Forum Archive Home -> Computer -> What was your first computer?
| What was your first computer? | ||||
| freebird73717 posted 2008 Oct 04 15:13 | ||||
| What was your first computer? Mine was a Packard Bell 486 (don't remember exact speed but it was something like 25hz--VERY slow but fast back then) processor running win 3.1
It had a 5 1/4 and 3.5 in floppies and a modem that connected at a whopping 14.4kbps! I paid around $1,500 dollars for that thing. When I bought it it was top of the line! So what about the rest of you? I'm sure some of you have had computers older than that. Tell us about it! | ||||
| Baldrick posted 2008 Oct 04 15:22 | ||||
| Amiga 500! I think my father payed around $1000 for it. Played most games...like Giana Sisters and Boulder Dash. :)
Then a Fujitsu 486 33Mhz with 28.8 modem. It was really funny to dial up to bulletin boards and download stuff. Internet wasn't that big back then. :) | ||||
| prouton posted 2008 Oct 04 15:22 | ||||
| Sinclair ZX80 made from kit (aka, solder it yourself)
Membrane keyboard, video output to television (RF), booted to Basic No floppy or hard drive support, offline storage was an audio cassette recorder It featured a Zilog Z80a processor running at 4MHz 4k ROM for the BIOS, O/S and Basic Interpretor 1k of static RAM I hacked an additional 1k of RAM, a composite video output to a CRT monitor, and a movable key keypad. I still have in a closet somewhere...I wonder if the electrolytic caps have died yet? | ||||
| freebird73717 posted 2008 Oct 04 15:31 | ||||
Damn! Now that is an old one there! You're a braver fellow than I. Knowing my luck I would solder something wrong and blow the whole danged thing up. | ||||
| filmboss80 posted 2008 Oct 04 15:33 | ||||
| Apple Lisa prototype. Was a Beta tester. Somewhere around '83-'84. | ||||
| Ai Haibara posted 2008 Oct 04 15:38 | ||||
| Heh, I get to hint at how old I am, yet again. :)
My first PC was a Texas Instruments 99/4A, with the optional speech synthesizer and the cassette tape drive, and after that, a Commodore 64 with the 1541 drive and a 2400 baud modem. I actually still have both, in full working order. (Well, okay, and my Atari 2600, 5200, on up...) | ||||
| yoda313 posted 2008 Oct 04 15:38 | ||||
| I first had a cartridge computer that didn't even have a monitor - one that hooked up to a tv. Can't remember the brand at the moment.
My first pc was a 286 :) The first TRUE pc with any power was a 386. I had dos 5.0 originally on that machine than upgraded to 6.2 with windows 3.1 I STILL HAVE IT AND IT STILL WORKS! (it was a COMPUDYNE brand fyi). I also had a soundblaster 8 bit mono soundcard that I got for it. It was the first ISA expansion card I ever bought. Ahh.... those were the days..... Then I got a Pentium 200 later followed by a HP pentium 3. Then came my Celeron 2.66ghz EMACHINE wiht XP HOME that I still have. I am currently using a VISTA PERMIUM HP. It was originally a single core 2.5 amd (I think it was 2.5 or maybe 2.3???) ANyway I upgraded that to a dual core amd 2.7ghz processor - I know have a vista rating of about 5.2. I also upgraded to a soundlbaster fatality sound card, 2gb rams from 1gb initially. Added a sata card for the BLURAY ROM drive I have, a 500gb internal sata drive I added plus a 320gb external usb/firewire/esata harddrive. I have a ATI ALL-IN-WONDER HD 512mb PCI-E graphics card as well :) | ||||
| DereX888 posted 2008 Oct 04 15:39 | ||||
| Very first wasn't my own. When I was kid my dad or my older bro gave me to play with a one of those old chip-in-a-keyboard, aka Commodore ;), C=64 I think. That thing connected to TV, used cassette tapes hahaha... it just sucked LOL (yet I wish I had it today though ;) )
But to be fair, I must admit few years later I wrote almost 100-lines long "game" in BASIC on it (my very first own "code" hehe ;) ) | ||||
| libiec posted 2008 Oct 04 16:19 | ||||
| Commodore VIC20. 4K RAM, tape drive for storage and loading programs, cartridge games. Used a television for a monitor.
After that IBM PC, one 5 1/4 floppy drive, no hard drive, 128K of memory. Coupled with a wide carriage dot matrix printer and CGA color monitor. DOS OS. Price tag $5,000.00. After that 286, 386, Pentium,....... | ||||
| NoBuddy posted 2008 Oct 04 16:44 | ||||
| Sinclair ZX 81 - no kit ;-)
with a "huge" 16 KB extra memory. Which moved all the time out of the slot. 200 programs on cassette still anywhere in a drawer... | ||||
| hudsonf posted 2008 Oct 04 17:03 | ||||
| My first computer was a Atari 800XL. I later added a tape drive(a nightmare) then a 5 1/4" disk drive followed by a second 5 1/4" disk drive. To top it off I added a printer(used tiny ink pens). | ||||
| sambat posted 2008 Oct 04 17:05 | ||||
| Ti-99/4a
Still have it connected to a CF card through the synthesizer side port (emulates three disk drives) - even has a printer port that's connected to a Sanyo daisy wheel (prints around five cps) and shakes the house. | ||||
| painkiller posted 2008 Oct 04 17:30 | ||||
| Sinclair ZX81 kit. Added a 2K memory module.
This used a regular cassette tape to store/load the programs. Displayed on a regular television. I wrote a meager OS on it that took 40 minutes to complete (execution time). Rewrote that program at work on a Honeywell minicomputer in assembler, 4 seconds execution. | ||||
| redwudz posted 2008 Oct 04 17:45 | ||||
| My first computer was a VIC-20 with the cassette drive and the added memory. Seems like I paid a lot for it. Long gone now. :)
Feeling nostalgic a couple of weeks ago, I bought a Macintosh SE-30 off Ebay. It came with keyboard, manuals and the 'brick' mouse. :) Works great. Nine inch B+W screen. It even has Space Invaders installed. :lol: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_SE/30 
Now I have to dig out my old SCSI peripherals and see which ones still work. :) I still have a Amiga 1000 and 2000. | ||||
| Verify posted 2008 Oct 04 17:47 | ||||
| Hi All,
Been reading and enjoying this site every day for over four years now, finally decided to join :D 1st Computer used: Interdata Model 3 Mini (IBM 360 instruction set) 1st built: 1967 8KB Core Memory, 1KB Core ROM (reprogrammable by stringing wires) 1st Owned: Microkit 8/16 development system (S100 bus box with various plug-in microprocessor boards, 16KB RAM, Memory mapped video (16x64) and two tape cassettes (which worked really well). 1st built 1975 Developed the software for a torque monitor for a 1000HP electric motor on it (8080 Assembler). (Also designed the hardware which included an embedded 8080 with 2K of EPROM plus the signal conditioning bits.) | ||||
| redwudz posted 2008 Oct 04 17:51 | ||||
| Welcome to our forums, Verify. :) | ||||
| Verify posted 2008 Oct 04 17:58 | ||||
| Thanks red,
You're definately one of the several members that have kept me coming to this site. | ||||
| craigarta posted 2008 Oct 04 18:36 | ||||
| I guess my first one was pretty high tech from what I have read.
My Aunt gave me her old Apple IIe. (She gave it to me in 1992) I remember that it had it's own green monochrome monitor (whoo hoo) The Duel 5-1/4" floppy drive (yes two drives in one seperate external case) and I belive it ran ProDos for the operating system and I rember my Aunt did expand the memory to a huge 128kB | ||||
| freebird73717 posted 2008 Oct 04 18:42 | ||||
| Yes. Welcome.
Hope to see you stay around and post from time to time. Share some of that knowledge with others. | ||||
| Verify posted 2008 Oct 04 19:01 | ||||
| Thanks freebird (you're also on my 'good list'),
Hope to be of help - if you need to know how to build a neutron-chopper or a vacuum evaporation-rate monitor or a custom smart-card ASIC (brag, brag) :D just let me know. Also, I really should thank Baldrick for his heroic efforts at keeping this wonderful site going! So thanks A LOT, Baldrick. | ||||
| SandyB posted 2008 Oct 04 19:08 | ||||
| Heathkit H8 that eventually ran CP/M os and got to add an 8 inch floppy that held 160kb....even had 8meg memory! Learned how to program in C-Basic. 40 years ago? | ||||
| lantern posted 2008 Oct 04 19:22 | ||||
| TI 99-4a for me and the cassette tape drive and 2400 bps modem. | ||||
| prouton posted 2008 Oct 04 19:25 | ||||
Yeah, I was one of several high school electronics shop students that put one together in 1978-79. But I think you're off on the memory size -- it took a plug-in board (about 12"x4") full of chips to yield 8kb. We did three of them for a whopping 24kb. Between those and the CPU board, you could practically toast bread. :D And on ours, you had to load the bootstrap code via the octal keyboard on the front panel, at which point it would load the full O/S from cassette tape). A contemporary of that computer was the Commodore PET which started at 8kb RAM. I don't recall how much the math lab's TRS-80 had, but I would guess 4kb. | ||||
| Bodyslide posted 2008 Oct 04 19:37 | ||||
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64 | ||||
| gadgetguy posted 2008 Oct 04 20:27 | ||||
| I bought a Commodore64 at the same time my Dad and brother each bought a TI99-4a. I was still using my C64 long after they both gave up on their TIs. Started with the tape drive, followed by the 5 1/4" floppy drive, then got an actual monitor, and finally the 3 1/2" disk drive. I then replaced it with a Commodore128, which I still have. Cut my programming teeth with Commodore Assembly Language, even getting published once in RUN Magazine, (although they spelled my name wrong). And for those that think it was only a game machine, I even used it for remote programming customer PBX systems. | ||||
| Midzuki posted 2008 Oct 04 21:05 | ||||
| The very first computer I used was not mine at all ---
--- a goode and olde B6700 :oops: :D Hope freebird will consider it a valid answer to the question :mrgreen: | ||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Oct 04 21:13 | ||||
| Atari 800: http://www.computercloset.org/atari800.htm | ||||
| freebird73717 posted 2008 Oct 04 21:26 | ||||
Impressive. Mainframe type computer right? This thread has been an interesting one. Looking forward to more responses! | ||||
| Xylob the Destroyer posted 2008 Oct 04 21:38 | ||||
| Frankensteined from multiple old broken down PCs.
Intel processor, but before the Pentiums came out... It ran Win 98. This probably around late '01/early '02. I was a late bloomer! It ran VCDgear & Prassi and lead me to vcdhelp.com though! | ||||
| bendixG15 posted 2008 Oct 04 21:54 | ||||
| 2 Sinclairs - forget the model numbers - TX1000 and 4068 maybe.
1 had chicklet keyboard. The other loaded using audio tapes, took multiple tries to read the whole tape without an error. But the games were great even if they were in black and white and low resolution on the TV. 1st "real" PC was the Compaq 8086, desktop - hard drive had 3 month warranty and died 1 day after 3 months, ouch, I cried. (The Compaq 8086 was 1.7 times faster than the IBM 8088 at the time) | ||||
| pepegot1 posted 2008 Oct 04 22:03 | ||||
| Radio Shack Model 3 with a tape drive. | ||||
| kato51 posted 2008 Oct 04 22:03 | ||||
| Sinclair ZX-81 kit. BTW, Zilog Z80a ran at 1 Mhz. 2K ram internal. My last non-pc was an Amiga A-3000. Had to use raw ram chips for memory expansion. Amigas were amazing computers for it's day with dedicated graphics chips and multitasking. | ||||
| pepegot1 posted 2008 Oct 04 22:09 | ||||
| TRS 80 Model 3 Radio Shack with cassette tape drive and Z-80-2 MHz
Sorry for the double post-Mia Culpa! | ||||
| redwudz posted 2008 Oct 04 22:22 | ||||
| I had many dreams of buying a MITS Altair 8800 computer way back then, but no way I could afford it, about $1200 for the full setup. Programming was done via toggle switches. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_8800
Anyone out there ever used one or still own one? They were arguably the start of the PCs we use today. A decent TV movie you may still be able to find called 'Pirates of Silicon Valley' chronicles the start of PCs, with Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs as the principals. Maybe not historically correct, but interesting, nevertheless. :) Bill was likely not amused with the movie. :lol: | ||||
| edDV posted 2008 Oct 04 22:49 | ||||
| "Mine" was an IBM 360 followed by a CDC 6800. | ||||
| Gramps posted 2008 Oct 04 22:52 | ||||
| I got my start programming on a Digital PDP-11 mainframe running RSTS back in the mid-70s. I remember the college bought a 4 color pen plotter for $35,000. We spent the next couple of month programming it to draw spirograph designs. :)
The first home computer I had was a VIC-20 with the cassette tape drive. Later, I got a Commodore 64 with dual 1541 disk drives and a 300 baud modem. I bought my first 8086 PC-XT in 1984 or 85. | ||||
| prouton posted 2008 Oct 04 23:29 | ||||
| My first mainframe (since the topic seems to have grown :D ) was an IBM 370/145 running DOS/VS (6 partitions) and CICS, in a whopping 1.25 MB of main memory. The company had picked up the computer used from the company that made the add on memory unit, which is part of why it had so much. I was an evening computer operator during Senior year of high school, and signed on as a programmer after graduation. It beat all hell out of working at a deli like a friend of mine. | ||||
| grossjamesh posted 2008 Oct 04 23:45 | ||||
| Altair 8800 and then a SWTP 6800 with 2K RAM and TTY interface.
BTW the SWTP 6800 is still working. | ||||
| lordsmurf posted 2008 Oct 05 00:40 | ||||
| Commodore Plus/4, but never used it.
First x86 computer owned by family was 286, I forget Mhz of it. Blazing fast 640k RAM upgraded, EGA card, 1.2B floppy. Big stuff at the time. Most folks still had not heard of hard drives, 1.2MB floppied (360k was norm), 256k, CGA, etc. This I used, more or less, as needed. A friend of mine had an 8088 at the time, it was pretty slick too. We had 386, 486, 586 -- then I jumped to a P4 and removed the "we" from the equation, it was 100% mine this go-around. | ||||
| Epicurus8a posted 2008 Oct 05 01:09 | ||||
| Apple II+
It had one 5 1/4" disc drive, 32k RAM, a 9pin Epson printer, and no hard drive. Eventually I bought a second 5 1/4" disc drive, an additional 32k RAM, and a 300 baud modem.  | ||||
| FulciLives posted 2008 Oct 05 01:42 | ||||
| My first computer was a Commodore VIC-20 which sucked so bad that I somehow convinced my mom to shortly afterwards buy me a Commodore C-64 (which was the shit).
My very first computer game was a cartridge for the VIC-20 called ADVENTURE LAND which was an all text game ala the Infocom games like ZORK etc. I could be wrong bu I think ADVENTURE LAND was written by Steve Jackson who was famous for his paper/board games back in the day. - John "FulciLives" Coleman | ||||
| Kayembee posted 2008 Oct 05 02:50 | ||||
Kids. javascript:emoticon(':)') My 1st was an Apple ][ (no "+"), purchased Feb., 1978. Stuck with ][s till 1987, when I got an Amiga. Broke down and got a peecee in 1996, though by then I'd'a rather had a UNIX box. My 1st real program was written about 1959, and ran on an IBM 709 (vacuum tubes!). It was a special class I entered, summer following 6th grade.
The original "Adventure" was written in Fortran and ran on some minicomputer, probably some sort of PDP, by Crowther and Woods, and came out way back, maybe as early as 1969. | ||||
| betwixt posted 2008 Oct 05 03:34 | ||||
| Mine was a home soldered Nascom 1 around 1977/8.
It had a Z80 running 1MHz, 1K of static RAM and was programmed in hex! Still booted faster than Windows though ! Brian. | ||||
| DB83 posted 2008 Oct 05 03:54 | ||||
| Just like several on here, my first was a C VIC-20.
I even invested major money in getting those add-ons(graphics, memory) which, if memory serves me, were each bigger than an ipod. A neighbour, who was into electronics, even rigged up an extension board, bigger than today's mainboards. But the best thing of these earlier computers was writing in line after line of code for that great game as published in a magazine which took three times as long to debug :) | ||||
| rhegedus posted 2008 Oct 05 04:11 | ||||
| Acorn Electron
BBC B Atari ST Then PCs Pentium 133, Pentium 233MMX, P3 700, P4 2.4 and now Q6600. | ||||
| träskmannen posted 2008 Oct 05 05:53 | ||||
| Sinclair ZX-81. | ||||
| painkiller posted 2008 Oct 05 06:32 | ||||
| (If red doesn't mind my posting twice ...)
After my Sinclair adventure, I got in to Atari product line. I had an Atari 800XL, STe, Falcon and their 'luggable portable' Stacy (still have that). Sold off most of the Ataris. I was gifted a Pentium II, which later was replaced with my first P4. Now? Well, look at my computer details ... guess I qualify as a technogeek junkie ... :wink: | ||||
| rcguy1 posted 2008 Oct 05 06:44 | ||||
| My first computer was a abacus... no only kidding. It was a x86 store bought no name computer back in 1987. It had a blazing speed of 2.7 with a turbo that moved it to 4.0MHz. I had two 5 1/4 floppy drives, 640k ram and a 40 meg hard drive. I also bought a 15" color monitor with the computer and all for about $2100.00. About a year later I bought my first Dell. It was a 286 and had one 1k of ram and a 90 meg hard drive. At that time it cost a $1000.00 a k for RAM. Today I assemble my own computers. | ||||
| Slapstick posted 2008 Oct 05 07:06 | ||||
| Atari 400, little brother to the 800. First IBM compatible was a Kaypro running a Nec V20, (8088) with a little switch in the back to bump it from 4.77 to 8 MHz. Whoa what speed. :o Anybody else remember having bring along MS Flight Sim to check the claim that the PC was 100 % IBM compatible? (whole program fit a 5 1/4 floppy) | ||||
| aedipuss posted 2008 Oct 05 11:19 | ||||
| atari 800, commodore 64, atari 800xl, ibm pc-xt 64K ram full height floppy, 1982 sharp pc5000 30lb laptop w/ bubble memory carts, 1983 visual full size portable, 1984-on built my own, early ones with the use of an eprom burner to make pc clones that would run programs that checked the rom for the "©ibm" text. | ||||
| TJK1911 posted 2008 Oct 05 11:48 | ||||
| I still have a copy of the invoice for my first machine, a 486-66 PC bought from Pal Systems in Redmond, WA in August 1994. It cost $1931.38.
486-66 8MB RAM 420MB HD 14" color monnitor I had a friend who had been using and playing with PCs since the original IBM Personal Computer came out, and who had spent untold thousands on dual-monitor setups (green for text, color for play), dot-matrix printers and the like. He kept trying to get me interested but I just couldn't see it being at all worthwhile. Then he showed me DOOM. I bought a PC within the week. Oddly, although it was first-person shooters that initiated me into computers, I pretty much stopped playing after getting through Duke Nukem. I never cared for the online play of Quake and such, and anyway the first-person movement gives me vertigo now. Even though I played DOOM and Duke for hours on end, I can only stand a few minutes of either one now before I get woozy. Just too damn old I guess. | ||||
| Wile_E posted 2008 Oct 05 12:08 | ||||
| Okay, I didn't see anyone mention this one...My first computer was a TRS-80 Color Computer, from Radio Shack. It was nicknamed the CoCo by users and still has a great following today by hobbyists. I still have my CoCo 2 (64k), and a CoCo 3 (128k upgraded to 512k), tons of accessories, and a library of Rainbow magazines for the CoCo.
I was lucky, in that my parents owned a small home-town TV Repair shop, and later bought a Radio Shack Franchise. So I got to play with all the different models of computers in the 80's. But I liked the CoCo the best! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Color_Computer 
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| TJK1911 posted 2008 Oct 05 12:12 | ||||
I thought it was nicknamed the Trash 80. At least that's what we called it at work where it was used to keep track of drafting change notices. | ||||
| FulciLives posted 2008 Oct 05 12:30 | ||||
Yes I fondly remember buying computer magazines with games that you had to type in although I seem to recall only having the patience to actually type them up only a couple of times or so. I also had several books (sadly I think they are all "lost" now somehow) about how to program text only adventure games ala Infocom's ZORK and I really tried my best to program such a game myself using these books. However I was frustrated by the fact that they were all based on IBM Basic and I was using a C-64 at the time and C-64 Basic did not have IF - THEN - ELSE ... it did have IF - THEN but not the - ELSE part. It made the long programming process even harder and more aggravating as you had to use some "tricks" to mimic IF - THEN - ELSE :evil: The closest I got was a mini-game with about half a dozen rooms that you could walk around in with a few objects you could manipulate and a few though not nearly enough verbs and nouns. I never programmed with anything but Basic. Well unless you count HTML :lol: Oh wait I do seem to recall buying a book about ASSEMBLY language for the C-64. I read some of it. Played around a bit with it. Decided that typing in HEX numbers was absolutely ridicules and gave up on it! - John "FulciLives" Coleman | ||||
| stiltman posted 2008 Oct 05 13:13 | ||||
| TRS-80 M1
TRS-80 M3 with expansion memory skip a few years IBM 286 | ||||
| freebird73717 posted 2008 Oct 05 13:19 | ||||
I remember when my brother brought his home. I thought it was "cool". | ||||
| t0nee1 posted 2008 Oct 05 13:40 | ||||
| First PC for me was also a Packard bell which I bought used from a friend for $300.00, it was a 486 with DOS installed..had to buy the DOS for Dummies guide....I finally installed Win 3.1 , yahoooo! | ||||
| tmw posted 2008 Oct 05 13:49 | ||||
| Apple II+. Only uppercase, and now lowercase, except for when it printed. Somehow it printed in both upper and lower case. So, the word processessor would put the "uppercase" letters in inverse, and lower case letters in regular type so I could tell how it would print.
And, I remember the typing code from magazines. That sucked. But, actually being able to get easily to assembly language and understand the level 1 coding was pretty cool. Something most people today don't even understand. The thing was so much fun, I spent "years" playing Wizardry. It's probably a good thing for me the internet wasn't around back then. | ||||
| dwill123 posted 2008 Oct 05 14:23 | ||||
Timex Sinclair 1000 which still works today
 | ||||
| cfi512 posted 2008 Oct 05 15:11 | ||||
| Like a couple other posts I've seen, my family started with a Commadore Vic 20. Anyone else buy a "Glossy magazine" for the program inside. You would half to hand key it in, and save it to Cassette tape. fun. :) | ||||
| John posted 2008 Oct 05 15:27 | ||||
| The first one like many was a ZX81, then moved on to an Oric 1, then got an Amiga, remember spending a fortune on a floppy, then even more on a digitiser to capture colour clips from a vcr, it even captured black and white footage, ah those where the days. | ||||
| JohnnyMalaria posted 2008 Oct 05 15:57 | ||||
| Sinclair ZX-80. 1K RAM including video. Cassette tape storage (had to turn TV off to prevent interference when saving/loading).
Got my first program published in a mag - it must have been a prediction of things to come - it was a highly efficient way to invert video...Got 15 pounds for it - a lot for a 15 year old. | ||||
| Number Six posted 2008 Oct 05 19:21 | ||||
| My first computer was a Commodore VIC 20, but the first computer that I actually used was a WANG that they had in my High School ( circa 1976 ) - I do not know the model number. | ||||
| FulciLives posted 2008 Oct 05 23:49 | ||||
| I had a friend in school that came up with the following computer joke: "I went over to my friend's home to play with his WANG"
We thought it was funny at the time :lol: - John "FulciLives" Coleman | ||||
| oldfart13 posted 2008 Oct 06 00:10 | ||||
| Atari ST that I won in a contest. I had used friends' Apple II clones (remember those?), Commodore Vic-20's and C64's as well as the mainframe computer at the university here previously but the ST was the first computer I owned myself. The ST really allowed me to become very interested in modding things which continues to today. It's still around here in it's box along with all it's apps and games. Fun times long gone by... | ||||
| Lucifers_Ghost posted 2008 Oct 06 12:42 | ||||
Actually, I COULD use one of each of those!! As soon as I figure out what they are ...... :) Welcome to the forums!!! | ||||
| robjv1 posted 2008 Oct 06 13:17 | ||||
| Commodore 64. My parents bought it in 1984 when I was 3 and it was our primary computer until July 1993, when I got my first PC, a Packard Bell "Legend 2000". I believe that was a 486 SX 25mhz, 4MB of RAM , 170MB HD... and a 1x CD-ROM drive. I remember it had CD-ROM in giant letters on the front, as it was a new technologly for the bargain-bin masses at least. Not too much of a bargain at $1900 though! | ||||
| MOVIEGEEK posted 2008 Oct 06 13:27 | ||||
| Timex-Sinclair 1000,I think I paid $50 for it.It was fun learning BASIC and writing programs for it,the cassette backup was a joke though.
A couple of years later I bought a Commodore 64 which was pretty powerful for the time,I used to sell them at a store and customers would ask me if it would automatically do their taxes...LOL. My first real PC was a refurb with a PII,4GB HDD,32MB RAM and Windows 95. | ||||
| TimA-C posted 2008 Oct 06 16:31 | ||||
| I started with a 48K ZX Spectrum (5 mins to load a 48K program from a cassette player - the cheaper the better!) Then went to a twin-floppy (720K 3.5" floppy) Apricot then went to the wonderful Apricot Zen (286 cpu and an external PSU that kept your feet nice & toasty in the Winter!). Then came the Amstrad 1512 with a colour EGA screen and a 32Mb hard drive. Then came the Amstrad 1640 (which we upgraded to a 286 with an add-in board), then a Multiplex(?) 386 followed by a locally built 486DX which I think I upgraded to a DX-2. After that I started building them myself and ended up doing it as a job. I've still got my ZX Spectrum sitting in it's box somewhere but I think I'll stick with my Intel Quad-core for the time being. | ||||
| wingnut2003 posted 2008 Oct 06 18:20 | ||||
| mine was a no name computer, it was 8 mhz processor with a turbo button to kick it up to 16 mhz. 640 kb memory max. cga graphics, 2 15 mb hard drives (these things were the size of cd drives today, and were mfm drives). had two 5.25 inch floppy drives, one i had to make an external drive (actually worked). no modem, no windows operating system. dos only. also it was a xt motherboard, can't remember the make. i still have have all the 5.25 inch floppies too. | ||||
| CogoSWSDS posted 2008 Oct 06 18:28 | ||||
| I wrote my first computer program on the school's TRS-80 Model 1 (Level 2). I was 10 years old at the time.
My first computer was a 16k TRS-80 Color Computer (not the CoCo 2, which was in a white case, mine was the gray case!). Later I got a Coco 3 with 128MB memory. My first PC was a 16MHz 386SX running DOS 5.0. My current one is a 2GHz running WinXP SP2. CogoSWSDS | ||||
| MJA posted 2008 Oct 06 20:45 | ||||
| webTV .:-) | ||||
| Constant Gardener posted 2008 Oct 06 21:00 | ||||
| Hewlett-Packard HP-85, early in 1980. 32x16 screen, thermal printer, cartridge tape, and built-in HP-Basic. My employer had HP-85s everywhere, embedded in data-acquisition systems. I think the last one was retired six years ago, still running. | ||||
| GTRBudda posted 2008 Oct 07 10:38 | ||||
| :) ... Coleco Adam, tha add-on not the stand-alone. Eventualy with CP/M. | ||||
| DereX888 posted 2008 Oct 07 17:28 | ||||
I believe more proper and accurate misspelling for PC would be piss-see ;) Someone from my family (reader of this forum too LOL, but not a member) emailed me to say: his was DEC PDP-11/35 in 1973 and asks too "why don't we have poll or stats?" | ||||
| freebird73717 posted 2008 Oct 07 17:33 | ||||
Way to many options to think of. Just look at all the varying responses. If you guys want a poll just give me some ideas for options and I'll edit the OP and put in a poll. And why isn't this person a member of videohelp? :? | ||||
| slickster posted 2008 Oct 07 17:58 | ||||
| 386 with a whopping 4 megabytes of ram.
I also remember my first computer at work. It was also a 386 with 4 meg ram. It was a kickass work machine. We had also purchased a plotter for work and wanted to upgrade the builtin ram. The extract 4 meg of ram cost $400.00. UNBELIEVEABLE!!! | ||||
| akrako1 posted 2008 Oct 07 18:00 | ||||
Wow. same here. TI 99/4A with the tape drive (Mmm... save your BASIC code on a regular cassette tape!) After my C64 I finally got my first PC, a 8086 AT @ 8 or 12 Mhz (depending if you turned on Turbo! mode or not). At least it was faster then my friends 4.7 Mhz Tandy 1000. I had no hard drive, but was lucky enough to have two 5 1/4's. When I finally got my first HDD (10MB), I was so excited! Wow! I could put ALL of my floppies onto that bad boy! | ||||
| Po|arbeaR posted 2008 Oct 07 23:33 | ||||
| c=64 with dual floppy drives and a dot matrix printer all hooked up to a color t.v. It was a great setup until the Feds came and took it all. =(
-PB | ||||
| FulciLives posted 2008 Oct 08 01:34 | ||||
I have to ask ... the Feds came and took it all ... why? - John "FulciLives" Coleman | ||||
| Marvingj posted 2008 Oct 08 05:34 | ||||
| A 086 which was a monster back in the day. | ||||
| lordhutt posted 2008 Oct 08 05:47 | ||||
| Commodore 64 unless you count my Bally Basic that came out in 1978. It was a cartridge based video game system that was also a computer. You had to program it using a keypad like a calculator with plastic overlays and color coded keys to get different results.
It was actually the superior video game system of its day but due to high price and probably bad marketing everyone bought the crappy Atari 2600. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrocade | ||||
| Nelson37 posted 2008 Oct 08 09:44 | ||||
| First one I touched was my Dad's Vic-20. In college we had IBM xt's, which I helped upgrade from 256 to 384k of RAM. Dual floppies, no HD, Hercules monochrome. Dos 3.0.
First one I owned was a 286-12, Harris chip, 20Mb Hd which I rll'd to 30. Monochrome, then CGA, back to monochrome, finally an EGA. Many, many more followed. I think my favorite was a 386DX40. | ||||
| TBoneit posted 2008 Oct 08 10:27 | ||||
| First computer was a Gray Coco 16k memory, later upgraded with a True lowercase kit, 32K memory upgrade etc. four floppies. I ran a BBS on it for a while with a 1200 baud modem. It was affordable...... I also ran OS9 multiuser OS on it with 128k memory
I ran it side by side with a 8088 XT clone. That ended up with dual 20Megabyte Seagate hard drives and two 6 disc Pioneer CD changers and two 1x Mitsumi cd drives also running a Wildcat BBS 2 line system. The Pioners were darned noisy when changing discs. I also paid a lot of money for the 1 Gigabyte Western Digital when it was the newest, biggest hard drive available from Egghead. I backed it up to 1.44 floppies, that took a while to do. But Idid it since Iwas running a BBS on it. Then a 286, 386sx, 386, 486, pentium 100, Pentium II, AMD Athlon, P4, Core2Quad. Along the way alsoa TRS80 Model 4P luggable running TRSDos and CP/M. I remember paying hundreds of dollars for a 4 meg of memory chips and hundreds of dollars for each Seagte St225 20Meg hard drives and even more for the controller card. | ||||
| mikel posted 2008 Oct 08 11:12 | ||||
| A GE Analog Computer Kit Model No. EF-140 (1961)
It worked like an electric sliderule. later, a KIM and an AIM singleboard... 4k ram...cassette storage ...had a 2-pass assembler, Basic & Forth ...added voice recognition (32 words) & an eprom burner fun times :) | ||||
| cd090580 posted 2008 Oct 08 11:55 | ||||
| Mine was a 386 SX 33 Mhz with 4 MB of RAM and a Trident 1 MB graphic card. | ||||
| bigass posted 2008 Oct 08 15:59 | ||||
| Sinclair ZX81 ... then TI 99-4/A ... then Coleco Adam ... then, eventually, a 286. Yeah, I had a line of orphans for a while. | ||||
| Ditka1985 posted 2008 Oct 08 16:14 | ||||
| Ahh -- a walk down memory lane.
The very first "computer" I had was a Netronics Elf -- complete with Hexadecimal keypad! Geez -- I'm dating myself, huh? After that, I build a Sinclair ZX80 from a kit (blue membrane keyboard), eventually upgraded it to a ZX81 (new ROM, black membrane keyboard overlay) and eventually a WHOPPING 16K of memory. Next up was the often maligned but surprisingly capable TRS-80 Color Computer ("The CoCo"). I had an original Gray-case version with a Revision E system board (scary, but I remember it). Performed all sorts of upgrades and board-level hacks to that thing. I ran OS-9, FHL Flex, and eventually an OS I wrote myself for the purpose of running a BBS. Throughout the 8-bit days, and in to the early days of 16-bit computers, I also picked up an Atari 130XE, a TRS-80 Model I and a TRS-80 Model 3. Somewhere along the line I also bought a CoCo3, but that was well after the heyday of 8-bit computers. My first venture into the brave new world of 16-bit computers was an Atari 520ST w/TOS in ROM :) As it became more and more apparent that the IBM PC architecture was going to emerge the ultimately dominant hardware platform, I purchased an 80286-based system from a mail-order place in Texas (after going through hundreds of ads in Computer Shopper). I've been riding the PC train ever since. | ||||
| Number Six posted 2008 Oct 08 17:26 | ||||
| Reading through this thread really shows that there was a lot of interesting equipment out there over the years. It reminds me of a friend that I had in the late 80's who was in the electronics salvage business - I got my first PC from him ( a 286 with 640k ram, dual 5.25 inch floppies, 20mb Seagate mfm HD ). He picked up a lot of computers in those years, including a very strange item. It was a new Xerox computer in an open box that looked exactly like a modern PC of it's day - but there were no manuals or disks with it, and no operating system installed on the hard drive. He tried to install MS-DOS and IBM-DOS, but it would not work. It seems that it ran on a proprietary Xerox operating system, but Xerox would not give him any support for the unit and refused to even sell him a copy of the operating system :? :-x :evil: - very strange! I don't think that he was ever able to get it working because he could not get the operating system for it. If anyone knows anything about this animal, please post a reply because this thread has really got me thinking about this :) | ||||
| isogonic posted 2008 Oct 08 18:09 | ||||
| sinclair ZX81 circa early 80's | ||||
| toolady posted 2008 Oct 08 21:04 | ||||
| Comodore 64 then an IBM XT with dos I don't remember what version it was my second computer after the Xt I had Windows 3.1 | ||||
| makntraks posted 2008 Oct 08 21:31 | ||||
| Circa 1989 - Zippy Epson 286 w/ TURBO, 640k non expanable, 40meg hd, 5/14 floppy, 2400 baud modem running Windows3.1 and a 14" crt monitor. Total cost ~$2500.00. When the 40meg drive crapped out I replaced it w/ a 130meg drive that cost a whopping $300.00.
You can almost buy a new machine just for what the replacement drive cost me.... Moved on to a various 386, 486 machines. Had a blast w/ my dual Pentium Pro's, then I moved to AMD... makntraks | ||||
| FulciLives posted 2008 Oct 08 21:32 | ||||
Remember the days when COMPUTER SHOPPER was a huge oversized book the size of a phone book with tons of ads all printed on cheap gray colored paper? The first time I saw the "new" version my heart sank :cry: - John "FulciLives" Coleman | ||||
| toolady posted 2008 Oct 08 21:41 | ||||
I paid $400 for a CD rom when DVD Writers came out I bought one of those for $400 now I wait till the technology is ancient and get it cheap | ||||
| hech54 posted 2008 Oct 09 00:36 | ||||
| I got started late with computers. My first computer
was an IBM....and it had a 1GB hard drive. :lol: | ||||
| budz posted 2008 Oct 09 01:36 | ||||
I too started late with computers. I got my first computer 10 years ago a Micron Pentium II 3.00ghz with a little 4gb hd. My first cdrw burner was a Yamaha drive that cost me $450.00! :cry: | ||||
| hech54 posted 2008 Oct 09 01:46 | ||||
I remember backing up DVDs(I only had a few at the time)....but didn't have/couldn't afford a DVD burner yet.....so I'd watch the files in DVDShrink....because computer players(at least mine) didn't recognize folders on the HDD yet. :):) | ||||
| stiltman posted 2008 Oct 09 13:25 | ||||
| Anyone remember Digital's Rainbow series?
I remember them because I still had my TRS-80 and got a summer job installing some heatshrink tubing on about 10,000 Rainbow boxes. No I wasn't by myself :) There was about 50 of us unboxing/shrinking/boxing all day long for a whole summer. | ||||
| edDV posted 2008 Oct 09 14:03 | ||||
Yes, my employer's IT department tried to stem demand for Apple II and IBM PC at the department level by issuing CP/M Z80 DEC rainbows as terminals to the VAX. This they thought would maintain their control of information. I and others brought our own IBM PC + Lotus 123 (~$6000) to work. This eventually led to the decentralization of the corp IT dept. with them reporting to the division. DEC Rainbow 100 
http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/rainbow.html | ||||
| Schmendrick posted 2008 Oct 09 16:00 | ||||
| My first programming I did using punched paper card decks for an IBM 360 or 370 system at the computer centre of my university in 1973. Then in the same year a CDC (Control Data Corporation) system with CRT terminals was introduced. From 1976 I used Digital Equipments PDP 11 series computers first with RT11 operating system then later with RSX11/M a multi user multi tasking system.
My first own compter was a KIM 1 single board micro computer manufactured by MOS Technology which soon was purchased by Commodore: http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=149 First I fixed TTL-shift register chips to it to extend the number of parallel I/O-lines to be able to connect the 4 1/2 digit BCD TTL-output of a digital voltmeter to it which was connected to a photometer in which the change of absorption of UV-light was measured in order to determine the kinetics of a biocatalyst (an enzyme). I wrote a small machine language programme to control the external shift register chips in order to be able to read the BCD singnal of the ditital voltmeter into the microcomputer. Then the read data was sent padded with some required control ccharacters (carriage return, line feed and hex FF) to a teletype which had a paper tape puncher attached to it on which this data was punched. This way every 1-2 second a reading of the digital voltmeter could be punched on the paper tape. This paper tape then was fed to paper tape reader connected to one of the PDP 11-computers to produce an ASCII-data file which then was processed with a data evaluation programme calculating a reaction rate of the enzyme used. This programme was a compiled Fortran programme. Later I extended the memory of this microcomputer to about 32 kByte memory, attached a faster papar tape puncher and reader to it, attached two digital to analog 12Bit-converters and an XY-PLotter to it. Also connected a Commodore produced 5 1/4 inch floppy disc drive to it which was connected via an IEEE-interface. To be able to connect it I wrote the required drivers and a boot driver to load a basic interpreter which had been sold by a brand new company back then in 1978 Microsoft. It first was sold on an analog audio cassette. Finally using this basic interpreter I programmed the whole data evaluation with data input from the digital voltmeter to the output on the XY-Plotter plotting the reaction rate of the enzyme versus its substrate concentration in order to use this data to develop a kinetic model to describe the reaction properties of the investigated enzyme. Later in 1983 I bought on of the first IBM PC's with a 8088 processor and only 16 kByte RAM soldered on its main board and additional 48 kByte in soccets, without a hard disc drive first and only a 320 kByte 5 1/4 inch floppy disc drive. Later I added memory and a 5 1/4 inch full hight 10 MByte disc drive to it. This PC was used until about 10 years ago for data acquisition with an analog I/O-card. Later I bought other PC's: a Toshiba 286-Laptop, a 386SX-PC, a 33 MHZ 486 PC, a Pentium 120 MHz Acer-Laptop, a Maxdata PentiumIII-700 MHz-Laptop, a Shuttle XPC with Pentium4-2.67GHZ processor, a Panasonic CF-R3-Centrino 12,2 Ghz-Laptop, a Sony Vaio SZ-3HP/B-Core2Duo1,8GHz-Laptop and finally this year directly bought in Japan custom ordered at Sonystyle a Sony Vaio-G2-Core2DuoU7600-1,2 GHZ-laptop with a 64GB SSD-drive: http://www.jp.sonystyle.com/Business/Vaio/Product/G/index.html Schmendrick | ||||
| Webster posted 2008 Oct 09 23:12 | ||||
| 1. TRS-80 model I with 16K expansion interface + 2 floppy drives upgrading continuously starting from 1979 to 1981 (final total cost >$7,000.00 using money I made with my waiter job after school for 2 years) I can not believe I actually spent that much on a computer system way back then... :!: :!: as a side note, does anyone remember a company named Shugart? :)
2. Atari famous 520ST computer Motorola 68000 @ 8 MHz with 512 KB of RAM and and 3½" floppy disks plus an Epson dot matrix printer total cost ~$1,200.00 (1985-1986) At this time I'd actually got a real paying job @ $5.00/hour working in a company partially own by a friend of the family. 3. Apple Macintosh LC II with a 68030 professor (1991) 4. Apple Macintosh Performa 6300 with PowerPC professor. 5. Pentium 150-->pentium 200--> pentium 200 MMX-->AMD K6-II 300-->Pentium II 300-->AMD K7 Thunderbird-->Pentium III 1GhZ-->AMD Athlon XP 1800, 2000, 2600, 2800-->AMD 64 bit 3200+,3400+-->AMD Athlon X2 3800, 4600, 6000 (all self built) 6. Pentium D 820, 930, Athlon X2 3800, core dual E2140, Q6600 (Dell built. At this time I figure it was more easier and cheaper to buy a Dell refurbished and upgrade them rather than build it from scratch by myself.) Man,! looking back, I'd spent a freaking lots of money on computers over the years. And most of them are sitting in the garage collecting dust.... And I'm not even working in the computer field..... :shock: :shock: | ||||
| Billf2099 posted 2008 Oct 10 01:01 | ||||
| C64. I did lust after the Amiga for awhile, and my next computer was a 486SX (soldered to the board) with an expansion slot that was perfect for the regular 486 I wedged into it a year later. Things were a lot quicker those last 486's were faster then the first pentiums. Ahhh the days of 30 pin sims. I think the last OS I had in that bad boy was windows 98, something that was supposed to be impossible....
I still have my C64 and the 1541 drive, and about 5 years of compute magazine. Peek this and Poke that. | ||||
| DereX888 posted 2008 Oct 10 11:10 | ||||
I'm cleaning basement... any nostalgic buyers around? ;)
 | ||||
| SingSing posted 2008 Oct 10 14:52 | ||||
My was an ohio scientific SBC with 8KB of RAM. A gift from the distributor.
Who is keeping track of these vintage ? Or else Verify is going to win it all :!:
| ||||
| serega posted 2008 Oct 10 20:13 | ||||
| Mine was Atari 1040 STE | ||||
| disturbed1 posted 2008 Oct 10 21:29 | ||||
| The first computer I owned was a Laser 128. It's an Apple II clone. http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=13 http://www.retrothing.com/2007/12/vtech-laser-128.html Also an older Atari ST computer. The Atari wasn't bought brand new, it was given to me as a present when I was ~14 years old. I had the Laser when I was ~10. Luckily my school district started computer education when I was in 1st grade (26 years ago :lol:) I believe they were either Tandy's or IBMs. Through middle school everything was Apple. High School was split between IBM PC compatible and Apple. Mostly IBM PC's for the programing classes in high school (Pascal, Basic, and Fortran). Now that I look back, computer education was actually decent in the early 90's. I can only imagine what kids have available to them today.
The first PC I bought was a self built 486/100 with 16mb RAM, 1gig hard drive, and super fast state of the art 33.6K modem. This was back when you could build them cheaper than you could buy them. I've only bought 2 manufactured PCs, a Sony Vaio with a Pentium 233mmx and an HP Pavilion with a P4 1500. All of my other PCs have been self built. | ||||
| ChickenMan posted 2008 Oct 10 23:24 | ||||
| Well I got my very first computer in 1982, it was a Microbee 32, an Aussie made computer with a Z80 running at 3.75Mhz and 32kb of memory. It used a tape drive to load games in and out and I had an amber coloured monochrome screen. Had a Basic, Wordprocessor & Telcom programs in ROM as well. I upgraded to a Microbee CIAB which had a 3 1/2" drive and ran CP/M. That upgraded to a Microbee 128 Premium which I still have and operational. I eventually upgraded its floppy drives to a 3 1/2" DSDD, a 5 1/4" DSDD and an 8" DSDD so I could read and right just about any floppy format.
They went by the way for daily use and I purchased my first IBM XT clone, running in turbo mode at 10mhz, woo hoo !!! It even had a colour CGA screen with 4 colours, Black, White, Pink and Blue :) and a 3 1/2" all for $1600 aussie dollars. I eventually added a 12 MEG hard drive and ran that fancy menu system called Windows 3.11. I then bypassed the 286 & 386 and went straight to a 486 33, a power machine at the time :) That was 16 years ago and have had 20 or so different (all hand built) PC's till now. Microbee info is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroBee | ||||
| MeDiCo_BrUjO posted 2008 Oct 10 23:37 | ||||
| My first computer was an Atari 800 XL, with a 5 1/4 drive and a printer loud enough to earn some complaints from the neighbors late at night.
Then I changed it for an Atari 1300 XE and got another 5 1/4 Drive... I was the man!, the only guy in my city with 2 drives!. Then I switched to a Commodore 64C, a great improvement at the time. I will never forget: load "barbarian" ,8 ,1 Huge loading times... swapping multiple floppies for a single load... low pixels and high prices... 800 baud modems... oh the memories! :) My first "PC" was an IBM aptiva 486 DX2 66 Mhz with 2 MB ram and a CD ROM!. I won a few bets with friends at that time... "Yeah, my computer has a CD drive installed.... wanna bet something?" :lol: | ||||
| Chopmeister posted 2008 Oct 11 00:45 | ||||
| Mine was an Apple 2e clone from Hong Kong that I got secondhand. The case was identical to the Apple 2+, except that it had a blue CV777 logo where the apple logo went on the real ones. It was a straight copy, and even came up with the "APPLE ][" screen on startup. Originally had no disc drives or Monitor - hooked up a tape recorder to store programmes, and it had a PAL modulator card in one of the slots which I used to hook it up to the colour TV. Later on I added a disc drive, then another, a 15" green screen monitor and a 9 pin dot matrix printer. Interestingly, when I hooked up the Monitor the PAL feed still worked as well so I could (and did!) run it in a dual monitor configuration - except both screens of course showed an identical picture (one in colour, one in green). Great for gaming sessions with friends. I used to give it a real thrashing, and it soldiered on for years. Eventially I gave it to my sister when I got a pc (IBM XT clone, dual floppy drives, no HD, 512K ram and an amber screen).
Interestingly, I recently discovered the Applewin emulator. My shiny new dual-core vista box now runs Apple Dos circa 1979 just fine! Castle Wolfenstein (the 2D version with speech samples from 1984) anyone? Ahhh ..... nostalgia. | ||||
| SingSing posted 2008 Oct 24 07:12 | ||||
My kid's first computer is a dell 12" laptop. Does that count ?
Kids has it easy now a day. They get scared or start giggling when they saw any Win98 logo. :roll: | ||||
| DereX888 posted 2008 Oct 24 08:27 | ||||
So were you when you saw Win 3.1 or DOS... so were our parents with calculators when they saw grandparents' abacus... | ||||
| wtsinnc posted 2008 Oct 24 15:44 | ||||
| Looks as though this topic is so popular, someone decided to start one just like it on another website.
http://www.techspot.com/news/32195-weekend-open-forum-what-was-yo ... puter.html | ||||
| freebird73717 posted 2008 Oct 24 16:04 | ||||
| Looks like we got way more replies though. I guess there are more nostalgic people at videohelp than there are at techspot. | ||||
| ricoman posted 2008 Oct 24 16:07 | ||||
| Apple IIC. This was the first portable computer, the mother to todays laptops. It came with 128k ram that couldn't be upgraded and at the time I remember thinking that I would never need more than that! It had no HD and all software ran from a 5 1/4" floppy. You got a 9" (think) green screen cathode ray monitor and a nylon carrying bag. I remember playing this Battle of Britain game that you had to type in all the instructions for an attack then wait about 20 min. to find out what happened. AND WE THOUGHT IT WAS GREAT! Unbelievable how far we've come.
Oh, and by the way, it cost me $1150+ in the early 80's when that was real money. | ||||
| edDV posted 2008 Oct 24 17:21 | ||||
I got one of those for my teacher girlfriend at the time. I still have the box up on the top shelf in my computer room. | ||||
| ViRaL1 posted 2008 Oct 24 17:45 | ||||
Commodore64, then an Osborne One,  then eventually an XT. | ||||
| SingSing posted 2008 Oct 25 10:12 | ||||
What happened to "the teacher girlfriend" ? | ||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Oct 25 10:34 | ||||
Is this the start of a new poll? "What was your first girlfriend?" | ||||
| gadgetguy posted 2008 Oct 25 12:07 | ||||
Female. | ||||
| rumplestiltskin posted 2008 Oct 25 12:25 | ||||
| Commodore 64 with tape drive (replaced with floppy drive), Star DMP, green-screen monitor.
Why did you have to remind me? *grin* | ||||
| rcguy1 posted 2008 Oct 25 12:37 | ||||
| MY first computer was an abacus. Then I graduated to a slide rule. | ||||
| ricoman posted 2008 Oct 25 12:51 | ||||
| Sounds like there are some old-timers on this thread. :lol: | ||||
| DereX888 posted 2008 Oct 26 00:10 | ||||
OMFG, is that a *SCREEN* in the middle of this thing!? Did it come as a set with magnifying glass? ;) (jokes aside, it is cool iMHO) | ||||
| rumplestiltskin posted 2008 Oct 26 09:17 | ||||
| Recommended reading: Hackers by Steven Levy which may be found here: http://tinyurl.com/5q84w2
It was the Osborne that reminded me. Also track down episode four of the first Connections series (by James Burke), "Faith in Numbers" | ||||
| MaDmiZe posted 2008 Oct 26 12:53 | ||||
| First computer (if you can call it that) was vic-20 inthe early 80's had a cassette tape drive and a 1200 bps modem. Used it as a remote terminal to access the server on campus from my house. Kept me from having to sleep in the computer lab.
Updated that to a c-64, then later a 80286 that I got as a box of spare parts from a friends dad. Had to buy most components and put it together, bought my first hard drive....105mb cost over $400. Now 500gb cost $105. 56k modems came much later and we thought they were the bomb (compared to 1200 the 2400....big jump to 14k) now we all run cable or dsl at 6mb and complain : ) By the way I still have the vic-20 and the comodore-64 and a huge collection of games on 5 1/4 discs. | ||||
| Ai Haibara posted 2008 Oct 26 13:04 | ||||
Looks a little like the Commodore SX-64, actually. :D (that picture reminded me of it; I didn't have one, but my uncle did.) For pictures of the SX-64: http://oldcomputers.net/sx64.html | ||||
| edDV posted 2008 Oct 26 17:06 | ||||
My Dad got the CP/M KayPro II in the early 80's and wrote three novels on it. It came with Microsoft Word and Perfect Writer,etc. I was using an Apple II Plus + VisiCalc at the time but switched to the IBM-PC + Lotus 123 in 1983.
 | ||||
| SingSing posted 2008 Oct 29 13:43 | ||||
| This Mark 1 mechanical computer is still on display at Havard University's Math department lobby, when I walked by a few years ago. It is rated in C.P.R. ( Computation Per Revolution )
If you are the operator of this relic, please step forward.  | ||||
| edDV posted 2008 Oct 29 18:12 | ||||
| My Mom ran Hollerith card sort machines during WWII for the British Railway. The card sort was used to route civilian and war related cargo to rail cars. The rail office was a prime target for Nazi bombs. A 500 lb Nazi bomb was defused at the rear of her house. Much of her neighborhood was destroyed.
After the war, Hollerith was renamed to IBM Corp. http://www.officemuseum.com/data_processing_machines.htm 
Recently, my mom lost her brave fight and died this past Tuesday. | ||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Oct 29 18:14 | ||||
| Is that your Mom? She's hot! | ||||
| Amish Electrician posted 2008 Oct 29 20:36 | ||||
286 SX with CGA monitor 5 1/4 drive & 20meg hd My buddy asked me what was I going to do with all that hard dive space. DOS 6.0 those were the days. I recall putting windows 3.1 on it had to get a 3 1/2 floppy took all day to load all those floppy. [/img]
 | ||||
| DereX888 posted 2008 Oct 30 00:28 | ||||
OT
Man, my sincere condolences :/ | ||||
| John-Paul posted 2008 Oct 30 00:39 | ||||
| edDV - sorry to hear that... | ||||
| Webster posted 2008 Oct 30 01:18 | ||||
| @edDV
My sincere condolences. No matter what anyone says, it is hard to loose a loved one. :( | ||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Oct 30 06:35 | ||||
Sorry to hear that. If I had seen it before posting I wouldn't have made the flippant remark. | ||||
| edDV posted 2008 Oct 30 12:19 | ||||
| Thank you all | ||||
| SLK001 posted 2008 Oct 30 14:34 | ||||
| PDP-11. You "bootstrapped" the thing by inputting a loader via front panel switches that needed 16 sixteen bit words to load a paper tape reader that would read your program from the paper tape.
The output was from a line printer. It was later upgraded with an 8" floppy disk that held a whopping 160kBytes of data (WOW! Who could ever fill up one of these??). | ||||
| DereX888 posted 2008 Oct 30 18:40 | ||||
Well, I never worked with such devices, but I'd say bits and bytes are the same regardless of the way you input them (paper tape with holes, magnetic tape with impulses, etc etc). Data feeds changed for faster and larger formats because the machines got faster and could process more, but aside of speed and capacity we are still using today exactly same binary technologies and concept as people 50 years ago - our machines just do it faster (which is also relative - when I'm watching Vista desktop running quad core newest CPU with oogles of RAM at office, I swear the first desktops I worked on - Pentium I PCs with Windoze 95 - were much faster and more robust in responsivness ;) ) | ||||
| Webster posted 2008 Oct 30 22:07 | ||||
Heck, we have computer I'd used at work for a scintillation counter which is an Intel 386 running at a blazing speed of 33 MHz (ISA card) with DOS 3.11 boot up (via floppy disk batch file) and ready to count in less than 30 seconds as compare to my work computer which is a E8400. The darn thing take almost 2 and a half minutes to boot up from off to the time it load MS word and ready for typing. Sometime I think technology is going backward...... :) | ||||
| DereX888 posted 2008 Oct 31 08:12 | ||||
hear hear! :lol: :? :shock: :( | ||||
| jagabo posted 2008 Oct 31 08:52 | ||||
| Yeah, I used to encode HD h.264 videos on my 6502 processor and it was so much faster than these clunky quad core CPUs we use today. And those beautiful 40 character green text displays were the bomb! | ||||
| DereX888 posted 2008 Oct 31 20:33 | ||||
who was talking about encoding? BTW today morning just out of boredom I installed Win2K on that quad core machine. Man, it really flies compared to when it had Vista. Everything is instantenous. The only problem was with Windoze itself (I made my last updated W2K installation disc in 2006, so you can imagine - there were about 60 new patches & hotfixes to be installed since then, ~100MB total download, took me like half an hour to do the updates) and Dell's website wasn't helpful at all with finding drivers. I used XP drivers when there was no 2K drivers (few I had to do simple modifications to install) and it took me another hour to do so, so its not for those faint hearted ;) But it was worth it. I proved to our new IT guy that same machine with different OS can be spectacular (he said that W2K "is too old and won't run on this" LOL where the hell they teach them this crap nowadays, at Microsoft's Vista Advertising Department or what? :) ) |
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