What was your first computer?

My firsr PC was an Apple IIe, yet I worked on IBM's all day at work. The two DOS's were confusing, so I returned the Apple IIe to the Bank. They sold it for what I owed on it. I then bought a "Computer Shopper" magazine, this was in the early 1980's, and it was huge. I bought all the necessary parts that I wanted from different suppliers, and assembled my own IBM-Compatible. The 1st one I built ran at 4.77 MHZ, that was fast back then. No hard-drive, just 2 5.25" floppy drives, ran DOS, had BASIC-A ROM chips on board, Monochrome monitor. I forget how much RAM.
Later I upgraded to a TIGER 286 motherboard, it ran at 8.MHZ and in TURBO mode about 12.0 MhZ. My friends and co-workers would come by to see my "CLONE", and they would usually buy it, I sold it and built another one better than that one. I bet I built 15 or 20 PC's since then for friends, family and business's. Now I'll tell ya I messed around with AMD motherboards and CPU's, I always had problems with these PC's.
What I have now? I gave Intel a chance, I have an Intel motherboard P4 ready, in mid-tower case, 425 watt power suplly, 1 gig of DDR-RAM, an Intel Pentium-4 with H-T, a 200 gig hard-drive, a CD-ROM, a DVD, and a 3.5" floppy. The MOBO has audio and video on board, but I'm running a GeForce FX-5500 AGP, and Windows XP-PRO.
The Intel Pentium-4 runs at 3.0 GHZ with a FSB of 800 MHZ, I play Unreal and Ghost Recon really well, even been on gamers networks to play on line. It's quite some different the 4.77 MHZ first PC I built back in the 80's.

My first computer was when I lived in England UK. Around the late 70's. It was just a large keyboard which hooked up to the TV.... no monitor!
I programed simple games, budget spreadsheets and other stuff on it. It came with 'ping pong' game on it but that was about it.

The first computer I purchased was a TRS-80 that I bought from a Radio Shack store. It came with a tape recoder as its storage device. It cost around $500 that I recall.

I did all kinds of programming, recordkeeping, and text processing with it.

I had it for several years and replaced it with an IBM PCjr.

Although criticized by many, I felt that was a very good machine for its day and its price.

I started off in university on a mainframe. One of my work terms,I used Dec terminals and a PDP 8. I used an Apple II clone belonging to a friend quite extensively - my first word processor.

I also used the first PC and the first Mac (and the first Compaq luggable) when they hit the scene.

But the first computer I bought with my own money came years later - it was an Apple Macintosh SE. I traded it months later for a Mac II. Shortly thereafter I bought a clone XT box and had two computers for many years. I even had a VGA A/B switch so I could use one monitor for two computers.

James

What model was it?
Sinclair ZX 81
Where did you buy it?
Expensive Department Store
How much did it cost?
It hurt.
What kind of stuff did you do with it?
Print"Loop-the-loop"
How long did you have it?
1 year
What did you eventually replace it with?
TI-99A

What was urs?

Prior to the PC was CP/M
I owned a Royal Business Computer which had 128K of RAM 2 Floppy Drives and a printer. The processor was a Z-80 and the ensemble cost $500.
This was purchased in 1980-82 (don't remember the exact year)
I could run the WordStar word processor, PeachCalc spreadsheet, and dBase II relational database (2 work areas to relate).
I had this machine until 1987 and did all of my business work on it.
In 1987 I replaced it with an ACER XT which operated at the phenomenal speed of 10MHz (My Royal was a respectible 2.2 MHz)
The ACER had 768K of memory (the last 128 was relatively useless unless you were some sort of power user.) On that I had WordStar 4.0, dBase III+, and Lotus 123 Rel 2.01d.
These were truely workhorses and many of the functions were as fast as today's bloated systems.

The first computer I had was a Timex/Sinclair. It cost $100.00 Canadian and had 1k of memory. It could be programmed only in Basic. It hooked up to a T.V. and was very laborious to progam. It was very sensitive to static and after spending hours to get one page of code in with no errors in the syntax, it would crash and I got to watch all of my work disappear line by line many,many times.

My first one to work on was an IBM 1401 with 4K of storage. We did the payroll for the Pentagon civilians on that sucker back in 1962.

Now I have a PC with more storage than the big IBM Stretch 7090 computers that the Weather Bureau used and I carry it with one hand. Amazing how times have changed. I actually at one point worked on a computer that used vacuum tubes. Imagine the cooling that one needed.

I still remember the first PC I even used at all. It was a Tandy TR80 (?). The guy who owned it was trying to decide whether to stay with the Tandy or move to a Commodore or an Amiga. As soon as you bought one in those days it was out of date and you started saving for the next one you would buy. Some things never change. Right now I have a computer with an AMD Athlon 64 xp and now I read that they have the AMD 64 Dual core. At some point I will have to decide just how much computer I really need for what I use it for. Not into gaming so there is probably no need to go any further than I already have but I know I will keep looking anyway. What was that old saying about Big Boy's Toys?

It was an Osborne1 running CP/M. Ahhhh, here it is, http://oldcomputers.net/osborne.html.

My parents bought it for me for around $1500. Using BASIC I programmed a mini-version 'centipede' and started on some business software for my cousin's liquor store. I had it for a couple of years before replacing it with several years of slacking before going back to school and then getting a real job.

Let's hear the details on your first computer:

What model was it?
HP Pavilion 6646c:
500Mhz AMD k-6 2
intergrated 8Mb generic video card.
4x CD-rw drive
2 USB ports(one of which only works half the time)

Where did you buy it?
Sam's Club(walmart)

How much did it cost?
More then the PC i built. somewhere around $700 give or take 100.

What kind of stuff did you do with it?
played starcraft, and a few other games, surf the internet, photo editing...that's about it.

How long did you have it?
i've had it about 7 years, and still do in fact.
need to replace CPU though...just have to get that stupid cooling fan off so i can.

What did you eventually replace it with?
The beast of a PC i built. Granted it's not top of the line but it's good enough for me...for now.
160Gb WD Hard drive(main)(i forget think it was about $70 before or after rebate)
20Gb quantom fireball(slave)(pulled from system that was hit by Lightning...a HP in fact)
Micro Advantage dual-layer DVD RW drive($90)
standard 52X CDROM (pulled from non-working PC)
128MB ATI 9200(AGP)(it was a gift from a friend)
512MB RAM ($80 or so)
2.8Ghz Intel P4(northwood) w/ 800Mhz FSB hyperthreading(of course)($177)
8 USB v2.0 ports(two of which aren't hooked up)
a firewire port(not hooked up)
integrated SiS 900 PCI fast ethernet adapter.
QDI superb 4FX-6AL Mobo ($25...gotta love Ebay)
the Tower itself was $60(has a cool carrying handle on top, and a see through removable side panel)(again ebay is great)

The model was Apple Macintosh SE
I bought it in India
About INR 65000
I was doing Desk Top Publishing and Graphic Designing
I got 20 MB HDD and 2 MB RAM and also an AppleTalk connector to my diskless node Apple Macintosh Plus
I was having it for 7 years or so.
I sold it off. But later I was using Power Macintosh and of course, now I am using IBM PCs.

The first computer I used was a Tandy as well but I don't remember its model right now but I do remember that it had 128K RAM - which my elder brother upgraded to 640K RAM later on. It had two 5.25 FDD and of course no hard disk :)

it was a 386 pc/at model. man, it had a very small hdd cap(can't remmber, but i know its stuck in the MB region) and had 2 5' floppy drives, i even played games such as centipede and jeopardy on it. the bad thing is, the monitor looked so crappy it resembled a ice box or cooler or something, and the whole thing wheighed like a ton!!!

Since I had just graduated college (working as a computer operator at a large IBM 360 site), and was going to start teaching Computer Science at a local college, I needed a computer. I researched the TRS 80, the Apples, the Commodor, etc., but ended up with an Atari 800 (the IBM PC had not come out yet). With an extra memory card, I had a whopping 48K of RAM. I added a printer, but since it came with an RF adapter that worked with the TV, I didn't need to purchase a monitor. That put the cost somewhere near $2000 (a ridiculous price to pay for a computer today). It used a cassette recorder for program storage. I had a word processor program so I could compose the tests for my computer class. I learned the BASIC computer language and wrote many "practical" programs for my own use (checkbook balancing, record collecting cataloging, recipe cataloging, etc). I had it for about 5 years and didn't get a new pc until about 15 years later (didn't really need one since I was a career computer programmer). When I did get a new one, it had a 486 processor and was much light years ahead of my original Atari.

my parents didnt(dont) believe in game consoles or decent home pcs for a long time. my dad had an appalling amstrad 2086 (twin 3.5" floppy drives) for years. the next pc he got was when i gave him my old p2 the first pc i had. i had upgraded to a p3/450. he had that until last year when he got a dell celeron.

It was about 1981 or so when I bought my first computer: a Northstar running CPM. I used it to deelop business software, writing programs in CBASIC and then in the earliest releases of C that became available.

I bought it in partnership with a friend with serious plans to create a Freight Forwarding Software System for resale to Freight Forwarders.

But that friend never did his share of the required software development, and so my dreams faded away as the months passed and he didn't do his share.

It was a great computer! CPM was great, as were the versions of CBASIC and C which I used. Using the Northstar, I became an expert in CBASIC and then in C, and that expertise helped me launch a wonderful 25 year career in the I.T. industry.

I don't remember any details about what happenned to that computer; I vaguely recall that we sold it to someone else about 18 months after bought it.

-- Eva

My first computer was a Timex-Sinclair 1000...that lovable little black wedge that held all of 2K RAM! I got it for $35 at K-Mart and I had a ball with it. The screen was unique in that it was a plastic membrane placed over the CPU, and each key had no less than 5 (yes, five) functions. Its language was Basic, and it came without a monitor (you hooked it up to your TV), disk drive, or printer.

I immediately bought a 16K RAM expansion module, a tape drive, and a small thermal printer for it. Total outlay for the peripherals, $120+...but I had a computer!

What was so ironic was that I was working on an IBM System 38 at the time, and I literally tried to construct programs on my TS 1000 that mimiced those I wrote in RPG on the S38...needless to say, I was not too successful - but I had fun trying!

I later graduated to a Commodore 64, then a 128, and finally a Mac.

Today...fuhgedabodit...I have several machines, including laptops, across different platforms (XP, Linux, and Mac).

Ahhh...for the good ol' days...

Frank

When all of my friends were enjoying the Commodore 64, My father went out and decided on the TI99/4a which immediately isolated me. Eventually adding the Tape drive and voice synth. I used it for games but when TI decided to halt production, I had no choice but to learn TI-Basic so I could write my own games which eventually led to writing my own music and animation. It kept me entertained for many years until I received my next computer, an Apple IIe.

All I did with the Apple IIe was play games.

Those were the only two computers I ever owned from 1980 - 1990, then I made my first computer purchase. An Amiga500 which I had for many years. I had several Amiga 500 computers. I would hack the heck out of them with DYI upgrades and retro fitting into PC cases. I refined my music and animation skills as well as using it for games. Amiga, My most favorite computer I ever used, even to this day.

Sadly, when commodore went belly up I had to choose between a PC (clone) or a Macintosh. A pivitol moment for my unknown computing future. Once all of my Amiga stuff was sold, I had a whopping 500 bux to spend.

I was able to purchase a 486DX2 66 deesktop with color monitor, 1200 Baud modem, CD-Rom and 32MBs Ram. I learned MS Works on it with WFW 3.11 and did a lot of BBS'ing, also used it for games.

Then I went threw Windows 95, 98, 98se, NT, Pentium 60, Pentium II, III and now...

Here I am many years later with Pentium 4 Dells, dual AMD processors and an iBook.

Still playing games, still doing music, still doing animation and now video. No More BBS'ing, there is the internet. No More Dial Up, etc...

And yet, only 2 years ago, I found myself looking up Amiga stuff and purchsed (still updating) Cloanto's Amiga Forever, so now I can run an exact Amiga Clone on my modern day PC hardware. but this wasn't enough, last year I found myself bidding on Amiga 500 computers again. Now I have a fully functional A500 like when I was a kid. So while I was at it, I purchased and Atari 2600 with 86 cartridges. Can't seem to break free of the good old days.... I even went as far as building my own MAME cabinet.

As great as modern day computing is, there's a majic that exists in the good old days before virus, worms, and spyware took over the front pages of every computer magazine.

It feels good to time travel back to those days once in a while.

What model was it?
Commodore 64

Where did you buy it?
Not sure, my parents bought it when I was in 4th or 5th grade

How much did it cost?
Again, not sure

What kind of stuff did you do with it?
oh man, I played Lemonade stand and Kings Quest for hours!!

How long did you have it?
I'm pretty sure it was about 3-4 years

What did you eventually replace it with?
A decked out IBM PC 286 with a 40MB RLL Hard drive ...I can not remember how much memory but god it was top of the line and I know it cost about $4000 in 80ish!!

My first computer was a Kaypor running CPM

My first computer was a Sinclair ZX80 that I built from a kit. It later became the Timex Sinclair 1000.

In 1982 I went to work for Circuit City and sold many of the Timex Sinclair 1000's along with the TI99/4a (my second computer), the VIC-20, C64 and the Atari 1200XL. In 1990 I bought my first "clone" - an AST 386SX and I got "on-line" with Prodigy.

Those were the GOOD OLE DAYS!

What model was it?
An AT&T 8088 (used...it was actually part of our high school's network for our computer club)

Where did you buy it?
I won it through a contest in high school

How much did it cost?
$0

What kind of stuff did you do with it?
Hardly anything...was only good for word processing. (I did installed DOS 5 on it though)

How long did you have it?
Maybe a year or two

What did you eventually replace it with?
A Packard Hell (I forgot the model, but it had DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.1 installed), then a HP Pavillion (I Think it was a 4440....it had a AMD K6 processor, 64 MB of RAM, a 4Gb hard drive with windows 98 (not second edithion) installed).

Our first was the TI 99/4A , in fact we still have it and my Father-in-law still has two in the box unopened! I ran some basic programs, ran some games, never did spring for the floppy drive unit (as my FIL did), just used the cassette tape interface. We eventually replaced it with a Packard Bell 386SX-16, then with an HP P-90, now with an HP MCPC. Amazing how things have changed over the last twenty years or so. You can now buy a handheld calculator that would run circles around the TI 99/4A, in fact they probably would put the 386 to shame as well!
We had some of those IBM compatibles with no hard drive at work, some later models with a 10 M hard drive...

My 1st was a gift from my Dad for Christmas 1980.
A Timex Sinclair computer. Neither a Mac nor a PC it had a language all its own. If I remember correctly about all I could make it do was be a clock. Fascinating machine though. It sparked my interest and led to a long career in computers with the old Bell System and subsequent telecom companies.

Believe it or not:

Apple III
Introduced: May 1980
Released: Spring 1981
Price: US $3495 w/128K RAM
US $3815 with monitor
How many? 65,000 TOTAL (four year)
CPU: Synertek 6502A, 2.0 MHz
RAM: 128K, 512K max.
Display: Color composite video
16 colors at 280 X 192.
16 shades at 560 X 192
Ports: Two serial ports
External floppy port
Expansion: Four internal slots
Storage: Internal 143k 5-1/4 inch floppy
External floppy drive
OS: Apple SOS (Sophisticated OS)

*********************

Osborne 1
Introduced: April 1981
Price: US $1,795
Weight: 24.5 pounds
CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 4.0 MHz
RAM: 64K RAM
Display: built-in 5" monitor
53 X 24 text
Ports: parallel / IEEE-488
modem / serial port
Storage: dual 5-1/4 inch, 91K drives
OS: CP/M

~STILL WORKS TOO!!

*************
Texas Instruments TI-99/4A
Released: June 1981
Price: US$525 (without monitor)
How many: 2.8 Million
CPU: TI TMS9900, 3MHz
Memory: 16K RAM, 26K ROM
Display: Video via an RF modulator
32 characters by 24 lines text
192 X 256, 16 color graphics
Ports: ROM cartridge (on front)
Data storage cassette
Audio/Video output
Joystick input
CPU bus expansion
Peripherals: Speech Synthesizer
Peripheral Expansion Box
Data storage cassette
300 baud modem
OS: ROM BASIC

****************

OH YEAH i also have a Working Commadore 64 in the orginal box still

Commodore 64
Introduced: January 1982
Released: September 1982
How many: ~17 million
Price: US $595.
CPU: MOS 6510, 1MHz
Sound: SID 6581, 3 channels of sound
RAM: 64K
Display: 25 X 40 text
320 X 200, 16 colors max
Ports: TV, RGB & composite video
2 joysticks, cartridge port
serial peripheral port
Peripherals: cassette recorder
printer, modem
external 170K floppy drive
OS: ROM BASIC

Only had it for three months and took a soldering iron to it. Added Level 2 bios on top of Level 1 with a toggle switch. Added 16k mem(maxed out at the time). Overclocked the processor to 1.2M and doubled the storage speed of the cassette player. Wrote a book keeping program for it and used it for my taxes. Want to trash a computer board today? Touch it with a soldering iron. Next computer?... S100 bus with fortran. You should have seen the hard drive on that!

A Commodore 64 with a cassette tape drive. I would spend hours on input, and the end result was balloons floating up and off the screen....we have come a long way, indeed.

What model was it? Model I, low serial number. Upgraded cassette to Stringy Floppy - wow! Stringy Floppy was still a tape drive, but used a high speed answering machine size tape.

How much did it cost? More than the 2 Dells on my desk now.

What kind of stuff did you do with it? Programming, early Usenet, Ham radio - send and and receive Morse Code and packet, initiating a divorce, speech synthesis and voice recognition.

How long did you have it? Did?

What did you eventually replace it with? Added 1 Model III, 2 CoCos (stacked RAM hardwired to 64K), 1 Micro CoCo, Model II w 4 8" drives, eventually a BSR 386 . . . Still have them all. And all issues of 80 Microcomputing magazine.

Those were the the days of tight code.

I'm embarrassed to admit my first number crunching powerhouse complete with UBER graphics was the ((insert dramatic drumroll here))

THE ATARI 400!!

I swear that membrane keyboard was going to drive me nuts. I can't tell you how many times I tried to type out basic programs that I would see in Compute! magazine and only to screw it up a million times because it was IMPOSSIBLE to type on that thing!!
Complete with whopping 16K ram, and a 32K ROM (i think). Gawd I so don't miss that datasette recorder. Take 20 minutes to load a 48K game!
I thought I was on top of the world when I upgraded to the Atari 1200XL! Commodore 64 after that. Then the computer to end all computers: The Commodore Amiga. Damn if that computer wasn't the bomb! Puzzles me how something so good, winds up in the dust. Last I heard Gateway bought the Amiga tech stuff from somebody in Europe and haven't heard anything about it since.

Oh well.

Nowadays I have a small LAN in my apartment to geek on. Linux on some, Windows on others. Fun stuff.

Little did I know what I was stepping into when I got my first computer.

It's a bad hobby! Never stop spending money!!! Never have enough RAM, MHZ, or Gigabytes!

I don't remember the year I bought my first PC but the first one I ever owned was one my landlord had. He was fairly well off and very generous. He decided to buy a computer because he thought they looked like fun and for him that meant buying 2. I went over to play chess with him one day and he sent the second one home with me. Of course I was totally captured by the computer age from then on.

It was a Commodore 64. For the next year or so I purchased several games and books. I learned how to program in machine language (which I had no use for since I live in small town, rural Nebraska). When Commodore started shipping a 128, I bought one. Wow it was blazingly fast!!! 2 MHz. I still have this machine and it still works. We've set up a demo a couple times to show a short computer history.

Next came an Epson Equity I, my first IBM compatible. This one also was the lucky one to have me purchase my first hard drive. 10 MB I didn't know what to do with all the room. After a year or so I bought an Epson Equity I+. At this time I also sold my first new machine as a reseller. It was an Epson Equity II with an 80286 CPU.

Then came a Compaq 486/50. I was amazed at the speed with each new computer. I also got a fancy new 15" flat screen. It came with 2 MB of RAM which I then added 2 more for only $105 each, for a total of, hang on; 4! This was my first Best Buy purchase too. Altogether, almost $3,000 for this whole setup.

This was the end of the fun stuff. I started a computer business in 95 and new computers came regularly after the Compaq. The exhileration from one to the next just isn't the same anymore. It seems that everyone now just expects their new one to be faster and many times people are disappointed because they thought it would be so much faster than the old one. After about 1 GHz speed just isn't as apparent as it once was. Now everybody just wants to run an application or game better. Oh well, time marches on.

My first computer was a Sinclair - I bought a kit, but by the time they sent it to me it was a "computer" all put together. It used a TV screen and required a tape deck to record any programming. Any slight jarring would knock out that programming pretty quickly. I moved to a genuine Mac in 1984 - started with nine others the Mac SIG of Washington Apple Pi - we grew from ten to a couple of thousand in one year.

> What model was it?
Homemade

> Where did you buy it?
Purchased parts here and there, out of the Western Block during the Cold War. Critical technology export restrictions? Ha!

> How much did it cost?
It was affordable enough.

> What kind of stuff did you do with it?
Programming for fun & profit.

> How long did you have it?
If my memory serves me right, it must still be buried somewhere in the cellar. Maybe it even works.

> What did you eventually replace it with?
IBM PC, 16 MHz, a couple of 10 MB disk, I forgot how much memory it had. Must be a couple of 10 kilobytes. I used it mostly to run cross compilers & Borland Turbo C. Very good tool. Simple, fast, and reliable as a nail.

What model was it? Toshiba business class with a Z80 processor, 2 8 inch floppies and 16K of RAM. small (maybe 8 inch?) green screen and drives, all in a nice, neat little 125 pound package.

Where did you buy it? 1991

How much did it cost? Free, took it out of an old veneer lumber mill.

What kind of stuff did you do with it? Learned CP/M, computer basics and wrote a highly successful (just kidding) piece of software for printing images on a daisy wheel printer (using various letters and numbers. WOW!)

How long did you have it? 14 months

What did you eventually replace it with? IBM PC/XT with 640 KB of RAM and an AST Six Pack card which would actually keep the system time alive when the machine was turned off (DOS 4.3, buggy stuff).

The first was my first job in my first posting during my apprenticeship with a telecommunications carrier - get it working. The first program I got going was Lunar Lander and the next was Collosal Cave. It was a 16K RAM, mini data tape, single line LED display, daisy wheel printer output, calculator with delusions of grandeur(sp?). We eventually used it for what is was bought for. The second was my home computer, and it wasted many hours of my time teaching me how to design and program graphics-based games. Brilliant little machine, destined for the dungeon of no return thanks to Intel and IBM. Ah well. Cost of th eHP was of no interest to me. The TI I seem to remember being around $300AU, but then that was a number of years ago and my memory is a bit vague.

That was my first computer too. I can still hear the "Radar Rat Race" tune in my head.

From this machine i made a progression through all the later Commodore models.

What model was it? ? Olivetti laptop with twin 720K floppy drives - no hard drive and forgotten memory
Where did you buy it? Somewhere in London UK in 1991
How much did it cost? 450 pounds sterling
What kind of stuff did you do with it? Word processing; spreadsheet and database design and development. Develop VB projects such as an automated ordering system for greengrocer olesalers.
How long did you have it? About ten years, but used in conjunction with a desktop purchased in late 1991 on return to Australia.
What did you eventually replace it with? Compaq Presario 2500.

KIM-1 - Key Input Mode Single board computer. It cost something like $400, so I borrowed one for a few weeks from a professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA in the late 70's. It had a hexadecimal keypad and two 7-segment hexadecimal digit displays. I spent an afternoon writing a program about 137 bytes long that could divide 1 binary coded decimal (BCD) number 8 digits long by another one of the same length, and place the result in a 16 byte buffer. I had to hand translate the mnemonics into hexadecimal bytes and enter them into memory through the hex keypad. It took half an evening to test the program, but it worked! All the hard work was lost, of course, on power off. My next computer represented a gigantic step forward for mankind: An Apple II+ for $4,000 in 1980 w/48K memory, 2 floppy disk drives, a monochrome monitor, and Applesoft Basic. Heavenly!

Okay, my first computer was a kit--but it just didn't have much kick--no storage at all.

Second was a Osborne O-1a, which I had in pieces the first week to put in a DD board and screen pak--dual 160k and 104char on a 5" screen. I was dropping 3,000 pieces of mailouts per month (1st AF recruiter with his own personal computer in the office.)

Then I really got the bug--The Morrow portable, an NEC that did CPM, Dos, and NEC Basic (5.25&8"). Then I built a clone with a 10M hd. Then a Heath 386 (got Xenix with it.)Then a Sharp laptop....it just doesn't stop, does it?

A commodore 64. I no longer have it but it was memorable.

My first machine encounter involved renting time on an IBM 360/20. It had 64k of "core," and used decks of cards or paper tape for input. We thought it was a wonderful machine.

We paid by the machine cycle and the clock hour (very expensive). It made sense to try hard for programs that would execute in fewer steps.

We wrote our own applications in what was called BAL--until someone sold us on the merits of this nifty thing called COBOL.

WAS A TEXAS INSTRUMENTS TI-99/4A. TYPE MY FIRST PROGRAM IN BASIC A MARBLE GAME.

It had a whopping 16 K of memory, and loaded programs from a tape recorder. I remember writing little BASIC programs like a variant of Lunar Lander. And I bought 5 1/4" floppy drives for it.

Utility was limited, so I bought a Franklin 1200, an Apple II clone. Apple was the way to go in those days, and the Franklin was tricked out with dual hard disks and at least 64K of RAM. I bumped it up to 128K and added a few things like a CP/M card...

Apple had their chance with the Apple II GS that I bought next -- and blew it. Apple advertised it as the crossover machine to the Macintosh, so I bought one -- and then they didn't deliver. The II GS was actually a nicer machine than early Macs, but they let it fade -- and my confidence in them went with it. I moved to Wintel boxes in the early Seventies (a dealer-constructed 386SX) and never looked back...

...is sitting in front of my family's full Commodore64 system, with a sheet of paper my older brother printed out at school. He told me to just type it all in... turns out one of the first things I vividly remember ever doing was programming a little connect-four style computer game. I must have been 5 or 6 years old. That would have been about 14 years ago.

It was only a short time after that, maybe just a year, when we got our Acer. All I really remember of it was the sleeve of CDs that came with it, four or five of which were games appropriate for my age. Some coloring book and a MathBlaster. I also vaguely remember running out of hard drive space a lot. That's what happens with two adults and three children sharing less than a gig of hard drive space.

The real revolution for me was when my brothers showed me Hotmail. I still have the same hotmail address from when I was 10 years old. I think those were still Acer days.

And then: the dark ages. Compaq Presario. WinME. Ugh. I rather lost interest in computers for a while.

Anyway, I just thought it was most interesting that, after thinking about it, I've probably had a passion for computers since before I can remember. Neato.

It had a 60MB ESDI hard drive and I upgraded the RAM to 8MB a year later.

Well, yeah it was an IBM 360/20. I was 16 at the time (1967) and learning how to wire up Unit Record Equipment (to you young duffers out there, it is equipment that utilizes IBM/Hollerith cards 80 columns plus. Hollerith worked for the U.S. Census Bureau in the 1890's that needed a quicker way to do the Census. They used wires to poke through the punch holes to find data). Since I had graduated from the school (I nternational D ata P rocessing I nstitute otherwise known as IDPI, even before I graduated from High School), I had vowed to own my own computer, even if it But if we are talking personal computers, my first computer was a Trash 80 (TRS 80 level II) level II. I had previously learned ANSI BASIC so when I got to my Trash 80 I was a little ahead of the game. In 1979 I went to college for Computer Information Systems and graduated in 1984. After that I had purchased several personal computers and now I build and my (baby)sister build our own computers.

Never got a disk drive. I used to try and write games on it.

Wrote stuff in basic (sprite editors etc) and 6502 assembler for the game engines.

Wow! Now this brings back memories. I got my TRS-80 for Christmas when I was 10 or 12. I also received a subscription to a magazine that had code listings for all these great games that you could create with the TRS-80 Color computer or a C-64.

This was 8 bit computer. I payed about $4,000 it had 2 floopy drives(160K) 64k ram and RGB color monitor.

Replaced it with custom S-100 computer with main
boards from Siera Data System (Z80 and 64k ram)it ran on CPM and had 2X 1.2meg 8" 1/2 hieght Qume drives.

and still have them.

Those were the days.

The Vic20 was just a pig, tape drive, black & white 12" tv for a display, huge text, basic was the programming language you would type thousands of lines of basic code just to get some crap text based game to function but it was the bug that bit me and got me interested in computers to begin with. A couple years later, I got a Tandy Coco 3 with 128K Ram for christmas (I was maybe 11 at the time), it boasted real color, lots of color, varying levels of display resolution and I believe it had a top resolution of 640x480 which at the time was unheard of, I had a monthly subscription to Rainbow (magazine for Coco computer owners), it basically completed the transformation from regular kid to geek all in a few short months. The weight gain and corrective lenses came afterwards, no doubt from lack of physical activity and staring at a color monitor 6" from my face for several hours at a time. Computer & keyboard were the same thing, but it was an actual color monitor, not a tv, a 5 1/4" floppy disk drive, a dot matrix printer, and the rest they say is history.

...in MIDDLE SCHOOL!?!!? Me and a few friends of mine would be in the computer lab alot playing that most wonderful of games, "Lemonande Stand". We'd be in the lab all the time at recess playing it. I don't know, for whatever reason, the teacher who was in charge of the computer lab (who would become my 7th grade science teacher) would allow one of my friends to load the programs from the server onto the network to load onto the other computers. I'm assuming that it was a client-server network because there was an TRS-80 that the had the big ass 8.5 floppy drive and all of the programs that would be used by the other TRS-80s would be accessed after the floppy was loaded. Anywoo, because my friend had access to the server and the programs, he load Lemonade Stand for whoever wanted to play it. And I know how, but I picked it up on how he did it and sometimes we would take turns loading games...until I asked the teacher "officially" if I could do it.

I had my Tandy Color Computer II at the time, but I didn't have a floppy drive, I had the tape recorder. Needless to say......I have my friend to think for the path I'm on today...kinda reminiscent of Robert Redford & Ben Kingsley in Sneakers..one of my favorite movies *ROFL*

What model was it? Commodore VIC20
Where did you buy it? Computer Store
How much did it cost? around $100
What kind of stuff did you do with it? Games and BASIC programming
How long did you have it? probably three years
What did you eventually replace it with? Commodore 64

My first computer was an IBM 1400 punched card machine. It was the size of a decent house, and I have forgotten everything about ram etc. You programmed it by connecting holes in a honeycomb plate with small wires. It had the big advantage that when something crashed, you could SEE the crumbled cards, repunch them, put them back and press 'go'. Sorting was the big thing, as mostly you used an 'update' stack of cards against a 'master' stack of cards. If the master file suddenly went berserk reading and outputting cards like h*** and nothing else happened, sure thing was you had a sequence error in the 'update' file. It was easy to see on the output stack from the masterfile where the error started - the edge of the stack looked different. So you loaded back from the master output to the master input, noted where you were in the update stack, resorted it, placed it back in the update, and ignored errors about mastefile being out-of-sync with update until the next - correct - update card was read.
Later I moved to a Bull something with 16k (bits - not bytes) core store, 8 tapeunits and - in 1970 - a 1200 lpm printer. Staff was 1 boss, 3 programmers, 1 planner, 8 operators and 12 punchers. Operation was 3 shifts. The punchers were a real asset as they were all female, mostly young, adding a lot to the atmosphere and raising the value of office parties.Then I changed to IBM360/25 and followed IBM until the iSeries hwich I left in 2001, to concentrate entirely on project management.

First PC was an IBM PC-G with a 6 needle printer which I still have and it still works. Current one is a Shuttle full of nice goodies dualbooting into Linux/XP - with a strong preference for the first.

By golly I think I still have a copy of that somewhere...man that was cool back in the day!

Oh, how I miss my Commie 128 :)

You got it from Sears? Let me guess, the thermal printer was an Okidata, right? Had one myself.

Used the Commie for school work, games, and playing on the BBS's. Even ran my own BBS on the Commie.

Every now and then, I pull it out and play with it when I feel nostalgic. Would have been interesting to use the commie on the net, wouldn't it?

What model was it? Sinclair
Where did you buy it? Order via Philtron
How much did it cost? Can't remember,
What kind of stuff did you do with it? Programming
How long did you have it? 2 years
What did you eventually replace it with? Commodore 64

My first computer was a Sinclair ZX80, which at the time was a very advanced piece of kit, with ?kb of ram. But sadly this could only handle integers ...

Over the next year I did any odd little job that a schoolboy could do; paper round, returning glass pop bottles for the 10p deposits, digging gardens in the summer, and repairing bicycles so that I could afford the ?80 for the ZX81 kit.

Having sent the postal order off to Sinclair, proudly announcing that I would like to order a ZX81 kit I sat back in anticipation of its' arrival. Then on my birthday in early November my grandfather made me sign for a box from the postman. When I opened it, I was over the moon, and totally confused because the kit that I had ordered appeared to be a fully assembled computer - little did I know that my gandparents had ordered the ZX81 two days before I did.

With 1kb of RAM - WOW - and able to handle absolute numbers this was a powerful machine.

Two days later my kit arrived, and I sat down with a friend of the family & my granddad over the next two weeks soldering the thing together in order to finally screw the case together and power it up on the small portable TV just in time to go to bed for Christmas Eve. For what it was the ZX81 represented a leap in home technology, I could record my cassette collection within a database, I could fly a flight simulator, and spend hours typing in programs only to watch it crash when I pressed save. Even worse, was realising that you had failed to connect the cassette recorder to the thing and knowing that you had lost 4 hours worth of work.

Over the next couple of years I progressed to the Comadore Pet that was in need of repair; and stumbling across a Comadore 710 - which looked as though it actually belonged in some futureistic episode of Space 1999 - before buying an Atari 510 which was used as a word processor, replacing my 9-pin Epson FX80 with another printer.

It wasn't until the late 80's that I progressed into PC's with my first XT, and then 8088 (AT), before buying my first laptop, (a leading edge 486 with a colour screen), with a 30Mb HD and 2Mb RAM whilst I was in Tampa back in the very early 90's. Truthfully I think the guy who sold it to me thought I was rich. What I didn't tell him was that I had a UK credit card & that the exchange rate was nearly $2:?1 so I had a bargain - the guy even gave me a 10% discount because I was English.

I still have the ZX80, and both ZX81's which work; yet I wonder whether we've really advanced with computers. Yes both the power and functionality of the systems have improved within the last 26 years. But have we ?

23 years ago the Geek was found loitering within the broom cupboard or somewhere within the basement amongst the cobwebs, I was 16 and writing programs for school children so that they worked in less than 32kb; yet today this is not enough to hold some sound files; and memory is measured in Gb, rather than Kb's. Nibbles have faded into a distant memory, and are now regarded as small bites of your food, and other than the Older geek just how many new techies could explain the use of a 3 dimensional array within the program code, and not a database; not to mention the difference between an Operating Environment and Operating System ?

The first program that I downloaded was back in November 1981, with my cassette recorder pressed against the speaker of the TV, and it was from BBC's Tomorrow's World. Not that it worked, but it was fun ...

A

Back in the 80's these machines were fantistic for the price, I managed to get hold of one for my younger brother, so that he could run the BBC software on them. The only problem was I spent many a night playing Chuckie Egg, and Reptilion on the thing ...

Before I met a fashion consultant who convinced me that I looked good in greens & DP, I was a member of the team who rolled the Acorn Atoms out to Interflora agents allowing them to be "networked" - in the loosest sence of the word - with their central handling agents. The keyboards were the right size, and many people felt happy using them because they didn't look like computers.

A

My first real (?) computer was a Timex Sinclair TS-1000. As a poor college student, I bought it used for $35. I also had the optional 16K addon memory pack, about the size of a pack of cigarettes. Programs were saved onto an external cassette tape deck (not included). You hooked it up to a TV, and the pixels were about 1/8" in size, as I recall. Despite that, I managed to write several programs to demonstrate underground seismic waves reflecting back to the surface. I was sad when it died!

i had one too. My first computer. i bought it 'cause it would also run CP/M and i could play with dBase and Wordstar besides running games on it. It cost me about $300 and i bought a tape deck and external drive for it. i had a Star printer for it that's still in my garage. i ended up selling it to help finance my next box, a Northgate 286 that morphed into a generic 486 box that i still have.
Things were MUCH simpler then, even though they still managed to confuse the bejeebers out of most folks.

My first computer was a Sinclair QL with a blistering 128k memory....ah what memories, I spent many long hours writing my first novel on this machine until it eventually died, taking with it my literary aspirations!

Actually my first was a minavac 601 I found in the alley, had lites and buttons didn't do much.

My next was a Commodore 64.

My first real computer was a IBM XT I think it had a 10 meg hard drive, and a Princeton Graphics color monitor. That about all I can remember about the spec.'s. I do remember it cost me $10,000.00 brand new.

JP

What model was it? Commodore Pet and Vic-20 (My cousin and I also shared a Sinclair ZX81)

Where did you buy it? Pet in Edmonton, Canada and Vic-20 in Cold Lake, Canada

How much did it cost? Pet = $800, Vic-20 = $300

What kind of stuff did you do with it? Pet was my fathers for business use. Vic-20 was mainly for gaming and learning BASIC programming

How long did you have it? Pet for 5 years, Commodore Vic-20 for 2 years, Commodore 64 for 6 years.
What did you eventually replace it with? Commodore Vic-20 to Commodore 64 in 1985, Commodore 64 to IBM 486DX33 clone in 1991

I remember being able to copy loads of freeware and shareware games on to my tape drive. Every kid on the block was coming to our house (and leaving their blocky Atari VCS/2600 in the dust). Games like Snackman, Choplifter, Omega Race, the Space Invaders ripoff, Froggee, Night Driver, Lunar Lander. Stayed up late at night sometimes writing programs from Compute! magazine to see if they would work. Also had the 16k memory expansion. Got to use my Dad's Pet for typing assignments on.

When the Commodore 64 came out I bought the C64 first for $300 and then later the 1541 disk drive for another $300 with paper route money. Even more games were copied with this machine thanks to hacking software from Europe. The Commodore dot matrix printer was very slow and noisy but it at least would print the fonts that were found on the GEOS Commodore windows interface. Anyone remember GEOWrite? or GEODraw?.....With 64k those programs struggled...The games were great though with titles like Summer Games from EA, F15 Strike Eagle from MicroProse, H.E.R.O, Donkey Kong, Lode Runner, Jumpman, Miner 2049er, Karateka, Castle Wolfenstein, etc... you just had to be patient with the 5.25" disk drive; Load "*",8,1 and return...

I sold the C64 computer, disk drive, monitor and printer for $250 back in 1991 to save up for a IBM clone. When I got my 486 I learned a lot about PCs when a roommate of mine introduced me to the art of ugrading computers and online bulletin boards, before the advent of the internet as we know it..

My first computer was the Microace, a kit-version of the TS ZX81. I used it to learn digital electronics: designed and built a 16K (huge!) memory board and an interface for a real keyboard.
I reverse-engineered the 4K ROM and learned to call the OS routines from Z-81 assembly language routines (I wrote an assembler in Sinclair Basic).

My first computer was one I designed (at the chip level, not plugging together some one else's boards) in late 1974 (about the same time the first Altair was being designed). By early 1975 I has it working, with a huge 1k of RAM! Eventually I expanded it to 64k, making it a huge micro computer for its time!

After I wrote a loader and connected a paper tape reader and punch salvaged from an old Western Union teletype, I wrote a simple monitor program, then a rudimentary real time operating system.

Fond memories!

Well, that was just a chipset (2 chips, Register and Control). Nomnally 2MHz but would single step (i.e.: use a debounced momentary switch instead of the clock - handy for debugging). Needed a "few" external chips to make a computer, including a few 7-segment LEDs!
Bought: mail order
Cost: chipset - a few dollars ($20?) everything else? $200+
Do with it? first, a multi-setting alarm clock, later morphed into a darkroom clock (hey, the red LEDs were "safe" for paper.
How long? until I scraped the darkroom in 2001
Replaced with? Nothing - no film, no darkroom, no timer. Or you could say I replaced it with a digital camera, a flash card, and a Pentium Laptop running PaintShop Pro 9 (my virtual darkroom, but it still needs no timer).

See above for RCA 1801 blather, but is this really a computer by todays standards? No screen, no QWERTY keyboard etc., so in that case.... Kaypro running CP/M and WordSTAR 1.1 on dual 5" Floppies. Love that 9" green screen. Used if for term papers, lab reports and resumes. Had my first wife (and my friends wife) typing up term papers and resumes on it for extra $$$. Bought a 24 pin Toshiba printer for high-quality output (first 24pin printer is the age of 9-pin and Daisy-wheel printers). I think the printer cost more than the computer, and we had to write a driver for it.
Model: Kaypro II
Bought: local computer store for about Cdn$2K.
Did: Word processing, a little spreadsheet stuff, a little programming in SBASIC.
Had it: 2 years.
Replaced it with: IBM PC clone.

Started with unit record equipment in the '50's. First programmable computers were IBM 1620 and CDC 1604. Migrated through the entire CDC family: 3L00, 3U00, 6x00 and 7600 writing Fortran and assembly language.

First home computer: Microdata 800, 4k memory, paper tape and ASR-33 (teletype)

Second owned computer -- Osborne I, purchased in 1981, 64k memory, dual floppies, came with Wordstar, SuperCalc, MBasic, CBasic and CP/M OS.
Cost $1,995. Still have the first box of 10 SSDD floppies - $67.00! The Ozzie is STILL IN USE at my office and is used to drive a Qume Daisy Wheel printer. I use this system to print continuous one-up mailing labels and company checks. Software which I had for the Osborne includes: Cobol, Fortran, Personal Perl and compiled Basic.

...unless you count the BASIC Programming cartridge for the ATARI 2600.
The 64 was bought at Dillard's, I believe. I think including monitor, printer, and floppy drive it cost about $1200 in 1985. Eventually, I got another floppy (2!) a 1200 baud modem, 9 pin printer, Koalapad, etc.
I used it to the max and finally replaced it with an Amiga 500.

Jason has a list of Apple/IBM/other.

My first computer was a PDP11/34; way back. Not my own, as you can imagine; but I was the single user; in Research.
My first own computer was a used ZX81 that I bought 21 years ago and sold it for the same price a few days later.
My first PC was an IBM 'sewing machine'; portable with a green, built-in monitor (forgot how many inches, 8 or so), 286, 640kB of RAM, 20 MB of harddisk. Did all of my work on it.
My last PC was and is a DELL Inspiron 8100 (I like the portable ones, you see); five years old and still working (though DELL had to replace almost everything: Hard disc (3x), keyboard, floppy, motherboard, CDROM, power supply; so it won't be a DELL again).
As long as it runs, I'll keep it. With P-III 866 and 256 MB it runs Debian great and fast.

My first PC was an Apple II+ with 4K of Ram. It had no hard drive, no floppy drive, only came with a cassette tape with one program --- Lemonade Stand.

I kicked it up to 48K eventually. It had a green monitor and the display was all caps. The floppy drives I added were one sided 5 1/4" and held 720K (We thought they were huge).

Wrote my own programs with Applesoft Basic since there wern't too many out there. Used "VISICALC" which was the predecessor to Lotus 123.

They were fun days.

Eventually worked my way out of Apple and into the Intel/Microsoft world. with a XT 33 mhz.

I still have the old Apple II+. I'll use it as an anchor one day.

Had 1 Floppy, & a 300 Baud Modem. Around '83/'84? Had some games but used mostly to type in Basic & Assembler. Used to log into Texas A&M's PDP/11? to run Fortran homework from home at 3am then pick up output on the way to lab. Replaced w/C=128, then Amiga 500. Good memories...

Armando

I first purchased a laptop manfd. in Hongkong with 80MB hard drive and 64KB memory in 1989. but later I wanted to change battery and increase thememory but when I wrote tothe manufacturer letter returned that the addressee left. I purchased it at that time at about US$4200. I used it for word and excel.then I have to throw it out when my assistant spoiled the computer by dropping it on the floor.I am now usign only desktops and do not use laptops.

Wasn't mine but our school had one. Big box 2.5 ft square 1ft tall. Not floppy or HD. Programmed on numeric keyboard. Stored programs on a magnetic card. Got me interested in computers then (Late 1960's). Saw one again 4 yrs ago in landfill site.
Anyone else remember these?

As i recall, I went to a showing of a condominium in Albuquerque, N.M., and in exchange for taking the tour with a half trained blowhard, i got the computer. It was just the consol. I had to hook it up to a tv, add a portable tape deck and type in all my programs in Basic (not even DOS). I recall it had something like 8K of memory built in. I didnt get the expansion box and eventually gave it to a church school after trying to remove some of the words i had put into a game of spy (guess the right letters in a word in so many tries) just to get rid of the thing. I dont recall when that was, but must have been about that time. My next was a 286 with all the bells and whistles, like a monitor, a 20K hard drive, 5 1/4 floppy and some ability to be modified.

Daenabean,

If you really liked Buck Rogers, it is available on the MAME arcade emulator software, and can also be found for use with the Adam/Coleco Emulators that are currently available. The MAME version is a LOT better than the Adam version (to be expected, of course).

Richard

Really a large programmable calculator--programmed in octal (base 8) saved to 1/4 in tape. Later upgraded to 8" SSSD for storage. One could load in a 2000 'word' core, and then bring in overlays at 6000 a pop--all on an 8K machine. Output was paper tape, later a Diable typewriter--all hooked together with a cable-50 twisted pairs! Wish I still had it.

ZX Spectrum (81)

16k of the highest quality memory!
(Later featured 48K!!!!)
Featured rubber keys!
It was the size of a laptop keyboard!

Done a bit of BASIC programming and played defender.

What model was it? Commodore 64

Where did you buy it? Local Shop

How much did it cost? Dont know, father purchased

What kind of stuff did you do with it? Games mostly....

How long did you have it? Still do, well pieces of it.

What did you eventually replace it with? A hammer, then a Commodore Amiga 1000.

The first computer I helped design, build, and use was a system we built at Auburn Research Foundation as a top secret developmental project for the Air force in 1952. Cost was about $2,000,000 The first computer that I personally owned was a Redcor in about 1965. Cost was about $5,000. Used it for network analysis, word processing, and accounting.

My first computer in college was a mainframe called a Burroughs 6700 it was programmed with a Tektronix green-eyed monitor using CANDE, Command AND Edit.
After graduating with a Degree in Chem Engr. I bought a Personal Computer an Apple ][ with no hard drive an audio tape to save the text. No floppy was affordable at that time.

Well not counting the abacus or my first programable calculator that had a magnetic data reader that used a piece of wood like a nail file with a piece of magnetic tape stuck to it, my first real machine was a sinclair ZX80, not to be confused with the 81, which sold in the zillions.
this machine as i recall had 1k of memory on board for everthing and no data storage facility, hence program it and switch it of and then start all over again.
when a line of basic was input the screen went off while it was processed because of the shared memory, not much different now with xp pro 2gig of ram and working on a large photoshop file.
ANy way this unit was the princely sum of ?99.00 back in 1979.
This soon had to go and was replaced by an early pet, then a trs80 by radio shack then a sharp mz80k, so who remembers any of them.
Apricot F5 (5 megabyte hard drive)
Atari 800, atari ST later and we ended up with a early IBM xt.
the rest is history, todays homebuilt machine using and AMD 64 bit (my first AMD chip in 28yrs of computing)
Here we are with 1000 time more ram than my first hard drive.
where will we be in anither 10 years

Garry Kirby
Computer lover and consultant in the UK

Radio Shack Colour Computer 3

Radio Shack

Don't remember what it cost but I remember I maxed the memory (individual DIP chips), bought a floppy controller from a friend, and hooked it up to a surplus DEC chassis with two 5.25" floppies. The CoCo OS (never did put OS-9 on it) treated each side of a floppy as a drive so it had four 180k 'drives'.

Mostly played games on it

After a year and a half I bought a Commodore 10/20, an IBM/PC clone with a 5.25" & 3.5" floppy, EGA, a 20 Mb HD and a 2400 baud modem.

My first was a TI 99. Had to type in programs and save them to a cassette.

Commador C 64
Purchased in Ft Bliss TX for 129.99 in 1984. I learned to change IBM program commands so they can run on the commador. Played a lot of games load"*",8,1. Replaced it with an IBM 1088

!983- an Adam by Coleco. It had a tape drive and I used an A-B switch so my TV was my monitor. At the time, Knight-Ritter had a hook-up that was the internet before the internet. Most people didn't understand what I was talking about when I spoke of emailing others on the network. They thought I had completely lost it.

How about an ATARI XE with 1 drive with 5-1/4 disks

I bought it from the manufacturer for $400, and it had 24 LEDs & switches for I/O and 4KB of memory in 1978.

I took a Freeden Flexowriter (a Punch-Paper-Tape Electric typewriter) and hacked it so I could use the PPT reader & writer as storage, and the typewriter as a printer. It was slow, but at that rate, it would 'last forever!'

I expanded the memory to 64KB, and then to 2MB. And I added an 8" FDD (128KB) and of course I had to make my own Video Display (16-lines x 64-chars)

I had it until my x-wife called and said: "The dumpster is leaving on Wednesday, and you can have 'anything you want' before then." I retrieved it, but then sold it to a collector in NY for $400 (+S&H).

It was supplemented with an IBM 5150 16MB RAM, 320K FDD in 1984. And I replaced it with a 20MHz 386 AT-clone.

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