When I was small, I like walking around and disintegrate toys and
electronic appliance within my reach, similar to many boys,
electric and electronics became one of my hobby.
My parent's family, like the other Chinese who live in the region of
Guang Zhou ( 廣 州 ) , flee to Hong Kong in order to escape from the
civil war and Japanese Invasion. My father was a factory worker of
garment industry, since he only attended the primary school for a
few years, he feel how hard to earn a living without knowledge and
qualification. He encourage me to learn the computer, and bought me
a game console, this is where I came in the computer related field.
When I was about 12, the gaming industry begin to grow rapidly, the
best known game console in Hong Kong was ATARI ( 雅 達 利 ) . After
it launch the promotion campaign, a lot of similar game consoles
suddenly available on the market, within a few years most of the
game console begin to hybid become computers, and include BASIC
language, in order to win the sales in the keen competition.
My very first game console is Vtech Creativision ( 機 利 寶 ), after
a struggle of 6000 lines of a BASIC game 'Frogger', I trade it to a
Texas Instruments TI-99/4A, and found that the BASIC was too strange
to handle, 'OLD' to load? And later found a better EACA Colour Genie
EG2000 ( 智 力 ), it had the best cassette tape signal monitoring
design I've ever seen, when normal signalling level, 3 to 4 star
will be display on the top right corner, also got Microsoft BASIC,
but this computer still lack of software support, trade again ...
next computer is Sharp MZ-80A with monitor and tape, it's fast and
easy except no graphic mode, it's the the weak point of this Z80
computer, finally I've found Apple ][ and //e, which can play games
and got tons of software, and last a long life even today. (AD 2007)
After Apple //e fade out, I've no choice but buy an IBM compatible PC
with 4.77MHz, 640K memory and no hard disk. The Macintosh just begin
to sale, but the price was rocket high at that time, I can't afford.
I spent too much time on the Apple ][ and //e, and I've found that I
can't learn the other computer languages anymore, just playing with
the MS-DOS 3.3 and learning file management.
When I graduated from Form 5, my examination result was not good
enough to get into any university in Hong Kong. I have no choice
and start to work in the Golden Shopping Center ( 高 登 購 物 中 心
), now became Golden Computer Center ( 高 登 電 腦 中 心 ), located
in Sham Shui Po ( 深 水 土步 ), Kowloon. My first priority is to
work in a computer related job, never thought of others, because
computer is what I'm interest in, and it's my best.
When Intel launch 80486DX, I bought my first 80486 with a Western
Digital 80MB hard disk, still MS-DOS ... but the time has come, a
friend have an extra Discovery 2400bps modem, which he can let me
try for a period, from then I'm deeply addicted to the BBS world,
as I remembers it should be 1992, the fastest modem at that time
was a Hayes 2400bps with MNP5 compression.
Later I was invited by the Mr. Seki Yuen, the founder of United
Chinese Network ( 聯 合 中 文 網 ), to start my own BBS. That's
was the beginning of Audio Gang BBS, should be 1995.
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