The Kid's Guide to Home Computers

A paperback book

In my stash of retro computing reading material I came across a small paperback book called The Kid’s Guide to Home Computers.

Thie book 118-page book by Daniel and Susan Cohen came out in 1983 and sold for $1.95 (about $6 today). This book looks vaguely familiar to me, but I don’t think it was one I had back then.

It consists of 14 chapters:

1. Bringing Home Your First Computer

2. The History of Computers in 2,000 Words or Less

3. Almost Everything You Need to Know About Computers

4. A Really Easy Chapter on Programming

5. What’s Hot in Hardware

6. Peripherals — The Added Power

7. When Your Computer Is on the Phone

8. Turn Your Video Game into a Computer

9. Kid’s Stuff

10. A Hard Look at Software

11. Where the Action Is

12. The World of Adventure Games

13. Where Do We Go From Here?

14. How to Keep Up

There was a fair amount of Atari mentioned in the book, which I liked. Right off the bat it starts with a photo of some kids huddled around an Atari 800, which was also the computer that the authors used.

Kids using an Atari 800

In chapter 4, there is a ridiculously short program shown:

10 PRINT "I AM A REALLY SIMPLE"
20 PRINT "COMPUTER PROGRAM"
END

I’m not sure why the “END” is there by itself as it doesn’t serve any purpose.

The authors then tell you to “punch” in “RUN” to see the output. I like that phrase “punch in” — it’s not really one you hear today.

This is the only program shown in the book, although the rest of the chapter does talk about some other BASIC commands.

Chapter 5 covers the various “hot” computers of the time and the list includes: Timex Sinclair (1000, 1500, 2000), Commodore VIC-20 and 64

¹

, Texas Instruments 99/4A, Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80, Atari 400, 800 and 1200XL

²

, Apple II.

This bunch of computers is pretty reasonable for the time and were all popular in the US. At the time the book was written the Commodore 64 was still brand-new so the authors had no way to know it would become the most popular computer of the era.

The authors did note some of the low prices for computers such as the VIC-20, Atari 400 and Sinclair models, but did not predict how this would lead to the crash of 1983 that killed off the TI 99/4A, the Sinclair models and almost killed Atari.

Speaking of that, the chapter also talks about the Mattel Aquarius and Coleco Adam, two computers that got a lot of fanfare back then before they were introduced, but failed immediately and disappeared quickly.

The Aquarius was an especially horrible computer with poor graphics, a bad BASIC and few peripherals. The Coleco Adam was an all-in one system with a daisy wheel printer, built-in high-speed cassette and the guts of the ColecoVision. In fact, you could even buy a version of the Adam as an “add-on” for a ColecoVision, resulting in a system that took up a lot of desk space! The Adam did have a good BASIC, some apps built into ROM and some nice games, but it launched late and had reliability problems.

The chapter on peripherals gives a good overview of cassette and floppy drives, printers and monitors.

Chapter 7 talks about modems and going online, which was an amazing luxury back in 1983. Online networks were incredibly expensive (charging by the hour) and bulletin board systems were hit-or-miss and if a long-distance phone call was required would also be expensive to access.

Chapter 10 talks about software and then strangely highlights a bunch of Intellivision and Aquarius titles. Perhaps they were sponsored by Mattel?

I liked the adventure game discussion Chapter 12. These types of games were unique to that time period and were a lot of fun to play!

Overall this was an interesting read about how computers were treated back in the early 80s. They definitely were a unique and not entirely understood technology and you can see here how people were trying to determine how they fit in.

For a couple bucks, this book might have been able to give a kid the details they needed to convince their parents to get them their own computer, which would certainly be way more fun than reading a book about one!

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1. Referred to as the 64/K.

2. Written as 1200-XL.