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Weekend Open Forum: What was your first computer?
And there's probably no better way to get you started than by telling my own story...
If memory serves me well, my first hands-on experience with computers started with an Atari 800XL at home and a HDD-less IBM PC at school. With the former I basically just played games, and with the latter I was taught how to browse through DOS directories, in other words, so much for hands-on computing!
Eventually we got an actual PC at home which was a clone powered by an Intel 386SX CPU running at 33MHz, 2MB of RAM and a whooping 80MB of hard drive space. The machine served me well for a while until it got upgraded to 4MB of RAM, a 486SX CPU (40MHz) and a multimedia bundle from Creative Labs that was comprised of a soundcard, a pair of speakers and a CD-ROM drive. I ran Windows 3.1 along with DOS which I didn't drop completely until I was forced to do so in later Windows releases. The use for this computer was very basic as you can imagine. I always played whatever games were available at the time using the keyboard, but word processing and overall tinkering with the machine was the most typical use this computer would get. With the faster processor and optical drive a whole new world opened, there was Wolfenstein 3d, Doom and a plethora of shareware applications from which I remember one of the earlier versions of Paint Shop Pro, which got me started with graphics editing. Of course, the first digital encyclopedias were all the rage at the time as well.
I don't quite recall how much the original machine cost but I believe it was somewhere in the $2,000 ballpark, only to be sold years later for a fraction of that. My next step up was a big one to a Compaq Presario 9240 mid-tower, a Pentium 133 MHz machine of which I also have a dozen tales to share, but I won't bother you with that :).
So, what's your story? Discuss.
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I was in Junior High and "Pac Mac" was all anyone could talk about.
The first computer I *owned* was a 16K Atari-400 with "peanut-butter-proof" (aka "hard plastic membrane").keyboard and cassette tape drive that took 15 minutes to load a 16K file into memory. I learned to program in Basic and read everything I could get my hands on until I was writing simplistic games using "Player/Missile graphics". My favorite pasttime was typing in the free programs they used to print in magazines.But just prior to that, I followed the adventures of a friend that (unsuccessfully) tried to build a Sinclar ZX-81 kit computer (ordered from a magazine for $99). My neighbor (successfully) build a Heathkit-80 with Z80 processor.My buddy who failed to build the ZX-80 ended up buying a 5K Commodore VIC-20, also with a cassette tape drive, that took twice as long to load apps as my Atari. Ha Ha!In college, I outgrew my Atari (now a 64K Atari 800XL, which is still in my closet), I upgraded to an Atari 520ST (and later a 1040STe), to which I attached my very first hard drive, an 80MB "behemoth" connected via ICD "scuzzy" adapter.In High school, they didn't offer my first computer class until my Junior year, where we had One Apple ][e and and Apple ][+ (you HAVE to use the "][" notation or else you're a wannabe) for the entire class. By my senior year, we actually had a full "computer lab" with about 20 Apple ][e's in it (enough for every student). "PC"s (circa 1985 now) were still considered "business" machines at that time, so almost no one used one.My first year old college, we still didn't have PC's. Everything was done on VAX terminals and DEC Rainbows-100's. I learned to program in Pascal on a DEC Rainbow.I touched "Windows" (v3.1) for the first time in 1993. I asked my Computer Operations professor if we would be getting "Internet" access. "Internet?" he replied. "What's that?" I was quickly dismissed when I started talking about how it was part of the old "Defense Department" global computer network.What a long/strange trip it has been. -
My first computer, a old AST with a 33mhz 486, 4mb of ram, 2x cdrom drive, 120mb hard drive, 3 1/2 floppy, 5 1/4 floppy, and a (back then) very nice 1mb vid card. Was a rental computer, 1,000 to rent it for a year. Had Windows 3.1 and we set up our AOL account on it. I was...oh, 1 or 2 years old maybe. (Had to return this)Then bought our first computer, a compaq presario 4712, 166mhz pentium mmx, 32mb EDO ram, 2.5gb hard drive, 2mb S3 vid card, windows 95, 4x cd-rom, 3 1/2 floppy. (Died)Then there was our compaq presario 7000 with a 700mhz celeron, 64mb of ram, 15gb hard drive, 40x cd-rom, 2x cd-rw, 16mb graphics card, (died)Then we ordered our Dell Dimension 4600, 2.66ghz pentium 4, 512mb ram, 80GB hard drive, 16x cd-rw/48x cd-rom/16x dvd-rom, and a AGP Nvidia FX5200 128mb with windows xp (still in operation)My first computer build, that was a 667mhz pentium 3, 8mb Matrox Graphics card, 256mb RAMBUS, 48x cd-rom, 10gb hard drive, and windows xp. (scrapped)Then i moved up to a ECS RS482-M754 with a 3200+ and 2gb of ram, with a Nvidia 8600GT 512mb and a 80gb hard drive and windows xp (still being used)Now, I've got my complete gaming computer, Biostar Tpower N750, AMD athlon 64x2 5000+, 4gb of ddr2-800, 320gb sata, 9800GT 512mb, cd/dvd-rw, Windows VIsta Buisness.
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My first computer was an Atari 800 with 16k memory and a physically huge cassette drive. it was hooked up to an old black and white TV in my room until I could save up for a 15" color TV. I never could talk my parents into letting me get a modem (300 baud) so i could connect to bulletin boards like CompuServe. I used to stay up for hours programming BASIC games, or typing them in from Antic magazine. I bought it mainly to play games that were better than the 2600. Star Raiders rocked!At school, I used an Apple II/e with 64k and an amber 13" monochrome monitor. It had a 5.25” disk drive!I upgraded to an Atari 1200XL, with 64k (but only 48k was accessible to the user), an Indus GT 5.25" disk drive (faster, smaller, and more capacity than the Atari drives), and a smaller cassette drive. I also had an Epson dot‑matrix printer that used perforated paper and printed in "near letter‑quality." For Christmas one year while in college, my parents got me an IBM clone with a whopping 640k of RAM, both 5.25" and 3.5" floppies, and a VGA monitor. When we opened the box, there was no keyboard! We drove 60 miles back to the store that sold it to us, and they had no more in stock. Then my sister had to have surgery, so I told them to just get cash in the raincheck and use it for her. I still wonder how much my life would be different if I had kept it, since I lost interest in computers and programming for the next several years after that.My first PC was a Pentium II 350 with 64 Mb and a 10 Gb hard drive, and a 17" CRT monitor. I upgraded to 256 Mb, upgraded the Intel 740 graphics card to a GeForce2 MX, and added a Soundblaster Live! card and a CD‑RW. [Edited by mrtraver on 2008-10-25 14:43:32]
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well.. I had like an AMD Duron @1Ghz, 256 MB of RAM *can't recall now what freq or manufacturer*, an NVIDIA Riva TNT 64 with 32 MB of dedicated memory, and a K7VZA mobo... It really coped well even on windows XP SP2 until I bought a new one 2 years ago.
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wow, how sweet all the memories!! My first pc was a 8086 with 640k ram and a whopping 10mb hard drive and Dos 3.2a. I went to the library and found some books and learned to write programs in dBase III+ and later in Clipper. It was super years. I had later also a 286 "Laptop" with black and white LCD screen and twin 5.4 floppy drives, no hard drive and also 640kb ram.[Edited by whabligone on 2008-10-25 17:06:47]
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My first computer was an apple //c. It came with a built in 5¼ drive and my first purchase was a $300 external 5¼ drive. Copying disks on a single disk with such a small amt of memory was a chore. (I don't remember how much memory was stock, but I eventually beefed it up to a whole megabyte). When I bought it I also purchased a copy of Dollars & sense to justify the purchase. Now I could keep my checkbook balanced. I eventually, after maxing out the //c with memory and speedup chips. (2 and then 4 mhz), bought a IIgs from a friend for $1600 dollars. I eventually had to move to DOS/Windows machines to keep up at work, but Used the gs for Years after. Both machines are in the garage and still work fine whenever I boot them up.Dave
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IMSAI 8080It had eight toggle switches that represented eight bits which made up one 8-Bit word or one Byte. Basically all you could do was make each LED light up in an ascending binary count.
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Yes I am old. My first 3 computers happened around the same time. I was an Air Force Newspaper editor and recieved my first Z286 and a K-pro "portable" (about 25 pounds)with two 51/2-inch disks and an amber screen that popped up. One had the program "Wordstar" and the other was to save your data. At home I got my kids a Commodore 64 with a real color printer. Quite a feat for the time.
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My first computer was a TI (Texas Instruments) 99/4A. Not much of a computer by today's standards or even the first IBM PC. Not sure of the year but either late 70s or early 80s. With an Extended Basic cartridge it was quite interesting to program. I/O was an audio tape recorder. My first IBM-compatible was a Panasonic Sr. Partner. This was a luggable like the IBM PC Portable, i.e. all in one box including an amber 9" screen, 2 360K diskette drives and a built-in thermal printer. Cost me $1500 in 1985. Shortly afterward bought a 20MB harddrive for about $300. First important application was MYM (Managing Your Money) version 1.5; we are still running MYM today -- V12 which came out in 1995 -- to manage our finances, running under Windows XP (no, not on the Panasonic which probably only had maybe 5 years). Also ran the first spreadsheet program, Visicalc, on the Panasonic.Bernie[Edited by Bernie157 on 2008-10-26 08:11:56]
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[b]Originally posted by len8587:[/b][quote]My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81 - ( [url]http://oldcomputers.net/zx81.html[/url] ) No sound support No color support The built-in BASIC programming language can deal only with whole numbers The keyboard is a membrane-type, a flat plastic surface which is difficult to use and wears-out rather quickly Very slow program execution - there are no video chips, the CPU performs all of the computer functions I paid about $100 for the computer and a 16 K memory card. There was a display converter that allowed you to use a b/w tv for the monitor. Data input was by audio tape recorder. It took almost 7 or 8 minutes to load a program and you didn't know if it actually loaded until the very end. I have spent (thanks to bad connections at the tape player) over an hour trying to load 1 program.I actually was able to write a program in basic that determined how much a telephone cable would sag if it were incased in ice. Just before I started using a Texas Instrument Professional (MS/Dos PC) I hard wired a standard keyboard into the Sinclair. It worked for about a month before I accidentally shorted it out.[/quote]
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[b]Originally posted by len8587:[/b][quote]My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81 - ( [url]http://oldcomputers.net/zx81.html[/url] ) No sound support No color support The built-in BASIC programming language can deal only with whole numbers The keyboard is a membrane-type, a flat plastic surface which is difficult to use and wears-out rather quickly Very slow program execution - there are no video chips, the CPU performs all of the computer functions I paid about $100 for the computer and a 16 K memory card. There was a display converter that allowed you to use a b/w tv for the monitor. Data input was by audio tape recorder. It took almost 7 or 8 minutes to load a program and you didn't know if it actually loaded until the very end. I have spent (thanks to bad connections at the tape player) over an hour trying to load 1 program.I actually was able to write a program in basic that determined how much a telephone cable would sag if it were incased in ice. Just before I started using a Texas Instrument Professional (MS/Dos PC) I hard wired a standard keyboard into the Sinclair. It worked for about a month before I accidentally shorted it out.[/quote]Sorry about repeet. Sweeet! Did you build it yourself? I got one already made. but remember seeing kits in the back of magazines. I had same Sinclair as this guy as Christmass present and within a year I mowed enough lawns to get the Timex 1000. Upgrade to color and I cant remember 4 or 16k. My friend got a comodore 64 and at first I teased him about mem overkill but it did not take long for me to get jelous. I did however like the one touch keyword keys. ie P was print, Gwas goto plus two shifts so each key had up to 3 comands asociated with it.I wrote a couple BASIC games like space invaders and pong. It was comical watching the program slow down going through every line deciding what to do with the vast number of parameters. LOL I still have the TS1000 in perfect shape andI think I might have the old S 100 tooAfter a pc hiatis I bought a P90 with ATI Mach 64 with 9600 baud modem. I used it for AutoCad in win3.1 and 3dstudio r4 for dos. I bought a game called Decent which was first to use graphics card and was a Descent addict ever since. After that a new pc every 12-16 months[Edited by Dodgeboy59 on 2008-10-26 12:00:53]
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Well I began my computer career programming an old RCA Spectra 70 which was a large mainframe computer back in 1973 and then the IBM 360's. However, my first "owned" home desktop computer was the Commodore 64 which sadly couldn't do much but it was fun. My first PC was an old Pentium 90 with the 9600baud phone modem and the 5-1/4 flexible floppy discs (similar to the setup in the film Wargames). Then came a Dell 266mh with 6gb of storage and a 4mb Matrox Millennium card with a 4mb Monster 3d graphics daughter card. I thought I really had something with that one! Now I'm sitting here with a Quad Core 64Bit, 1 TB screamer. Oh how far we've come!
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My first computer was a Zenith. It was so long ago, I can't remember the model. It was 1985 and I had graduated from high school and enrolled in engineering at Queen's University, Kingston, Canada. The faculy decided to be the first engineering school in Canada to have computers incorporated into the curriculum. The asked us all to buy these Zenith computers. Up to then, I only knew of Zenith as a TV manufacturer. Any how we all bought these PCs with an amber coloured screen display. Software piracy was RAMPANT on campus that year. Also, the failure rate was up as too many students were spending too much time video gaming. Most complained they knew nothing about computers and were stymied in getting to learn how they worked. In the end, we felt it was a waste of money but that's the price of being the guinea pigs in the evolution of computers!-- Andy
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First computer I used was an IBM my dad bought in collage a year before I was born. I typed a couple of reports on it when i was 10 or so. At the time he bought it, it was hot stuff because it had 2 of the 5" floppy drives!!! lol When I was about 12 we bought a hp with windows 98 on it. Don't remember much of the specs, but I know it did have a 4gig HDD and 32mb of ram, and I think a something around a 500mhz cpu :P. That lasted us for about 3 years before we bought an eMachine. My parents still use parts of it in the computer I built them about 3 years ago.My friend got an Apple IIe a year or so before we got that hp, and it could run games. I hated him :P[Edited by TorturedChaos on 2008-10-26 19:32:34]
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An Atari 800XL. I souped it up with a wopping 256kb odf ram, a 10MEG hard drive and a 256 bit interlaced graphics mode that beat the IBM AT. I also had a 19,200 baud modem, an 80 column display card. It was really something else. I was going to start a bbs of my own, but I never got around to completing the project.
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[b]Originally posted by Bernie157:[/b][quote]My first computer was a TI (Texas Instruments) 99/4A. Not much of a computer by today's standards or even the first IBM PC. Not sure of the year but either late 70s or early 80s. With an Extended Basic cartridge it was quite interesting to program. I/O was an audio tape recorder. My first IBM-compatible was a Panasonic Sr. Partner. This was a luggable like the IBM PC Portable, i.e. all in one box including an amber 9" screen, 2 360K diskette drives and a built-in thermal printer. Cost me $1500 in 1985. Shortly afterward bought a 20MB harddrive for about $300. First important application was MYM (Managing Your Money) version 1.5; we are still running MYM today -- V12 which came out in 1995 -- to manage our finances, running under Windows XP (no, not on the Panasonic which probably only had maybe 5 years). Also ran the first spreadsheet program, Visicalc, on the Panasonic.Bernie[Edited by Bernie157 on 2008-10-26 08:11:56][/quote]I made a mistake. The IBM luggable had the amber monochrome screen while the Panasonic had a green monochrome screen, which is why I liked it better. Found this link about it at [url]http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c
498[/url] -
[b]Originally posted by Erik:[/b][quote][b]Originally posted by optimusprime:[/b][quote]i was one of the lucky ones that had a comadore 64 and then moved onto the apple II gs playing where in the world is carmen san diego..lmao that was more than just a few yrs ago..my buddy actually has an old k pro that still works and we goof around wih it every once in awhile..[/quote]I remeber playing where in the world is carmen san diego, what a great game[/quote] i played that too, haha
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My first computer was a Tektronix Graphics System. (Don't remember the model.) It was primarily an oscilloscope with embedded BASIC, tape cartridge storage, and the ability to print. In 1978-79 I used this to write programs to produce the graphs and figures for technical publications.
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I took my first programming course in the fall of 1962 (introduction to FORTRAN programming) ... never could get that "Good Morning, America" program to work. A sad start to what turned out to be a rewarding career. After graduating from LSU I went to work for Lockheed, in the engineering department. As a salaried employee I had very few restrictions on my movement, and often found myself at the time sharing terminals (connected to an IBM mainframe). I took proper programming courses after hours and learned FORTRAN and later assembly language. I wrote my first spreadsheet in 1966. No one was interested but me. Sad.Things progressed. In the fall of 1977 I purchased a Heathkit H8. Cost $379, with no memory. I ordered 12K with the basic unit. Used an Intel 8080A running at 2 MHz. Building took a while and involved over 2,000 solder joints. My eyes watered for weeks after all the solder fumes! The unit came with a (as best I recall) 1K monitor burned in ROM and supported by a 16-key keypad. All coding was expressed in base 8 (octal). That Christmas (77) I added 4K of RAM for $100. For what it is worth, I'm typing this on a quad core Intel-drive XP/Pro system with three displays and 4GB of RAM -- that RAM cost me about $100 -- what I paid for 4K back in 1977.I still have the H8 in my office. It was upgraded to 48K, a dual floppy disk system added ($1,100, as I recall) using 5.25" drives holding 100K each. The last time I tried to power it up (about 5 years ago) I found that the fuse block had deteriorated and broke ... sigh.This thread has been a good romp down memory lane. Thanks for the ride!
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he.... u guys started in the early ages but i started about 5-6 years ago witha amd duron 1.3ghz 32mb sis 650 video 256mb ram and 40 gb hdd...well for that time it was great and it still is cus i still have that old kick ass computer haha.
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