The next step on my road to computer literacy came in 1980 when I had turned 12 and was also in part thanks to the Work Experience programs we had at school back in those days! Another big reason for this one is, again, my big brother
@Erich_H and his interest in cameras! He used to frequent a local store in the city where he lived, called HEFOMA (short for Helsingborgs Fotografiska Magasin which translates to Helsingborg Photografic Warehouse) that sold consumer electronics like TV's, radios, records and, in one department, cameras! I tagged along quite a few times and found all of it fascinating and also got to know a couple of the people working there, including the owner! So, when the time came to select somewhere to go on Work Experience the choice was obvious! I managed to get a spot in the Radio and TV department and got to work!
On the first day at lunch we went to the break room which was upstairs and there were more people there than I realised even worked in the store! Turns out that HEFOMA also had a Computer department on the third floor! I never even knew that was a thing before this moment! So I managed to sneak up there to have a look and that was probably one of the best ideas I ever had! There will be more stories coming up connected to this store, me and my brother!
When I walked around and looked at all the awesome stuff they had there that lit a flame in me that never faded! I went up there whenever I had the opportunity even after my Work Experience activity ended! By that time they had gotten to know me and never really seemed to think that I was a problem but rather liked my interest in all things computer and even though I posed tons of questions they always patiently answered them! However they also had to do proper work so they decided to plop me down somewhere where I wouldn't be able to mess to much stuff up! In the end they sat me down in front of my next computer... this time it was a Commodore CBM 8032 with a magnificent CBM 8250 dual diskdrive!
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They gave me a binder with the instructions to Commodore Basic v4 (incidentally the rights to use this was purchased from a guy called Bill Gates working at a little company called Microsoft!) and I just plowed through this binder in no-time and after just a few days I had managed to learn and program BASIC! I was thrilled! This would influence me significantly so that later that year, when I finally purchased my very first own computer, I got myself a Commodore VIC-20! You can imagine the war-like state that later developed between me (the Commodore guy) and my brother (the Sinclair guy)! Which one that was best out of Commodore vs. Sinclair was actually a thing in Europe at the time, very similar to the iPhone vs. Android thing today!
Fast forward to a number of years later, at the end of the 80's, they finally wound down their business due to the increasing competition from other electronics chains that popped up and outpriced the smaller stores! They initially kept the computer department as a separate company named HEFOMA Data for themselves and sold off the electronics store to another company, which still exists to this day, but in the end for the computer department it was to little too late and they closed their doors for the last time in 1989 or 1990! When that happened I managed to buy this computer (and a few other machines with corresponding history coming in the near future) from the owner!
As with so many of these older computers at this point I have had to go through and recap the power supplies of both the computer and the disk drive! I also had to refurbish the screen and keyboard so that now it looks and works as good as when I first used it 40 years ago!
To finish off this part of the story... a treat for all of you in the MU-43 community:
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My own memory only extends to the Mach III, and then only because of friends who owned one; I never did, myself.
