Early Computer Encounters

The first computer I remember using was the one my dad brought home from his work when I was less than 10 years old. I'm fairly certain it was an old IBM, and even though I'm sure there were more advanced computers around at the time, this one ran DOS. The most exciting aspect for me, other than playing around and printing things off WordPerfect on the Dot Matrix printer, was the video games.

WordPerfect in DOS

The games came on floppy disks, which were aptly named at the time because they were huge, and made of a material which bent easily. When they were inserted into an external drive which would read them, one had to navigate to A:\ and then run the executable (usually game.exe or something similar, the disks had instructions printed on them).

8-inch floppy disk drive and diskette, with 3.5-inch disk for comparison

Some of the games included on the various disks my dad had were Q-Bert, a bomber-type game, a variation of Star Trek-type game (i.e., controlling a space ship to battle aliens), and a base-defense shooter type of game. I found myself mesmerized with these games, and with the computer itself; even at an early age my mom was always to remind me not to spend too much time on the thing.
In elementary and middle school however, I was exposed predominately to old Macs, running OS 6 and 7. In elementary school I had fiddled with the computers enough to be the "go-to guy" if ever a computer locked up. My usual solution involved pressing the three key sequence (control-pretzel-power, if memory serves) on the keyboard to manually reboot the system.

Screenshot of Mac System 6

Along with the usual dose of Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, and Need For Speed in the games department, I was introduced to the then-new iMac in its various colors throughout middle and high school. Personally, I couldn't stand them - the entire computer was built behind the monitor! But I did interact with them on an almost-daily basis and my interest in computers and their uses was solidified, and the rest is history.

Original iMac