His name was Andrew Tather, better know as Panda for obvious reasons. His parents moved in next door to my parents before I was born and his dad, Malcolm, was in awe when I was brought home from the hospital after being born. According to my Mum he said 'Is that baby real ?? It looks far too small !!!'. Well I was real and 13 months later he'd realise that as Panda popped out of his Wife's under-carriage

Once we were old enough to walk we became best friends along with Sindy from across the road. Yeah, okay his real name was Paul, but due to his physique, small and wiry, that nickname would come to haunt him at school. Before computers were invented we spent most of the time either riding our bikes, scrapping dog shit off the bit of grass near our houses so we could play football, playing with Tamiya Radio Controlled cars or making smart Lego constructions. Panda was to move before the Tech. came tho. Malcolm being some type of businessman, was obviously doing well and when some big 4 Bedroom Detached houses were built at the end of our road they moved. This was 76-77 I think and this place seemed huge, massive back garden and plans to build a playroom extension for Pool Table and Scalextric setup. By the time all this was done though Sindy had got a ZX81.

For some reason very little remains in my brain about this momentous occasion, the only recollection I have of Sindy's ZX81 was sitting next to him reading Smash Hits whilst he played Flight Simulator on it. I do however remember Panda getting his ZX81, the sight of setting this little black box up in his living room on a very thick and deep cream fluffy carpet and having it plugged into a then huge 25" TV was amazing. He didn't have a tape recorder for it and to be honest there wasn't much you could do with it, but it was new and fantastic. It was however about to be blown in the atic. As I said Panda's dad must have been raking the money in because within a few weeks of the ZX81 arriving a much more powerful machine turned up and it was American. It was big, had colour, sound and a cartridge slot, the keyboard was very similar though. Can you guess what is was .... yes an Atari 400.

The amazement of seeing Pac-Man and Space Invaders load straight away and playing with proper Joysticks instead of the keyboard was a truly ground-breaking experience. But the upgrades didn't stop there, soon the 400 was replaced by an 800 (proper keyboard), and then the cherry on the already very tasty cake, a 5 1/4 Disk Drive (he had a Tape Drive, but having got one game and watch it take 30mins to load it didn't stand much of a chance really). My god the Panda had it all, his own computer and colour TV in his bedroom, and he was only 11. At home both Sindy and me made do with sitting at the dining table downstairs with B&W TVs.

There were problems with owning the Atari though. Firstly no one else had one, obviously the exclusivity was cool up to a point, but with the other problem of games costing 30quid a pop the brilliance of the machine soon got boring. We needed more games god damn it. The most eagerly awaiting Cartridge was Miner 2049er. In a generation of Shoot-em-ups this was different, this was a Platformer with 10 levels that were all unique. We couldn't wait. For about 3 weeks Malcolm kept saying he'd pick it up from the Computer shop in Hull (we lived 10 miles out in a little village), every time I went round after school all I wanted to know was 'Has he got it yet ?', the answer was no too many times to remember. It hadn't come into the country yet, the shop is waiting on the supplier, the supplier is waiting on the ship turning up, the ship hasn't even set sail yet, has the game even been coded yet !!!
Oh the agony, this was cruelty to children surely.

Going off at a tangent for a moment, this waiting period reminded me of the December Issue of C&VG, 1985. I subscribed with our local newsagent. The significance of this issue was that a tape was going to be on the front cover with Side A containing the Outrun Soundtrack and Side B containing the 720degrees soundtrack. For a whole week before Xmas we rode our bikes to the shop, only to come away with the release having been delayed. When you're age 15 nothing can come fast enough can it (hmm, doesn't really change though does it). I still have that tape, I can even lay my hands on it within 5 mins of looking.

Miner 2049er finally made an appearance on a dark and rainy evening circa early 1982. I knew before going over to Panda's that it had arrived as Malcolm had delivered it late the previous day. Panda had had a quick go and was suitably impressed. I arrived on the his doorstep at about 4.15, once inside with shoes taken off, I carefully ran up the open wooden stairs to the large bedroom on the left. Panda's 'bedroom of tech delights'. It was already on the screen when I walked in, it was on a whole new level of brilliance, the title screen looked amazing and the HighScore Table, all 256 available colours cycling down the letters and numbers, this is why the Atari was so desirable. This machine was made in 1978/79, the ZX-81 in 1980/81 and Spectrum 1982, why did Sir Clive bother Well okay his machines didn't cost 400quid, but still !!

Over the next few years, Panda managed to hook up with another Atari User/Dealer in Hull. Every so often there was a day during school holidays when he was unable to 'play' as he was off the Staffy's house (I have no idea what this guys name was !!). The day after a visit Panda would have many 5 1/4 disks stuffed with Multiboot menus of new games from the USA, now i'm not saying Piracy is a good thing but with games costing 30quid a time you can see why he did it.

One day though he came back with some games and they wouldn't work, oh no his machine was no longer up to it. This beast of an Atari 800 with 48K of Random Access Memory refused to load Koronis Rift from Lucasfilm Games. This was odd as both BallBlazer and Rescue on Fractulas loaded and played fine and these were made by the same company This was 1985. Atari in their Wisdom had newer versions of this now pensioner of a home computer, nothing radical a nip and tuck in a few places here and there gave us the XE Range. Panda hadn't bothered with the XL Range that had appeared in 82/83 as nothing had changed really. But with the release of the 130XE (128Kb Memory, but only 64k available for games or something), LucasFilm Games had made Koronis Rift a 64K only game. The cheek. Even more cheeky was the fact that it would load up the funky Corporate Logo screen with twinkly stars and 4channel chords, then appear to load the game before going tits up 30secs later. I seem to recall seeing this about 10times in a row as we shouted at the thing to just 'god damn work'. It didn't, couldn't, its little memory was full with bits and bytes escaping out the side of the machine and off downstairs to watch Dungeons and Dragon on TV. We were gutted.

To be continued...........................

Coming in Part Two of this adventure;

Koronis Rift finally works
I get an Atari
Panda gets another one, and thus I'm still 'In love with my mates computer'

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