What Was Your First Computer?
Actually, it was the family computer. But I remember inserting cartridges (yes, cartridges) like Parsec and Alpiner and spending hours in the game-zone.
Mine was a Tandy Color Computer with a Basic cartridge and a tape player for storing code.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on May 25, 2008 at 2106 hrs
Commodore 64. Then I went to an Apple IIc and I have never owned a PC.
Posted by Fuzz on May 25, 2008 at 2137 hrs
Tandy 1000, which we promptly had a 10 megabyte hard drive installed cuz using the big ol’ floppy thing to boot up was a real pain.
Posted by Kate on May 25, 2008 at 2151 hrs
Acros 200/386sx.
Upgrades:
* 4 MiB memory
* 800 MiB hard drive
* Math coprocessor
* 486 upgrade piggyback chipPosted by midnightcomm on May 25, 2008 at 2209 hrs
Tandy Corporation’s TRS-80 Model I with a cassette drive….later…I stepped up to a Model II…..then a TI-99 4a with an Expansion Interface….
Posted by Pete Fanning on May 25, 2008 at 2238 hrs
This was it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lisa
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on May 25, 2008 at 2301 hrs
The first I used belonged to the High School, called Big Bertha, Don’t know the make or model. 16 or 32 programmable steps of 2 character code.
Next was my own TI-59C with 32 or 64 programmable steps of 2 character code, plus a slot for preprogrammed functions. I don’t think it had the memory strip. Still got this one.
2 years later, accelerated into the computer classes at high school, think it was a Del Sol (obsolete by this time), and more computers called Apple IIs. later they got some Apple IIe’s.
15 years later a friend gave me a Televideo, maybe 286. First with hard drive.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on May 26, 2008 at 0226 hrs
http://oldcomputers.net/pics/osi-c4p.jpg
That was the first computer I remember using at my dads house. An Ohio Scientific
After that I recall a whole line of these (my dad was a programmer for Zenith/Heathkit)
http://www.mellema.net/homecomputers/images/other/Zenith_Heathkit_H89_Large.jpg
Tried to find a picture of the first MODEM I remember using but can’t find it. My dad operated a bulletin board when he was in college and I remember hearing the phone ring and we’d have to run pick it up and put it on the old modem.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on May 26, 2008 at 0924 hrs
Oh yeah, I had the TI-99/4A, and that led to bigger and better things. I remember storage was a cassette tape, and it recorded/played back sounds similar to a fax machine. I also remember a magazine that had basic code each month to create a game. Remember there was a cartridge for Extended BASIC?
I actually made a Star Wars flight sim on that TI-99. That machine was a blast. Of course, I had Parsec and M*A*S*H cartridges.
Then it was a C-64 and finally onto the IBM platform of 8088, 386, 486, 486-DI, VIA Cyrix, P-90, AMD/Intel and so on…
Okay, back to the real world… the past looks so geeky…
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on May 26, 2008 at 1026 hrs
My first one was the Timex Sinclair 1000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000
Black-and-white output, membrane keyboard, 2k of RAM - great stuff! You loaded software by connecting the computer to a standard cassette player by way of a patch cable. You had to manualy keep track of where the various software packages resided on the tapes, using the counter on the cassette player—and then fast-forward to that point before you could push play and begin to load the software into the machine.
Then I moved on to a Commodore 64 that I got for Christmas when I was 14. I started out with the proprietary cassette reader (Datasette) for software storage. This unit still had an analog counter, but at least the computer was capable of telling you which software package it was loading. I had one game I liked to play on the machine that would take nearly 20 minutes to load from tape! Eventually, I bought a 1541 floppy disk drive, and I used that machine in conjunction with a daisy wheel printer all the way through high school and college. I wrote the resume for my first real job after college on that Commodore 64 machine!
Eventually, I ended up with a hand-me-down PC from my father-in-law—a Leading Edge 386DX/16—with 1MB of RAM! I upgraded the RAM to 4MB for $160, and upgraded the internal 15MB hard drive to a 35MB hard drive that I found in a second-hand store. This allowed me to run Windows 3.1! Again, good stuff!
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on May 26, 2008 at 1207 hrs
The first I used was a Commodore PET (Personal Electronic Transactor) at school, (Junior High) The first I owned myself was a Commodore 64. College was mainframes, anyone else remember punchcards? Ever drop your shoebox? Computer time was at a premium and lowly freshmen had to sign up for ungodly hours of between 2 and 6 AM in the ‘Fishbowl’ to load and run programs, then hope you didn’t have to debug, or found the problem fast enough and got the card replaced before your 20 minute block of time was up….. And this was at an elite engineering school…
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on May 26, 2008 at 1916 hrs
1979-80, SDS Sigma 6 mainframe, programmable via punched paper tape, from my high school in western Michigan that was hooked up via modem to the Comp Sci dept of Hope College in Holland, MI. Good times.
Posted by Tony Turner on May 26, 2008 at 2001 hrs
My dad had been a mainframe computer programmer back in the days of Fortran and Cobol. He would bring home stacks of those punch cards at the end of the day, and pore over them manually, looking for programming bugs. Once, the dog jumped up on him as he was coming through the door, and knocked the stack out of his hand. So he had to get all of the cards back into the right order—took him hours!
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on May 27, 2008 at 0738 hrs
Commodore C-64 with a 1541 floppy drive (upgraded to a 1581 3.5 drive), 1200bps modem, dot matrix printer, color TV for a monitor…all the bells and whistles to “surf” the local BBS’s.
Still in boxes in my garage. I may bring it out later this year for its’ 25th anniversary. Can’t wait to hear the chatter of the disk drive…
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on May 27, 2008 at 0938 hrs
My first computer was Acer P! with 75MB hard drive. Came with 14.4 modem which i later upgraed to 56k. From 3.1, I upgraded to Windows 95.
Posted by FREE Computer Help on June 09, 2008 at 1129 hrs
You have been using computer lot longer than I’vebeen using looks like. I bought my first one just about 15 years ago and it didn;t look anything like yours
Posted by electronics on June 09, 2008 at 2328 hrs
wao! thats an ancient computer. do you still have it in working condition?
Posted by computer components on June 11, 2008 at 1535 hrs
Mine was the ZX spectrum - remember that huge module that could go on the back increasing ram size by a few k - those were the days!
Posted by PC Parts on June 12, 2008 at 0244 hrs
I couldn;t tell it was a computer. looks like an old black and white TV
Posted by hot free layouts on June 12, 2008 at 1153 hrs
Looks like real old timerr. I have nevver seen anyone using such a computer
Posted by website design on June 18, 2008 at 1205 hrs
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Posted by owwhftjp on June 20, 2008 at 0744 hrs
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