Your first computer?

[Leha]

GEE...all those models listed here(commodore,amstrad, atari) COULD be my first computer. The problem is, in USSR of 1980's PC was for rich guys, who I wasn't. Studying in university I worked on SVM (virtual machine system)
This giant monster virtually worked on 40 terminals, so when all 40 were occupied you could wait for compilation of your tiny program 2-3 hours.
Ah...memories.... I remember some genius even wrote poker program for this beauty.

Ah, yes. Later we got 20 XT-compatibles made in USSR, Minsk!!
2 of them had hard drive 10 MB!!!! There allways was long line of guys waiting to work on those.

 

[Lotus49]

I used the Compaq luggables in the early & mid-80s. We're talking 8086 processors, CGA (4 colors... actually all amber-ish) graphics, 5 1/4" floppies, best I can recall it didn't actually have a HDD, that was interactively usable like what we think of as a harddisk today (it was sort of like a BIOS, it was there, but it was only for system purposes), and there really were no 'graphics' per se... just alphanumeric characters.

Anyway, I was really young, but I thought they were fascinating. Computer games back in the early & mid-80s were mostly share-ware, that were sort of like novelty items. As in, "hey, look what this guy created... that's pretty neat, huh?" A lot of them were really just fire & forget simulations, like a bunch of 'buildings' that kept appearing, one in front of the other, indefinitely, creating a skyline, until you pressed a button to exit.

Eventually, though, interactive games (that were more than just word-typing, pre-scripted 'adventures') started to appear; I remember a 4-color 2D chess game, that I thought was a blast. It was not uncommon to wait 10 min(+) for the computer to move. If you were really advanced, sometimes many hours.

The most fun ones, though, were the interactive simulations, that used characters (instead of graphics like we now have). Things like,

<TANKER> ---moving really slowly

<PT> ---moving quickly

etc., would scroll across the screen, and you commanded the 'submarine' down below. Pressing the spacebar, you'd launch a topedo (something like this: &#9612; ), and it would fire, hopefully colliding w/ the target.

Had we been able to see how far things were going to advance, we would have been blown away back then.

 

[Gingerbread Man]

I remember using the following computers in my early childhood:

A Commodore 64 at my grandmother's place, prior to 1994, but I have no idea when...

An old 8088, on which I would play Leisure Suit Larry (If I could guess all of the answers that would let you play the game). Oh, the things I discovered on that one disk...

A 386? laptop, on which originally win 3.11 was loaded, and eventually Windows 95, taking however many dozen disks to install.

Pentium 200, bought in 1996. 32MB Ram, 2GB HDD.

Following that, a AMD Athlon 950, AMD Duron 1.2, AMD Athlon 64 (current).

 

[~Corsair#01~]

This one, since 2002-ish. Upgraded from Geforce 2 to Radeon 9200, from Windows Millenium Edition to Windows XP and put a DVD drive in.

 

[Grisu]

I started pretty late in the computer-thingy (around 14 or so). My first computer was a Amiga 500.

 

[Joeb WK]

ZX Spectrum 48K and the ill fated 128K spectrum then the Atari ST.

Who can forget Manic Miner and Jetpac though, ah fond memories

ZX Spectrum was a classic bit of kit its a shame ours broke. Anyway here's a nice song which you may have already seen about oldie computing.
http://www2.b3ta.com/heyhey16k/

 

[dragokatzov]

Intel Pentium 120Mhz
16 megs of ram
1.1 gig hard drive
256k of external cache
28.8 modem
2 meg S3 video card
some creative labs sound card
windows 95, later i put linux on it

came with everything, except a printer and cost my mother $3500! lol i was about 12 at the time

 

[bhsup]

I just can't help it, the first thing that popped into my mind after reading Leha's post was "In Soviet Russia, programs compile you!"

Btw, does anyone who had a TI-99 remember a Pirate game? It was a cartridge, text-based game. You had to meander around and collect items and so forth. One particular area I remember had "flotsam and jetsam" floating around. If anyone could supply the name, I'd be much obliged as it is driving me batty trying to think of it.

 

[thetrooper]

C-64.

 

[col]

First computer? I didnt own it - but it was the first machine I ever programmed.

A Ferranti Sirius. Input and output was entirely via punchtape. Programming was directly in binary using switches to set the bits individually in each memory location. It filled a room and was made in 1961.

http://www.chemeng.ed.ac.uk/people/jack/history/docs.html

 

[FriendlyFire]

Amiga :d

 

[Zwelgje]

Col has won this thread, hands down.

 

[Odin2006]

First computer? I didnt own it - but it was the first machine I ever programmed.

A Ferranti Sirius. Input and output was entirely via punchtape. Programming was directly in binary using switches to set the bits individually in each memory location. It filled a room and was made in 1961.

http://www.chemeng.ed.ac.uk/people/jack/history/docs.html

...............................

 

[Leifmk]

I'm guessing we're roughly the same age since my first computer was also a Vic-20. My dream was to upgrade to a C-64, but we were poor so I never got one.

Yeah, another Vic-20 here. Had that for a whole year before upgrading to a Commodore 64, and that was approximately the sweetest machine ever -- I'm pretty sure no other hardware has been exploited as hard as that was toward the end of its life, people were making it do stuff the manufacturer had never thought possible.

 

[Turner]

I just can't help it, the first thing that popped into my mind after reading Leha's post was "In Soviet Russia, programs compile you!"

Btw, does anyone who had a TI-99 remember a Pirate game? It was a cartridge, text-based game. You had to meander around and collect items and so forth. One particular area I remember had "flotsam and jetsam" floating around. If anyone could supply the name, I'd be much obliged as it is driving me batty trying to think of it.

Could it be this one?

Funny what a couple of words in a google search engine can produce.

My first computer was the Atari 800XL. I learned to program basic on it, as well as have a modest collection of games. Ah, those were the days. I even remember the name of the books that taught me basic.... Dr. C. Wacko presents Atari BASIC and the whiz-bang miracle machine. The author used humor to pound the lessons home. I had great fun poking around with the books and figuring out basic.

 

[PrinceOfLeigh]

I had a good old (British IIRC) Sinclair Spectrum 48. I can't remember if it had a tape deck but I was typing in code from a book at a young age.

I then got a Spectrum 128 IIRC which dazzled me with it's 2 colours.

Can't remember what my first computer was but it had 250MB of memory which I was assured I would never fill. Another salesman told me that my next computer 2GB was so huge I would ever need a larger hard disk. I'm going to punch the next salesman who tries to tell me that

 

[Leha]

I then got a Spectrum 128 IIRC which dazzled me with it's 2 colours.

Yeah, I remember that.
When I first saw Armstad with 16 colours in our professor's office I experenced a deep awe before this computer god.

 

[Mano3]

My neighbor had an Apple 2c with an additional tape deck drive, but his dad had some sort of huge monstronsity that used 8" hard plastic 'floppy' discs. We'd play the old Star Trek game on it.

Later, I bought a Packard Bell 286 with a whopping 1 MB of memory and huge 20 MB hard drive for over $2000!

Soon, I moved up to a Packard Bell 386 with 4 MB of memory and a 40 MB hard dirve. I used that thing until 1997!

 

[bhsup]

Could it be this one?

That's it! You rock!

Funny what a couple of words in a google search engine can produce.

I assure you, I tried. I kept coming up with "Return to Pirate Isle".

 

[IglooDame]

My neighbor had an Apple 2c with an additional tape deck drive, but his dad had some sort of huge monstronsity that used 8" hard plastic 'floppy' discs. We'd play the old Star Trek game on it.

Hey, if anyone is looking for 8" floppy disks, I've got a box of 10 of them - never used, like new!!