Your First Computer

What was it?

[phidentity]

First computer: Amstrad cpc64 with tape drive.

My first programming experience came when I was 8 with BASIC (line numbers and all).

Amazing fun playing R-Type and Double Dragon till late!

Jon

[moneymancn]

Sharp MZ80 circa 1981 ish with tape drive too!
Bought when drunk.
MM

[photon]

Commodore 128. I remember being very excited when I upgraded my 300 baud modem to 1200 (and eventually to 2400), and replaced the cassette storage with an external floppy (5 1/4") drive.

It was really exciting when I loaded GEOS on it, a graphical OS that our esteemed Mr. Tabke had a hand in.

[katana_one]

First computer I ever used?

TRS-80. Learned to program in BASIC on it in school.

First home computer was a Commodore 64. Ah, those were the days.

[mattglet]

First computer ever used: Apple IIe in elementary school. Learned to "program" (term used VERY loosely) with LOGO.

First home computer: white box with Windows 3.1 & 28.8 modem

[limbo]

48k ZX speccy - small black box with rubber keys and Jet Set Willy as standard.

<added> If you can call it a computer

[digitalghost]

Commodore Vic20. Followed by the C64, then the Trash80.

[lgn1]

First Computer used - Control Data Corporation CDC-6400

First computer hacked (back when hacking was an art) - CDC-6400 Mainframe.

Reason for hack: Dalhousie University had a no game policy (including programming games). I just came from Mcmaster University where game development was encourage, as it taught students the finer points of programing while giving the students some motivation.
The system admin disabled my computer account for a week, so of course, revenge was in order.

First personal computer TI-99/4

[Mardi_Gras]

Tandy Model D. It was decked out - dual floppies AND a built-in 300 baud modem. We eventually doubled the RAM, adding an additional 64k.

[SEOMike]

First computer I ever had was a C64 with a tape drive. The first computer I really played with (at about age 8) was the IBM PC XT. Dual floppies, AND the math co-processor! My dad paid about $5k for it. That's where I really took a liking to computers. I'll never forget the panicked summer days trying to get the computer back from a crash before my dad came home from work! <sigh>.... those were the days.

[shigamoto]

Uh a PC computer called Copam in 1988. Used it mostly for Word Processing and Spreadsheets, it was a pain, especially the printer, I had it in my basement collecting dust until 2002 when I threw it away.

[Vampyre]

Commodore Vic-20 and TRS-80 Model III

I pretty much taught myself BASIC with those two machines.

[Rugles]

Apple IIe, I just purchased 4 desktops for the office for about the same price I paid for the Apple IIe way back then.

[TheVisitor]

I have an ENIAC running in my outside toliet to this day

[Essex_boy]

ZX81 all of 1K only had one becuase a friend of mine wanteed a computer for Xmas, didnt really know what they did or what I could do with one.....

First softwarehacked - Jet set willy! Altered the room lay outs to make it easier to play then found that I could adventure games and find their entire vocab and some had hints and secret messages in them.

They were the days, men were men and sheep ran scared.

[mcavic]

In reverse order:

A 386 from Gateway 2000
Commodore 128
Commodore 64
Timex Sinclair (The one with no power switch - the power jack eventually wore out, so I took the machine apart to see all the pretty chips).

Oh, and I had an Atari 2600 that my cousin donated. As I recall, it ran BASIC, so I guess it counts as a computer.

[mastervisa]

Anybody else see my post from a few days ago about the old days and the Coco?

1985, I was almost 30 and started college. Bought a TRS CoCo 2, tape drive, multi-port, the works. Upgraded to the coco 3, 5" floppy. Learned basic and extended basic. Belonged to a pre-internet internet called Delphi Network. We had email, forums, program upload and download sharing. Paid about $1400 for everything, threw it in the trash 6 years ago. Worthless.

[curlykarl]

A Vic-20 with a marvellous 15k ram pack!

[krieves]

First computer - Timex/Sinclair. Anyone remember those? You had to hook it to your TV and a cassette tape recorder. The limitations were so great, I only used it for a few months. I still have it somewhere, I bet it's worth some money on eBay. :)

[snowman]

Vic 20. In later years I soldered in a 64k SRAM chip and glued it tight. Address limitations only boosted total RAM to 26k - still alot for that thing.

During the packing I found it among a pile of boxes. Gave it a new home.

[edited by: snowman at 10:16 pm (utc) on Jan. 26, 2005]

[pmkpmk]

First one I really, really badly WANTED: Sinclair ZX80 (never got one though, but the magazine ads were sooo sexy)
First one I laid my hands on: IBM PC (PC, neither XT nor AT)
First one I owned: Commodore 64

Oh, that's actually a chronological order. In retrospect, I must have given my parents a hard time in my teens...

[dregs33]

Hi

The first computer I got was something called a tangerine, My dad ordered it in 1979 and it came in 10 pcs that we had to solder onto the supplied PCB. It never worked. :)

dregs33

[Broadway]

IBM PC, two full height floppies. I loved that machine, probabaly just because the keyboard was heavy and had a click to it (felt like a real keyboard). I put in a hard drive, a monochrome hercules card, and a Quadboard for more memory and clock with a battery, and later on my first modem (Prodigy service). I loved the days when you could actually upgrade a machine and not run into a million conflicts.

[moishe]

A Sinclair ZX80 1k, talked my Mom into it by telling her I could put all her recipes on it:)

My Aunt got me a 16K plugin for my birthday and I was stylin'....

[RussellC]

Apple IIc for me..,
Then moved to an Apple IIgs, then
- Mac Classic
- Mac LC
- Mac LC II
- IBM-Compat. 386

The funny thing is that my grandfather still uses the Apple IIc and the dot matrix imagewriter. He keeps track of his medical history on 5.25" floppies and prints it out.

They have a brand new computer with all of the bells and whistles and even a broadband connection, but he refuses to use it. Too complicated I guess.

[GeorgeGG]

Late 70's got a 'Super Elf' then 1980 got a TRS Model III
then a Model IV, a COCO II . . . .
Can't keep the stuff forever, but:
[canufly.net...]

GeorgeGG

[Automan Empire]

My dad had a book in the seventies called (something like) Build your own minicomputer. The only thing I remember about it was an abomination of a "keyboard" which was fashioned from paper clips! I wonder how many were ever built..?

Could seldom pass up printing "TRASH-80" in an endless loop whenever visiting a radio shack.

I was very fluent on the Apple IIe in high school... could program in 6 or 7 languages. Graduated and moved out, by the time I got into computers again (286 era) those skills were worthless. Anyone remember the Beagle Bros. 2-liners? Amazing how much complex action can be coaxed from 2 lines of BASIC. Now there is so much computing power out there that brute force wins out over elegance/efficiency every time it seems.

[Essex_boy]

I once took apart a ZX81 and found a huge lump of cadrboard inside it. I guess that was the most important part!

Remeber laughing my head off at the time.

[pmkpmk]

I loved that machine, probabaly just because the keyboard was heavy and had a click to it (felt like a real keyboard)

I still have two of these keyboards in regular use. They are awesome! A few years ago, one was defective so I called IBM and asked about repair and/or spare parts. It turns out they are STILL available for sale, at ~$250 a piece. A repair would have cost ~$200 (and the rep told me that this would actually mean I get a new keyboard).

I thanked them very much and took it apart myself, cleaned the pcb-board with electronic solvent fluid and put all the mechanical parts in the dishwasher (no kidding). Put it back together - and it worked!

I guess I will still use the same keyboards in 10 years time - at least as long as computers have a PS/2 connector or any kind of adapter.

[vibgyor79]

Intel 286 with 16 MHZ processor
256 KB RAM
20 MB HDD
1.2 MB FDD
B & W monitor
Internal Speakers
MSDOS 6.0 OS

Paid $1000+

Played Prince of Persia like charm.