a "toy" computer , I was intrigued. These were so stunning simple and cheap that even a kid like me could acquire one and, more importantly, it was so simple that expansion was wide open. The most amazing thi...