[musiccog]

In my last year of primary school a teacher brought in a mate he had to give the class a lesson on computers for an hour or two. He brought in a TI99 and we spent the afternoon learning about programming, graphics and 'sprites'(yes he had the expansion)

..after the lesson, I went up to him (Graeme) and asked if he would tutor me after school.

I then spent the rest of the year - (two afternoons a week) learning programming - and have been doing it ever since.

Graeme wasn't what I would call a great teacher - but he gave me the opportunity.

I remember my first program was a copy of a game called something like 'Wild Gunmen' where one or two players tried to get into a situation to shoot each other.

I eventually got a TI99/4a a few years later (as it was selling for $99(AUD). Wrote a flight simulator (dials only) and something that I really loved - an almost perfect copy of Frogger including music! The most annoying problem with the TI99/4a (apart from loading from tape) was that it hated running out of memory - and when it did would just crash. That always meant a reload from tape, optimize something, save to tape, and try again. Lots of fun.