I have a recollection of seeing Sublogic very early on. My older brother the Physicist at time was allowed to borrow the school computer and I saw it at that time. I can't say that my memory of what it looked liked came from that experience since I've seen it a ton of times since then.🤣

I would have been at school in my final year. My five years at senior school were some of the most stressful and difficult years of my life (I was very quiet and introverted, and that made me a target for idiots), and it resulted in anxiety problems for many years after I left. I was fifteen years old on this day. On a lighter note, I would be checking out my very first flight simulator only forty-four days later (Psion Flight Simulator for the ZX Spectrum).

I had a Commodor 64 for a few days and I was offered MSFS 1 at Christmas. I have since had all the MSFS versions. 

First and foremost... celebrating my wife's birthday!

Secondly, my Director of Finance was demonstrating to me what Lotus 1.2.3 could do for my company to speed up our budgeting on a bizarre piece of equipment, looking like a small TV, called a personal computer, for which he was the only one knowing how to enter magic formulas in a "Wysiwyg" format delivering neat tables in a few minutes, a work that was taking us days and days before. What an anathema!

 

I was busy writing a strategy/corporate positioning paper for Weyerhaeuser, which back then was the largest private timber holding company in the US.  We were technically very sophisticated in the IT world having worked with GE and then Honeywell in the late '60s and early '70s to develop commercial multi-processing software. 

I had been working on mainframe GE, Honeywell, and IBM mainframes since starting with NASA in 1969.  My specialty was strategic planning for IS.  At that time we were designing and building the first small log mill (milled small logs but was an enormous facility) run by computers.   

I famously predicted that the novelty of Macs, Apples, and the prospective IBM PC would forever remain a consumer toy and corporate oddity.   We had a bunch of "personal computing devices" in the lab and had been evaluating them.  I was convinced they were no threat to the great blue dinosaurs.  I was pretty sure I knew what I was talking about because I had previously spent three years designing and then upgrading the first large oil refinery built to be controlled by computers. 

The other BIG reason I knew toy computers would never amount to any thing in the "real" commercial and industrial computing world was response time, IO thruput, and network speeds.  I had been working with IBM for years on trying to manage TSO (Time Sharing Option) on System 360/370...etc to provide a guaranteed 3-second online response time.  I knew how hard that was and stated quite clearly that "personal computers" could never provide the power or speed needed.   My technical team had struggled mightily to provide 3-second response time to 70 (Yes - county them SEVENTY!) users on an IBM 370-158MP (two processors and 16 MB of shared memory). 

I knew for a fact no toy computer with 4k memory was going to be useful or used in the commercial environment.

But - I had been playing Lunar Lander on an IBM 7094 coupled to Interdata PCs for terminal control since 1974. 

BOY WAS I WRONG!

Edited November 7, 20223 yr by TacomaSailor

38 minutes ago, TacomaSailor said:

But - I had been playing Lunar Lander on an IBM 7094 coupled to Interdata PCs for terminal control since 1974.

I remember playing that game! 🤣 I was 7 and I was great at it! 😁

6 hours ago, Alpine Scenery said:

The first Pentiums (75 and up) were like the first "real PC's", everything before it was like a glorified calculator more than a PC.

N00b😆

Probably sitting in traffic, either to work or from work.

In my college dorm, watching the shuttle launch.  

At a Remembrance Day ceremony.

Playing with my Intellivision console and experimenting with its very limited programming capabilities (though it was a great 16-bit gaming system for the time).  I was also dreaming of the day I might get a real computer in the home...

At work, I was marveling at the capability of my Sony 3/4 inch U-Matic back-space videotape editing system, as video began to replace film in broadcasting production.

1 hour ago, TacomaSailor said:

I famously predicted that the novelty of Macs, Apples, and the prospective IBM PC would forever remain a consumer toy and corporate oddity.

I knew for a fact no toy computer with 4k memory was going to be useful or used in the commercial environment.

 

I said the same thing.  Personal computers were just a fad that would soon pass.  About all you could do was balance your checkbook.  No software so you had to write you own.  I learned Basic and Turbo Pascal.  And when the Internet came out I said it was just like CB radio and would never catch on.

I agree with you, "Boy was I wrong" 🙃

Roy

I was probably in school, being bored or getting into trouble. Possibly both at the same time. It wasn't until I was a bit older that I got Flight Simulator for the Commadore 64. I had no idea what I was doing and used the thick book that came with it to try and understand VOR navigation. It was fun and I would burn countless hours flying trying to figure things out. 

I remember, it was Thursday. Raining. I was twelve and school was morning shift that week. The games of choice were Atari 2600, cartridges space Invaders, outlaws, basketball, air-sea battle and PAC man. But the top toy was Speak & spell!!!!! Bar none!!

In the San Fernando Valley, probably making arrangements with my now-ex-wife to move up to the Seattle area.  Probably took a little time off to play Star Raiders on our new Atari 400.  IBM?  They were for big businesses!