[oilbagz]

It was 1981, and the first "Computer Age" shop had opened up in my town, a place called Claremont - more of a suburb, really, of Perth, Australia. A lucky place, for it meant there was .. inside an air-conditioned cube .. a row of Atari and Apple computers.

Two school-kids are sitting there, tapping away, at something from a magazine. It looks immensely interesting, but they scowl at me as I get closer as if not to interrupt. So I go poke on an Atari, and immediately dislike its membrane.

The sales guy, probably only a few years beyond his teens, unlike me not yet begun, grins and nods over at another Apple II machine, newly set up. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I bang away at it "HELLO" this and "dO somehting" this and whatever, until the sales guy swoops in, wangs in a floppy, hits the reset combo and lets me play SABOTAGE for the rest of the afternoon.

The next day, after an interminably long day at school, I arrive with a freshly purloined magazine of my own. The same kids from before are there, just minutes before me probably but seemingly there all night, and are having a blast. They proudly, this time, beckon me over to 'have a go' at their game, TREK, wherein I am an "+" and there are "*"'s and . and #'s all over the place.

After witnessing me fail miserably, yet nevertheless programmatically successfully, these older kids chortle themselves out into the heat .. and I stick around to learn how to copy it to another floppy disk. The sales guy obliges, and gives me my first 5.4" floppy disk to save things on, "as long as you come back tomorrow and type a few more programs in, from those magazines you kids have..."

So, I did. What a summer it was.

I'll never forget those older nerds.

[smackeyacky]

Wow that sounds very different to my experience back then. Nerdy kid trying to get time on a computer in a shop in Canberra - generally the sales dudes would chase you out of the shop. The "Computerland" store in Philip was the worst offender for that. The Microbee people were slightly better so I am pretty sure that's how we ended up with one (plus the Apple and Atari machines were insanely expensive back then, and the Commodores seemed like toys).

[oilbagz]

I think in this case, it was inevitable that the shop was going to be inundated with rich schoolkids from the neighborhood, and the sales guy as I remember him seemed to understand, intrinsically, that these computers were going to sell if the kids could convince their parents to buy it for them...

Not saying I didn't get chased out of the other computer shops of Perth in the 80's, but those are other tales of joyous mirth, for another time ..

[nickstinemates]

What an awesome sales guy

[oilbagz]

Yeah, I guess they sold quite a few VERY expensive machines in that neighborhood, and there were raging arcade game controversies going along at the same time, so seeing kids do 'productive' things with computers - like program simulated galactic war games - seemed like a responsible thing to do.

In my case, that guy gave me a raging passion for computers that has led, 40 years later, to ridiculous things happening.

The "Computer Age" place stuck around for only a few years afterwards .. the cognescenti of my hacker club at school discovered TANDY and Dick Smith as places to test new hilarious routines .. and, meanwhile, some of us got modems.

Good times. I think my Mum still had that floppy disk around in her memoirs, somewhere. Something about how she righteously retrieved it from an old, much loathed, school principle, who had zero idea what it was, or what it would ever mean for the world that a 10 year old kid had simulated galactic war games on his person, in lieu of math homework, or so.

Anyway, yeah. Great sales guy, would time-travel and witness again.

[cmrdporcupine]

It really was the best era, and lots that I can relate to in your story there, though I was on the far opposite side of the world in snowy cold Edmonton, Canada.

And re: the principal, here's a great quote from my grade 3 report card which I get a kick out of, and use to help my kids feel better about their report cards:

"XXX's work is very untidy. More work is needed in cursive writing. His journal entries are computer programs."

I wish I could find that teacher today and send her a copy of my job offer from Google from 10 years ago.

[nicnic3]

I was a teenager visiting Computer Age on the weekends at the same time. It was a time when computer access was still scarce and you hung around shops and went to conventions just to get access to one. Some friends used to go to the tandy store each afternoon after school and type in a lunar lander game they had written on the tandy 100 for sale. Each day the shop would turn of all the machines and wipe the game so they would go back up the next day and type it in again.