Now we are in the PC age in my weekly recounting of my past computers there might be a sense this Micro Life series is getting a bit boring now? But stay with me as there is a twist soon. Last time i wrote about my lovely Unisys 386 that introduced me to the world of GUIs, 32 bit computing and even CD-ROMs! However by the time i had graduated i needed a more powerful computer and finally had a salary so could buy one. So i went down to Morgan Computers again.
I ended up with a 486 by Tulip Computers. Another nice solid box, though not my first choice actually. I first took home a no-brand PC box which had a faster specification however this lasted precisely 22 minutes before it conked out. I was offered another one but didn't like the rather flimsy system to be honest so got the Tulip instead. This had a 100MHz 486DX processor, i think the hard drive was 500MB and 8MB of RAM.
For the next couple of years it gave me trouble free computing. The monitor did blow up at one stage though so i bought a hernia-inducing 17" monitor instead. It was fine... but i was now working at a web design agency full of funky Mac boys. It was time to switch...
Micro Life (8b) : Macintosh SE
To be honest the story does get a bit complicated now, as i had money at last i was able to have more than one computer at a time. I'll just stick to my main computer in this series but i think the first "incidental" computer is worth a mention. I bought a Mac SE from Cash Converters for 50 quid, as you do! There wasn't a great deal i could do with this ancient Mac especially when i discovered there was a flaw with the floppy drive which meant, while it could read floppies it formatted itself, these floppies were unreadable in any other Mac. So my first Mac was an island... well until i got my hands on some more old Macs later on and installed a Localtalk bridge on a Mac IIci so i could access floppies on the SE over the network.
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