In 1984 – 1985 I was still in Longmont and still living in the house at east 4th and Lashley.
I started High School in 1984, 10th grade, a sophomore and I was attending Skyline High School. Skyline was the super modern school that opened just five years prior, a half mile east of my old junior high.
Skyline was totally amazing; it housed the multimedia wonderland that was the Vance Brand Auditorium (VBA). It was at the VBA, in 1982, where my dad worked with Scripps Howard on the cable TV presentations that successfully brought cable TV into Longmont. While this was going on I was left to run around and pester people, so I got to lay hands on some lights and some of the stuff in the sound and projection booth – under the guidance of some real studio pros.
This kindled a life-long appreciation for the theater arts, but before this cable thing all we had in Longmont was a couple of local TV stations and microwave HBO and Showtime.
I guess it was about 1980 or so when my dad built a pirate microwave downconverter out of a round metal snow sled, three threaded rods, a coffee can, and some ingenuity – and we had HBO and Showtime at the house for a couple of years prior to cable… You know, because science.
Anyway, I was pretty enthused about taking “Theater Arts” in my 10th grade year with such a high-tech setup as the VBA being attached to the school. But the enthusiasm was short lived; the class was pretty much nothing but a lot of after-school prop work… I get that one has to work their way up, but it was incredibly frustrating to be doing nothing but painting 2x4s black for two hours after school every other day. And I was looking at having to do this for a year before I could even touch a light.
Needless to say, I didn’t sign back up for Theater Arts for the next semester.
Skyline also had a computer class – if you could call it that…
Computer Operation and Data Entry was another elective, and it was integrated into the math department. And even though the school had owned a half-dozen Apple IIe machines for a couple of years at this point, the class is really self-study because no one in administration had a clue what to do with the systems.
The computer lab itself was right off of the library, on the second floor, so it was easy to get books and take them to the desk for reference.
Most of the self-study course work used Apple Logo, which bored me to death, but I could get the lesson done in 5-10 minutes, do the typing drills really quick, and then move on to my own projects… The machines at the school also had “Koala Pads” which, while primitive, kinda got me into the tablet thing decades before tablets were a thing…
Outside of school I’d been working in 6502 assembly for a year or so, using the VicMon cartridge on my VIC-20 (I blew past BASIC in a couple of months because BASIC eats up too much of the limited VIC-20 memory). The Apple machines also used a 6502, so most of my time on the school’s Apple IIe’s was either learning stuff I was interested in (D/A converters were my thing in 10th grade, I wanted to build a robotic arm), working on my own programs, or reverse-engineering games to see how they work.
My first legit ‘software hack’ was in 1985, on those machines at Skyline… Using a hex editor, I removed the copy protection from a friend’s copy of “Karateka” so that I could play it too.
A couple of times up there in the computer lab I got so focused on whatever it was I was working on that I missed my next class, which was Graphic Design. Fortunately, it was another elective, and I wasn’t too worried about it.
This was the beginning of the end of school for me. I started to evaluate electives by how much time they took away from whatever hardware or software project I was working on…
For my machines at home, I’d been trying to talk my parents into springing for a Commodore 64 now that they’d come down in price – mostly to get my hands on the 6510 and its extra I/O lines… But then I saw some news about Atari’s new “XL” series, and they looked pretty sweet.
And then there was Apple’s ad for the “Macintosh”, which was amazing, and the whole ‘mouse’ and ‘graphical user interface’ thing looked absolutely killer… There’s no way I could get one though as they were really, really expensive; $2500 ($6700 in 2022).
I really wanted a 68000-based machine though… Someday!
Here are some of the current events from my 10th grade yearbook, and a glance back in time:
Music-wise New Wave was all the rage on the radio and MTV. I was rockin’ out to groups like Def Leppard and Van Halen, but was also into groups like U2, Men at Work, Duran Duran, Eurythmics, Flock of Seagulls, and Thomas Dolby. The era was quickly being defined though by one hit wonders like Spandau Ballet’s “True”, Naked Eyes’ “Promises, promises”, The Tubes’ “She’s a Beauty”, Madness’ “Our House”, Kajagoogoo’s “Too Shy”, Taco’s “Puttin’ on the Ritz”, After the Fire’s “Der Kommissar”, and Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ “Come On Eileen”.
Musically 84/85 was pretty amazing, with lots of new sounds and musical textures powered by lots of grandiose synthesizers, digital drums, and intricate guitar work.
All in all it was a really good couple of years…
