My first computer was an Amstrad 464, the ne with the built in tape drive. Yep back in those days when I was around 14 it was the in thing with C15 cassettes that could also be played on a conventional tape deck.
This staggering piece of technology was awesome, so much in fact that it came with its own green tube monitor. Where everything was in green. If that was not enough to make your friends envious, you could get a modulator that when plugged into the back of a television would give you glorious full colour or so it appeared. From turning the machine came the sudden desire to buy magazines, type in miles and miles of code and hopefully play new games that staggering in their detail would blow your mind away. Or rather the going back through miles of code, to find that little detail you missed. Which would irretrievably screw up the parameters of that supposed game to become a nightmare of detective work and swearing. games like Daley Thompsons decathlon were the order of the day, along with Harrier Attack, Jet Set Willy and a welter of other titles all designed to be an awe inspiring and frightful waste of time. ( With adult hindsight)
It taught amongst other things a knowing of how to read computer manuals and pretend they were interesting. It set up the inevitable who is better at this game, me or him. In the case of the decathlon game: Who could waggle the joystick faster. It was more practical, in some ways, had more user options and probably more flexible than other machines arousing intense debate as to which machine was better. The other main contenders being the BBC 64 k or the Commodore of the ability, each of these machines had the same memory power of 64K of RAM, RIM, or ROM or whatever it was called and there was no such thing as a computer mouse or touch pad. Though some enterprising so and so designed and marketed the light Pen, providing limitless capability and unceasing frustration in equal measure. It worked for some people and not for others and was I think a clever way to extract money from peoples wallets. It worked from time to time and the rest of the time it went in the drawer. This after its making some blobs on the monitor screen and not much else.
The Fruit Machine game which came as part of the package along with the machine itself was great fun, especially upon winning the jack pot which happened more times than any real fruit machine. There was the Hangman game, Animal, vegetable, Mineral which was open to abuse and could be recorded for retrieval at a later time and much else besides. Many years later I let go of this wonderful old machine and sold it to a housemate, who apart from wanting to play computer games also needed it for his work logs. Natural progression moved him forwards to the point where he passed it on to his daughter and he got something else.
My current machine can do everything 363 could do, just faster, better and with more added features. It can also browse porn sites, enable video chats with people on the other side of The Atlantic and enable me to design 3D models and edit photos to my hearts content. Like the other machine it also creates alarming amounts of frustration, does things I did not ask it to do. Very rarely if ever does it get to play games, at least not the ones I want to play, installed ones are called mindfuck, why is the printer not working and cannot open that image. I would throw it out of the window in sheer frustration, but I fear that would break it and would cost a fortune to buy a new one so I don’t.
The musings of a professionally confused artist 
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