Weekend Open Forum: Your very first computer

[Guest]

Rob B

My 1st PC was the Sharp MZ-80B (1981)

The MZ-80B was one of the nicer, if not the nicer, and well designed home computer ever built. It also featured an innovative 'Intelligent' cassette deck which was able to find and load a program anywhere in the cassette tape. All the cassette functions were remote controlled by software.

The MZ-80B was compatible with the other MZ 80x computers (Sharp MZ 80A, Sharp MZ 80K), but unlike these ones, it was possible to have high graphic resolution thanks to one or two optional boards which provided one or two switchable graphic pages.

This computer, like all the computers of the Sharp MZ series, had no language in ROM, Basic (or any other language) had to be loaded from tape.

 

[Mr WW]

1989:
Olivetti 80286 16 Mhz - 1 Mb RAM - 40 Mb HDD - 14" VGA 16 colors - MS-Mouse - dot Matrix printer - running MS DOS 4.0 - Windows 3.0
Later upgraded to
4 Mb Edo-RAM - Sound Blaster Pro - MS-DOS 6.0 - Windows 3.1

 

[Guest]

Uk 101 yes I was the one and still have the burn scars from soldering it all together with my dad ( only 3 dry joints , not bad for a 14-15 year old even if I do say so lol

then a zx80 , only 2 dry joint this time
zx81-speccy-amiga - pc

 

[wiyosaya]

Timex Sinclair ZX-80 then a Timex Sinclair ZX-81, then Sinclair QL, and finally a 16 MHz 386SX with 100 mb hard drive.

 

[Justin Moore]

Hmmm...my first computer. I've used computers since 1979 throughout my school years with apple IIe, etc...tandy's in high school, etc...but my first owned computer was a Macintosh Performa 6360 with 16mb ram, 500mb hard drive...nice little computer...

 

[Guest]

The very first one I had was a Tandy that was really old. It ran DOS and Windows 3.1. I learned DOS on that computer and played Microsoft Flight Simulator. This was from the early 90s.

The first computer I bought was a Pentium 166mhz with MMX, 32MB of ram and a 2 Gigabyte hard drive. The video card was an ATI 3D Expression 2MB video card. I bought this PC back in either 1997 or 1998.

 

[pseudoque]

My first owned computer was a TRS-80 Color Computer. I started by typing in BASIC programs from magazines such as Hot CoCo and the like. I learned 6809 assembly to unlock some speed and put the Vic 20's and Com 64's in their place (6809 has 16 bit registers). I started with a 4k computer; I "piggy-backed" chips and ended up with a 32k computer. Watched the movie War Games and built an auto-dialer on a breadboard. Everything installed in that computer -- Along with a kill switch for the cartridge port so I could disassemble games and make my programming stronger. Great times as a teen!

 

[Guest]

XT 8086 - 4Mhz.
256KB RAM
FLOPPY 5 1/4 - 360KB
HDD 30MB
AMBAR DISPLAY

 

[Guest]

IBM 160....Had 4kb. of Arnold core memory with optical punch tape reader and green screen monitor. IO was through a Freiden flexowriter paper tape punch machine.

After that an RCA Spectra 70 and a CDC 3600 both of which required a large room with temperature controls and were slightly less powerful than your average cell phone is now.

 

[SirCharles]

1st used, PET
1st used in school, Commodore 64
1st used at home/purchased, used school computer , Commodore 64 (they moved to Apple II)
1st IBM, IBM PCjr

 

[LNCPapa]

I got my first computer in early '87. It was an 8-bit machine based on a 1.79 MHz 6502C with 128KB of RAM. I had dual external 5¼" floppy drives that I had to daisy chain to get hooked up. I also purchased a 300 baud external modem that I used to get on the BBS. It's the machine I taught myself basic with and when I started spending lots of time on it my mother told me I was wasting my life on that box because it was never going to get me anywhere.

 

[lripplinger]

The first computer I bought with my own money was from a local computer shop at the time. This was in the summer of 98 or 99. It had a AMD K6-2 400mhz chip if I recall, and an ATI Rage 128 AGP video card with I believe 16mb of memory. It was all on a crappy Jetway (I think that was the brand of motherboard in it) motherboard that died in the fall of 2000 when I went to college. They board literally had smoke coming off it, and the whole area on the board where the front side bus traces were, was completely black. That system ran Windows 98SE. I do remember as a kid we had an Intel 386 based computer, and I still have the portable NEC-PC8500 with CP/M on it, which still fires up to this day.

 

[Guest]

An Atari 800 w/48K RAM in 1982. I also purchased the tape drive and 6502 Assembly language cart. I ran it on the TV but wrote and sold a utility program to one of the Atari magazines which provided the funds to purchase a DS/DD drive and a Commodore 1602 monitor. I still have the lot (and lots more stuff purchased for use with that system over the years). Yes, it still works.

 

[JakeT]

A digital calculator in 1974; with the first ever LEDs made that only came in red. I think it was a TI but not sure.