It was boring, but if you finished your work early you could play games for the last 5-10 minutes of class. This involved the little triangle in the middle of the screen known as a “turtle” which would draw to the co-ordinates you entered. Through CPM we would regularly have “Logo” classes. Right from the get go he focussed on the fun aspect of computing and got his students hooked.Īs well as Locomotive Software’s version of BASIC the Amstrad CPC used CPM, which was a precursor to DOS. When you think about it my computer teacher was a genius. Yes, in our first computing class we played games as a way of introducing us to the computers. The program in question if memory serves was Kuma’s Fruity Frank (a Mr Do clone). I remember sitting at the desk loading my first program expecting a bit of a wait, when “BAM”, the program had loaded. The first thing I noticed was how much faster the built in 3" disc drives were. That black plastic, the uniform monitors, the sleek built in disc drives… how could you not love these machines? During the following year when I started primary school I had my first taste of what it was like to use them. There in front of me was a room full of Amstrad CPC 6128 computers. Upon entering the school’s computer room I was hit with a sight so wonderful that I could barely look upon it. Prior to starting at the primary school we were given a tour of the grounds. My junior primary school had 2 Commodore 64s that were rarely used, and my computer experience up to that point was limited to moving a cursor around a maze that was taped on to the monitor. I was introduced to Lord Alan Sugar’s mighty beast at the age of 7. In the spirit of these childhood playground arguments I am writing a companion piece to Mike’s “Childhood Memories of the Fond Kind (Commodore 64)” article, coming at it from the point of view of the Amstrad owner. In other countries you could substitute Amstrad for another computer such as the Apple 2 or add the Spectrum into the mix. In Australia during the 8-bit era we had the Amstrad CPC vs Commodore 64 war. Lesser known, but by no means lesser in nature were the home computer wars that were occurring at around the same time. The Sega vs Nintendo wars of the 80s and 90s are well documented and are considered to be the thing of legend. Childhood Memories of the Fond Kind (Amstrad CPC)
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