Fire in the Valley

So I'm almost done reading Fire in the Valley, and it's made me appreciate the people and events that were the driving forces behind the personal computer revolution. And I'm a little embarrassed to say this, but I have to give Bill Gates his props (yes, that Bill) because he was once a real hacker – breaking into systems just to crash them, and writing BASIC for the Altair before he and Paul Allen actually had an Altair to work with (they wrote a program to emulate the Altair hardware to test). Of course it didn't take too long before the BillG we all know and love emerged – I'm referring to the famous "An Open Letter to Hobbyists" letter that Bill wrote blasting users for copying his BASIC program (first warez!).

I just got done reading the chapter on how Apple started. Good stuff. I just wish I had kept all my old computer stuff from way back. The only things I have left are my old Atari Cassette Deck (with a cassette that has this Paint-like program written in BASIC that I typed in by hand), and the 80-column card from my Apple //e. I really wish I had held onto my Atari 400 (my first computer), and all my old books and computer magazines.

Anyone remember Family Computing? (And entering in those BASIC programs for whatever system you had?) Or how about the kiddie computing magazines like Enter and K-Power? Or how about ANTIC? And was I the only one who, whenever I was at Fedco or Sears, would beeline it for the computer section and type in a 2-line BASIC looping program that PRINTed how cool you were? =)