Who still has their first computer? My TRS-80 Color Computer 2 is sitting quietly in my garage, in a box that contains it, the TV adapter, the Color Basic manuals, a Radio Shack joystick and a half dozen cassette tapes with programs I wrote as an 10yo in 1982.
If anyone at the Computer History Museum reads this: Get the 70s/80s micro computers out from behind the display cases!!! CHM has at least one of every computer you can think of, why not take the extras and put them on the floor for visitors to play with? It's like torture wandering through the displays and not being able to play with all those computers and video games you lusted over as a kid.
I have a couple TI-994a's and a C64 out in the garage that were given to me as gifts... not the original (that died a long time ago).
I learned to program on the TI, TI-BASIC first, then Extended Basic, then some Assembler. The C64 was great because you had to understand how to work directly with hardware. On the TI, you would nice library call like CALL SOUND. On the C64 you'd have to POKE everything to the correct address to coax sound out of it (often what you would do in a single line on the TI would take 4-5 lines on the C64, but the C64 was fast, and had lots of memory). Good times.
My Atari 800 died in a lightning storm in 1983, but I still have the replacement 800XL downstairs, with floppy drives, cassette drive, thermal printer, and 300 baud modem. An Ape Face paralell port adapeer for the Epson RX-80, which I don't have anymore. Lots of floppies and cartridges, too. And JForth along with the manual.
We still have my wife's first computer (Sinclair ZX81, she was the first kid in school to have their own computer), and my second (Amstrad CPC6128 & colour monitor).
I still have my first keyboard, an IBM Model F. The PC-AT which went with it was Ship of Theseuse'd into the late 486 era, I abandoned it when tower cases became standard.
If anyone at the Computer History Museum reads this: Get the 70s/80s micro computers out from behind the display cases!!! CHM has at least one of every computer you can think of, why not take the extras and put them on the floor for visitors to play with? It's like torture wandering through the displays and not being able to play with all those computers and video games you lusted over as a kid.