. | From Home Computers
to a Real ComputerBonaventura Di Bello- Bonaventura is Italian and has been using Macs since
the late '80s.
I would never have imagined the giant step that in the
early '80s took me from "home computers" to what then was a
real "monster machine," a Mac
SE. I was a game writer for those fascinating "interactive
fiction" games called "adventure games" in the early '80s.
At twenty-something, in the full spring of home computing,
small but nice little digital creatures, called Sinclair
Spectrum, Commodore 64, and MSX, I created games for people
of all ages to enjoy the challenge with their own computers
at home. I wrote more than 70 of those games and earned a big
bunch of money, for the time and the age I was in. Then the
trend stopped, as it usually happens in computer trends, and
I was left with no job at all. Then the unexpected happened: the publisher for whom I
wrote the games asked me if I was able to "make a whole
magazine" for him. That was the early season of desktop
publishing (DTP), a very confused and confusing one, indeed.
I had heard of a computer called Macintosh, and watched a TV
serial about it, but it was like a dream to me, such a
beautiful thing. I browsed all the magazines of the time, looking for
articles about DTP and "making pages on a computer." Most of
the articles pointed to those Macintoshes. All I had to do
was to say Yes to the publisher, accept the challenge, and
take him to a shop to buy "everything we need to accomplish
the goal" (his words). Needless to say, we bought the most powerful system we
could get at that time: an SE (no SE/30, just SE) with 2 MB
of RAM, a 20 MB hard disk, and an external Radius A4 "pure
black and white" (yes, no grayscale) monitor. And a
LaserWriter Plus, of course. And, thanks God, the DTP
program I asked for was Quark XPress (1.0!!!) and not the
awful PageMaker the reseller tried to sell us. I had one
month to understand how all that stuff would do the DTP job
the publisher asked for -- guess what? In less than one month I was able to layout a whole
magazine, and it wasn't the only job I did (I also
translated it and wrote some articles). Just one final note about that adventure: the magazine
was about video games, and it became two magazines, later. I
had young people writing about and on all sort of computers,
from the old 8-bit Commodore 64s to the new 16-bit Atari STs
and Amigas.* I managed to connect all of those beasts in
such a way that all the typed articles ended up on my
powerful SE. Later on I bought a Mac
II for myself, with a LaserWriter II NTX and an Apple 16
grays scanner (ugh!) and an Apple Two Page 21" grayscale
monitor. I started working at home, and went on like that
all the following years. I still am, doing DTP, Web layout,
translations and multimedia. - * The Atari ST and Amiga lines both used the same
Motorola 680X0 family of processors as the Macintosh.
ed.
I've bought two Power Mac
6100/60s, and one still works, well souped-up. I also
bought a beautiful iMac,
the machine everybody in my family loves. Shame its price
dropped down so dramatically only after 2 months I had
bought it at full price! :( I've been using also PCs during these years, and I still
use them networked to the Macs. My dream is a portable Mac
powerful enough to emulate a PC for the "basic tasks" I
cannot do as comfortably as I do (or I'm used to do) on my
Compaq Armada 1700. And not more expensive than this one,
actually. Maybe the iBook will do, with Blue Label or
Virtual PC and 128 MB of RAM. Or maybe Apple will just throw
in a "software ROM" which you can choose at startup to fully
emulate a PC using the powerful G3 hardware. Maybe. I will wait, and maybe my next computer will be a
"lollipop clam" (as the envious PC fans call it ;), so I can
leave my iMac to the rest of the family, and stop fighting.
Let's hope, and think positively different. My First Macintosh- PC to Mac and back and back, "Rob the
Hood," 1/18/2000
- Ten Years with an SE, Matt Wolanski
1/12/2000
- Salvaged Compact Macs, "Adam Ant,"
12/2/99
- Macs for design, Lynn, 11/18/99
- From Fat Mac to iMac, Wayne Crannell,
11/26/99
- Macs Work With Me, Tom Gabriel,
10/25/99
- My First Mac index
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