: For those of you still around there is a little treat for you on the Story
: page. A little known piece by the one and only Matt Soell.
Talk about a blast from the past. Matt really lucked out there.
I'd completely forgotten the existence of LOGO, but we did have it at my school. All the computers there were outdated Apple IIs (probably the IIe model specifically but it's been a long time) and color Macintoshes, and we also had a timeshare scheme that kids had to sign up for. For some reason I have a very detailed memory of one particular class where we were walked through the MacOS Chooser thingy. Introduction to basics of networking, I guess.
We had Macs at home (or rather my father did because he wrote Mac software) but once I discovered x86 PCs and all the things I could do under the hood with them that Apple would frown upon, I got hooked on Intel. Learned to build my own using magazine articles and parts from machines discarded at the dump. For a while I ran multi-boot setups with DOS, Windows, ye olde Linux distros that came on five to eight CDs, and developer preview copies of BeOS that my dad discarded, just because I could.
I had a secondhand PowerBook 2400c to get my Marathon fix, which ingrained a longtime habit of playing with the PowerBook key layout even on desktops. Eventually AlephOne supplanted that final holdout, but it's probably still in the attic somewhere.
Speaking of AlephOne, I kind of regret not trying the BeOS port at least once. Just because I could.
