A Class You were part of using 8 bit computers in school / college / summer campus

5rtytry56

I'll kick off:

Around 1986 /87

In secondary school I completed about 12 hours (an hour per week, on a Wednesday morning between 8 and 9 am) on an Apple ][ Forget the model of Apple ][. I learned some apple basic, after trying to learning some other supposedly "useful" but awful "learning" programming language I care less to mention.

Later in Camp 2000, I spent ONE week (this was meant to be a two week course) using the classic BBC B Micro. Some BBC Basic done.

No qualifications acquired. There was the City in Guilds Level 2 certification available but I did not go for it

So what did you do as a school kid / scholar / 3rd level student on an 8 bit machine?

L1011

Nothing - my primary school somehow got the budget to go insane on 286's very very early on and had one in every classroom where the teacher was vaguely competent on them. Only eventually encountered Apple IIs when I was in secondary and they were used for some specific physics software and this was well in to the 32 bit era by then.

I believe the other primary school in the town was still in Apple II land at that time though.

r3nu4l

My primary school had a couple of BBC Micros, which I loved but we rarely got to use...once a year we got about one hour of use on the machine...

Then in 1983 there was set of 8 classes in the summer, where a tutor hired a room in the school and we got to use a Commodore 64 (original breadbin design) between two of us and learned some simple basic, e.g. "Hello World"

Happy days.

dilallio

In 1981 we used a Sinclair ZX80 to learn BASIC programming.
My uncle had a Commodore PET a few years earlier and in college, we used BBC Microcomputers. I loved those BBC machines - fantastic capabilities for their size.
I remember paying over £300 for an 8k memory expansion pack for a Commodore VIC20. POKE 36592

Deep Thought

early days, ZX80, then onto spectrum

School had the Apple IIe

Then onto a Training course, used BBC Micros and my first foray into LAN, College using Zenith PCs back to a server.

Amalgam

BBC Micro B's (multiple), with dedicated monitors, along with, I think, later, a single, lonely Acorn Electron.

Like something from ancient Egypt, neglected, at the back, by the metallic storage cabinet, was a Commodore PET, which, even in the 80s, seemed like an antique.

Graphing 'turtle' (perspex pudding bowl with wire gubbins and wheels) of some sort, which was maker faire stuff 30 years ahead of all that Arduino malarkey I like to read/dabble with now, ace.

BBC games played, Elite, Pacman, Pac-Man clone of some sort. I always liked the colour pallete on the BBC Micros, it was crisp and clear, unlike my Spectrum/Oric, at home.

MrCostington

We had an Apple 2 back in '81/'82 - just the one, in the maths class.. only the geeks stayed back to play with after normal classes. So, I'm still working at software now, for my sins!