Some background

In the early 1980's I was teaching music at Berklee College of Music in Boston. I had always had an interest in science, and personal computers were big science news at the time. I couldn't afford one, but I started reading about computers. I had always done a lot of writing, and the thought of a personal word processor interested me.

Then the Sanyo 555 came out: the first MS-DOS computer for under $1000. I bought one. It came with a bundle of software: WordStar, DataStar, CalcStar. It also came with BASIC, which is a good thing, because, given the limited capabilities of that early software, I really needed a way to make the computer do what I wanted.