NULL mag Issue 09 05 Amstrad memories
my first computer was an amstrad cpc 6128. when i got it, i was about 11 years old and getting one in the late 80s, early 90s and at this age, was something special. i think that, that era was the "golden era" of home computing and perhaps computing in general.
it was the time, that computers start "invading" our homes and by the same time, the whole "computing" stuff was developing/advancing, side by side with the new generation. today kids, may grow with a smartphone in their hands, at a very young age, but there is no way to feel, what we felt back then. they don't know about warez, disks, cracks, demos, bbses, phreaking, sharing code/disks with each other, breaking the limits and setting new ones, in programming and many more things.
when i got my amstrad, one thing that made an impression to me, was the big manual that came with it. you opened the box... and boom! there is the "bible" of your computer. with that book, you could start making stuff, by your own! no internet back then... and no one else knew a thing about computers. i remember that in my class room, me and one more kid, we had computers, in a total of 30 kids. the other 28 consider us, something like geeks/weirdos. and i was fortunate to have another friend with the same type of computer, cause we were able to exchange disks and play even more games.
another unique thing to our generation, was that home micros, came with a programming language. you turn the computer on, and immediately you can write a program... and back then, writing a program was something incredible. the feeling of making things on the screen was awesome.
immediately, after getting my amstrad, i started buying magazines about computers/programming. at some point i was buying 4-5 magazines per month! if having a home micro was cool... reading about the whole home micro scene and learning about new games, new computers, technologies etc. was awesome! it's something i miss very much... turning and smelling the pages of a fresh printed magazine, is something i miss very much. even if i have the time to read one, i don't have the "apetite" to do so. almost anything new, you are reading about it in the internet, even before it's printed in a magazine. you visit a webpage, a channel in youtube and learn it all. so why bother to read it in a magazine. this is also why the market for those magazines has shrinked and many of them have closed down. at least in my area.
so... with the manual in my lap, a listing with source code from a magazine and the keyboard in front of you... you had everything you needed to start learning computers and programming. and this is a big difference with the new generation, not only with computers, but general in life. back then, we learned and created stuff. today, users, just use stuff. they don't learn about them, in the proper way, and definitely they don't create, not in the same way we did.
but what about gaming? with an amstrad cpc6128 and limited money, it wasn't long enough, until i heard about warez! the kid in my class, learned from another kid in another class, that his cousin was buying warez stuff in a shop near by, so mouth by mouth, the "intel" were spreading and you knew where to buy stuff ;) after all, there wasn't many stores/people to do so, so everybody at some point learned the where and from whom stuff. this was also the big mistake of those stores/people, cause after a while the anti-piracy guys, also learned about them and came after them :( but it was good, as long it was lasted.
so you went to that "place" (a store or even the home of some totally unknown guy), asked about "not original" games/apps and they gave you "the list"! the list was some dot-matrix printed pages, very often blurred and in bad condition, cause there was only one list! and a lot of us :) you picked the software you wanted and if it was one or two, you were getting them almost immediately, or if you have made a big order, the guy was telling you to come and pick it the next day or so. sometimes you could arrange another place to pick the disks, if the guy was too buys or his mom was in the house... hahahaha. you could also bring your own diskettes to the guy/store, to write/copy the warez. this way you could save some money, from buying new disks all the time. but this, very often brought disputes, cause some times the disks were corrupted, even the new ones... it could happen or the copy procedure was failing and you couldn't run the app/game. so you went to your home, with all the joy to play a new game and if the/a disk was corrupted, you were smashing the keyboard from frustration!!!
i remember one time i went to the house of such a "guy"... in today words, to describe it, you could say, that the guy was living inside the matrix :) but this a story for the next time...
