The Tandy 1000 RLX (A Memory)
From my earliest memories until I was about six and a half years old, the computer I remember us having at home was our Commodore 64.
Then one random day during first grade, my parents picked me up from school early. (My mom must have taken the day off from work because she was there too.) On the drive home, they told me they had bought a new computer.
They had gone to the Radio Shack at the farther-away mall and picked up a Tandy 1000 RLX that had been marked down 50% off.
It’s funny how clearly I remember them telling me we had a new computer, yet I can’t remember helping my dad set it up or even watching him do it. I don’t remember the first time it powered on or the first thing we did with it. You’d think those would be the memories that stuck, but they’re gone.
What I do remember are all the little moments that came afterward.
I remember learning DOS, exploring DeskMate, and writing my first programs in GW-BASIC. I remember playing games like Monuments of Mars, Pharaoh’s Tomb, F. Godmom, AntRun, SpiderRun, and Castle of Dr. Brain. I remember watching my dad figure things out as he went, and in many ways we were learning these new technologies together. I also remember watching my mom spend time playing PC-Sherlock.
This was also the computer that introduced me to BBSs, America Online, and CompuServe.
I don’t remember the names of most of the BBSs we called. I think one of them might have been called The Grizzly Den, but I’m not completely sure. There weren’t many local BBSs in our area, so we were limited to ones that were a local phone call.
I can’t remember what my dad’s handle was, but when I was eventually allowed to have my own, I went by The Jamer.
I don’t remember spending much time chatting with people on the BBSs, but I’m almost certain that’s where we found a lot of the shareware games we ended up playing.
The funniest memory I have involving a BBS happened one day when my dad logged in and was greeted by a giant ANSI art screen that said:
“Happy Birthday, Old Fart!”
It was hilarious for a couple of reasons. First, it wasn’t his birthday. Second, he was only about 36 years old at the time.
We eventually found out that the message was actually meant for one of the SysOp’s friends and had accidentally been attached to my dad’s account instead.
Looking back, I don’t think I realized it then, but that Tandy 1000 RLX was the computer that really sparked my lifelong interest in computers. It wasn’t just another family computer, it became the machine where I learned, experimented, and discovered that computers were something I wanted to understand.