Your First Computer

[allan]

Rather than hijack Chicken's thread, I thought I would start a new thread.

What was your first computer?

This was mine:

http://oldcomputers.net/trs80iii.html

Of course, we couldn't afford all the frills, like disk drives -- we used cassette tapes, and we liked it!!

[nameslave]

May I just copy and paste from the other thread:

My first computer is a Japanese or Taiwan clone (I lived in Hong Kong back then) of Apple IIe that a friend of mine loaned me for the summer. Yes, it used audio cassette tapes to store data. I remember writing a simple BASIC program that bounced a "ping-pong" on the screen. Those were the days.

[allan]

For my Eighth grade (Form 2 for you Englishmen) science fair project I wrote a godawful program that consisted of a pixelated spaceship descending down the screen, the pixelated door opening, and a little pixelated guy walking down the ramp.

I got honorable mention :).

[VoxKeysGtr]

audio cassette tapes? Whoa, that must have been fun. How long did it take to store something and how much data could you store?

[allan]

Originally posted by VoxKeysGtr
audio cassette tapes? Whoa, that must have been fun. How long did it take to store something and how much data could you store?

I have no idea...It was enough space to play my text based games:

You walk into the center cavern, to your left you see gold statuette encrusted with jewels, to your right you see an entrance to a dark passageway, strait ahead you see a well-lit hall.

What do you do?

[DizixCom]

We had an Apple something or other kit computer thingamagigger when I was 4. But that doesn't really count since I never really "got it". I'd say my first computer, the one that got me into the world of computing, was an Atari 800. Not the perty XL's or XE, but a good old 800.

I still to this day play a game called M.U.L.E on an Atari 8 bit emulator. Best game ever written!

[Chicken]

I remember M.U.L.E. (well the name anyway). Can't recall what the game is exactly, but I remember playing it a whole lot. Can you refresh my memory as to the point of it (very briefly).

[interactive]

My first computer was a 286 laptop, with a black and white screen, and a external 5.25" floppy drive. So ya, I'm a "youngin"

[DizixCom]

M.U.L.E was a game of economics. You land on the planet Irata (Atari spelled backwards) and compete with 3 other players (real people or computer run) to colonize the planet. You build farms along the river, energy production units, mines, etc. Then you auction your goods off trying to drive up demand and run the pricing as high as possible.

Very addicting game. The Atari 800 had 4 joystick ports so it was common to have four people playing at once. Nowadays with networking and the internet, it could be a killer remake!

[Matt Wade]

I started off with a TI-99A:

http://oldcomputers.net/ti994a.html

then went to an Apple //c:

http://oldcomputers.net/appleiic.html

and then to an Apple ][e because it was more expandable than the //c:

http://oldcomputers.net/appleii.html

Had fun with them all. The only one I have left is the ][e. In fact, I have two of them up in my attic right now. I also have about 6 shoeboxes full of programs and an old Imagewriter printer :)

[Chicken]

Originally posted by DizixCom
...to colonize the planet. You build farms along the river, energy production units, mines, etc. Then you auction your goods off trying to drive up demand and run the pricing as high as possible.
Now I remember, heh. For some reason that one sticks out as on of the ones I played. I can't recall many of them.

I recall that soon after we got a Commodore 64, which kicked butt. My father still has a Commodore graveyard under his computer desk, last I checked. Those disk drives were as big as shoe boxes. They failed often and the power suppiles often were bunk. But good system at the time. Had many games for that.

[alpha]

whoa whoa whoa...

from the links, I found this:

http://oldcomputers.net/atari800.html

I think that's the kind of computer I first had - but I really didn't do much with it except play cartridge games... or maybe it was a Commodore...

anyways, the first computer I remember getting for real was a 486DX 33mhz computer with cost I think around 4grand (geez) and I also remember getting an upgrade to 66mhz, 2400bps modem,a new CDROM drive!

boot one of those up and it came with the DOS screen and you had to type 'win' to startup Win3.11

:banana:

[Operator]

My first computer was:

Compaq
AMD K6 500 MHZ
13 GB hard drive (was later upgraded to 80)
Window 98 (was later upgraded to 98 Plus! (due to DLL hell) and then Windows Xp)
...84 mbytes of RAM

Talk about hell!

[Chicken]

That's not hell, this is hell...
Originally posted by allan
This was mine:

http://oldcomputers.net/trs80iii.html

Of course, we couldn't afford all the frills, like disk drives -- we used cassette tapes, and we liked it!!
I owned one as well. It was very painful to load and save programs to cassette tape. Trust me.

[multipleimage]

I dont remember what my first computer was but you couldnt even play pong on it...:(

[James]

my very frist computer gaming system was the old atri 2600 i think.

my frist computer if you could call it that was a commie 64 with a 300 baud modem dialing local BBS's.

then i got a i think a 286, that thing was heavy (lots of shealding)
i used a friends vt100 to do dial up with. when the 286 died.

then i got a 8088 for 25 bucks :D

then i had my old 486 DX2 66 for about 6 years untill i upgrade to what i have now PII 400 512 megs of ram (all most as big as the hard drive on the 486) and 16 gigs of hard drive space between two drives.

[allan]

Originally posted by James

then i had my old 486 DX2 66 for about 6 years untill i upgrade to what i have now PII 400 512 megs of ram (all most as big as the hard drive on the 486) and 16 gigs of hard drive space between two drives.

It s funny, my 486 DX2 66 (Packard Bell of course :)) lasted me all through college (5-ish years), but now I can't seem to go more than 2 years without upgrading a system.

[Cyberland]

My first Computer was a brand new TI-99/4A - when the 300 baud modem was the rage... The good old days of programming in basic… I think I still have that modem somewhere around the shop too :baghead:

[allan]

Originally posted by Cyberland
I think I still have that modem somewhere around the shop too :baghead:

Now, was it a box modem, or a coupler modem. The first modem I ever used was a coupler :).

[Cyberland]

If memory serves me, it was a box, as I don’t remember setting the phone in the device. But, I could be wrong, as that was a long time ago. I also cannot remember the name of the service that I called into – CompUserve or something like that.

[allan]

Originally posted by Cyberland
If memory serves me, it was a box, as I don’t remember setting the phone in the device. But, I could be wrong, as that was a long time ago. I also cannot remember the name of the service that I called into – CompUserve or something like that.

Then I guess you are not that cool :D.

[Jan]

My first was Atari, followed by Commodore 64, then "upgraded" to a classic Mac :o: (the Mac wasn't in the oldcomputer list :p: )

[Chicken]

Originally posted by Jan
My first was Atari, followed by Commodore 64, then "upgraded" to a classic Mac :o: (the Mac wasn't in the oldcomputer list :p: )
Atari... check. Comodore 64... check. MAC??? :bigeyes: :banghead: :yuck: :yikes: :crazy:

[nameslave]

Originally posted by James
... then i had my old 486 DX2 66 for about 6 years untill i upgrade to what i have now PII 400 512 megs of ram (all most as big as the hard drive on the 486) ...
I remember the 486 DX2 (66Mhz) I got back in 1993 came only with 120 MB!

[Jan]

Originally posted by Chicken
MAC??? :bigeyes: :banghead: :yuck: :yikes: :crazy:
I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread at the time :cool:

[Cyberland]

Originally posted by allan
Then I guess you are not that cool :D.

Nope, not cool... Just old... ;)

[iBiz]

geez, this is soooo scary. mine was the one on the bottom of the page http://oldcomputers.net/atari800.html and then i too moved up to the commodore 64 and then used a friend's mac. after than a 286dx, 486dx, p1 and now a laptop that will be obsolete in a year (p4, 2ghz)

[Matt]

I started off on a C64 complete with tape drive - since then I've moved through the Pentium range, Pentium 2 range, Pentium 3 range, Athlon range and now Athlon XP range (built a new XP2400 based box for myself last week).

[allan]

Originally posted by Matt:

I started off on a C64 complete with tape drive - since then I've moved through the Pentium range, Pentium 2 range, Pentium 3 range, Athlon range and now Athlon XP range (built a new XP2400 based box for myself last week).


But do you still have the tape drive :D?

[MMiz]

My first computer, like so many other people, was the Commodore 64. It used to have lots of games, and a nifty little cartridge system too. You could hook a printer up to that baby too.

My first "real" computer was this green IBM that was in our basement. My father and his business partners purchased it for $15,000+ when they first went into business, and never used it. He brought it home one day, and we had the local computer whiz come over and set it up. As a kid in elementary school, we only used "Ask Aliza" and "Hangman," that was one expensive game of Hangman.

The first Windows computer I had was in 1995 or so, right when Windows 3.1 came out. For $5,000 we got a 66MHz Processor, 4 MB of Ram, and a tiny Hard Drive.

And thats it. We probably used the Commadore daily, for games, the IBM once a month, and the Windows computer a few times a week. The only Internet we knew of was the family down the street, who bragged about reading their newspaper online.

-Matt

[The Dude]

My first computer (With basic) was a TI994a!!

http://oldcomputers.net/ti994a.html

It was good for what it was...... I was kinda young then and didnt know much about computers.....

I knew a guy who ran a site off a ti994a (The Big Experiment) -- Nice guy.. I wish i knew where he was now,he was a good friend...... (He also customized it)


Then i got a COMMODORE 64 which i love!! (I use it very much!!)


I had some other 8 bit consoles over the years... Atari was my favourite (That and Colecovison)

The first PC i ever used was a Win95 machene.....

[iiDesign]

gateway, years years years ago

[chrisb345 [DHD]]

my first computer was a BBC basic acorn thingy lol you used to put floppy didsks in it to run, funny stuff

[webspacedepotcm]

My first computer was an Apple II. I wonder if anyone remembers those...?

[dave888]

Man, I'm getting the urge to bust out a c64 emulator...

[The Dude]

My first computer was an Apple II. I wonder if anyone remembers those...?Indeed i do!!

I loved Apple II's,i was loved BASIC and had made some programs :)

I loved it!! (Used them alot in school)

Makes me wanna look for an APPLE II emu,etc :)

[IPCGangsta]

I started with an Apple II. Not //e, not II+, Apple II. First program I wrote on it was an assembly language version of "Life". When I got a Applesoft BASIC card, and some floppy disks, and went on to do other things. I've had an Apple made computer ever since.

[InovaLink]

My first computer was Intel 386 DX

[GZWebHosting]

I'm not actually sure.. I had a Win95 pc when they first came out and a black and white mac laptop around the same time.

[MH-Andy]

I had some really old computer, god knows it was such a long time ago... I do know i moved up to Win95 a few years later though

[AndrewJ]

I had a Commodore 64 with tape drive and colour monitor!

[KDayton]

Mine was an old DELL. Think it was like a dimension 2300 or something like that.

[Micron21-Sarah]

Whatever it was, it was so very old. I didn't understand how to fully use it. Just played a few games here and there as a kid.

[Duane]

1964 - IBM 1620 (http://www.volkanrivera.com/esp/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/IBM_1620_Model_1.jpg) <--Click to see picture. It was not mine - but this was my FIRST computer. I was using it while I was in High School. It belonged to the local college and was part of a pilot project to see if they could teach high school kids to program. It worked - I have been doing it ever since. :)

[Chicken]

*That* is old school. Really, really, really, REALLY old school. Not sure how that manual typewriter fits into the mix, but if that's the keyboard entry then that right there is pretty impressive.

[Duane]

What you don't see is a card reader/punch unit plus a printer. :D

The typewriter is the main console I/O device. NO CRT device. :eek:

In it's day it was a BIG deal. :cool:

[steveto]

haha Apple IIe Clone circa 1984

[xan]

All I remember from my first computer was tha it was made from scraps and it sounded likea harley davidson that needs a tune up. The video card was just horrible. I could cook a tree course meal go to the laundry and come back and the file I would be working on would still be saving.

Thank god for progress.

[hostcadet]

An apple II c. It was good memories. I remember dig dug, swash buckler quite fun!