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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - My first Computer. (Page 1 of 3)

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:01:26 PM EDT

Commodore VIC20. I still have it, tape drive and all.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:03:42 PM EDT

[#1]

Tandy Model 4 which I don't have. I DO have a Model 4P. the "luggable" version.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:05:19 PM EDT

[#2]

Radio Shack TRS-80

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:05:52 PM EDT

[#3]

Apple IIe

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:06:11 PM EDT

[#4]

386

Noob.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:07:28 PM EDT

[#5]

TI-99/4a Learned BASIC on it, wrote to cassette tape, had a daisy wheel printer for it, but no word proc program, so had to write my school reports in basic on it, about a page at a time due to the tiny memory.

Good times.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:07:54 PM EDT

[#6]

Sinclair ZX-81 kit with 8K RAM addition

I don't still have it tho

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:09:57 PM EDT

[#7]

Vic-20 as well with an Apple IIe later on.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:10:41 PM EDT

[#8]

C-64, don't have it anymore. Have an Amiga 500 I bought when I got back from Germany in '88.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:11:10 PM EDT

[#9]

Can I count this?

In the early 90's, this is what I used to write my first Hello World program on it's "Large 4 line LCD" screen.

It came with cartridges that had different games, but they were ALL just Q&A trivia games. It came with instructions for writing programs like "What is my name?" "Who is the best person you know?" etc. But there was no storage so if you turned it off, you would have to re-write those 20-30 lines PERFECTLY all over again.

Couple of years later I got a 386 that ran Windows 95. It came with a CD that had moon lander! sweet!

The very first computer I ever used was a C-64 though. We had one at school for spelling tests. Load your 6" diskette, put the cassette in the tape deck, it would say the words and you spelled them on screen.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:11:27 PM EDT

[#10]

Commodore 64

Edit: got it 11th grade so that puts it in 1983.
Probably still in a box at my parents house

I heard they are re-releasing it faithful to the original

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:15:33 PM EDT

[#11]

1988 Packard Bell PB 500 "Turbo XT” computer

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:16:47 PM EDT

[#12]

I remember when having a shell account was a big thing too.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:17:14 PM EDT

[#13]

Tandy something. Probably 1000. I played my Intellivision more than anything.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:17:23 PM EDT

[#14]

Quoted:
Sinclair ZX-81 kit with 8K RAM addition

I don't still have it tho

I had the Timex version. Hacked it up and wired a real keyboard to it. Made a WORLD of difference.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:19:20 PM EDT

[#15]

Atari 800. Wish I still had it.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:21:46 PM EDT

[#16]

Ah, telnet, those were the good old days.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:22:17 PM EDT

[#17]

Commodore 64 with floppy drive. Got thru college with it. :)

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:24:23 PM EDT

[#18]

I even ran a BBS way back in the stone age.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:24:45 PM EDT

[#19]

Commodore 64. Used it for gaming only. Didn't know what else it could do.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:24:58 PM EDT

[#20]

Quoted:

Sinclair ZX-81 kit with 8K RAM addition

I don't still have it tho

I have a Timex Sinclair 1000 with the 16k RAM and thermal printer.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:27:42 PM EDT

[#21]

Mine was a Commode 64, and I had the tape drive also.

In high school I took a computer science class, which was just learning to program in BASIC (which I had already taught myself at home on the Commode, so I breezed through it). We used Trash-80s in that class.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:27:49 PM EDT

[#22]

I even ran a FIDOnet hub from a dish in the back yard.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:32:18 PM EDT

[#23]

I made my first one from a kit.

I wish I still had it.

You were smart to keep yours.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:33:36 PM EDT

[#24]

My first was a Timex Sinclair then moved on to a C64. I had that all the way into college.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:34:57 PM EDT

[#25]

My aunt still has her Apple Lisa.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:37:07 PM EDT

[#26]

I went on to industrial robotics for a long time, made good money and then decided that I no longer have to work any more.

I do miss the old days though. It was really fun back then.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:37:43 PM EDT

[#27]

...

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:40:23 PM EDT

[#28]

Quoted:
We had an Apple IIc

http://lifeinretroblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/apple2c.gif

Apple IIc
That was the first computer in my family too

Crazy how things have changed.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:43:40 PM EDT

[#29]

TI-99/4a was our family's first computer. Its been gone since the mid 80's.

My brother still has our SX-64 that we picked up when Commodore started liquidating them.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:43:58 PM EDT

[#30]

apple 2 plus

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:45:25 PM EDT

[#31]

Apple II+, still have it

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:50:19 PM EDT

[#32]

Quoted:

Commodore VIC20. I still have it, tape drive and all.

that was also my 1st computer

the next one was the C64 boy what a step up that was

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:50:26 PM EDT

[#33]

Quoted:

Can I count this?

http://www.blujay.com/1/525/3831270_s1_i1.jpg

In the early 90's, this is what I used to write my first Hello World program on it's "Large 4 line LCD" screen.

It came with cartridges that had different games, but they were ALL just Q&A trivia games. It came with instructions for writing programs like "What is my name?" "Who is the best person you know?" etc. But there was no storage so if you turned it off, you would have to re-write those 20-30 lines PERFECTLY all over again.

Couple of years later I got a 386 that ran Windows 95. It came with a CD that had moon lander! sweet!
The very first computer I ever used was a C-64 though. We had one at school for spelling tests. Load your 6" diskette, put the cassette in the tape deck, it would say the words and you spelled them on screen.

Had an embedded computer class with a lab. The lab time was a couple of hours and consisted of sharing 3-4 computers. I would get there late, having drove an hour or more from work, wait for my time, type part of the program, instructor now closes the lab, shut off computer without saving the program, and I start all over next lab period. Lord

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:52:03 PM EDT

[#34]

Sharp PC1211- got it in 1980.

I think it had 1.4K of RAM.

, but was impressive for its small size.

At the time I was used to a huge DEC PDP-11, so the tiny PC-1211 was amazing.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:52:05 PM EDT

[#35]

Quoted:
Sinclair ZX-81 kit with 8K RAM addition

I don't still have it tho

Ditto here. They were glitchy little pieces of crap, but fun.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:57:13 PM EDT

[#36]

l'll have to drag that old POS out tomorrow, wipe it down and take a pic tomorrow, just for shits and giggles.

Posted: 11/18/2012 7:59:46 PM EDT

[#37]

My uncle worked for TI and brought home a 99/4a. Earliest home computer I remember seeing. One of his son's was a programmer for some company that wrote French tax software and brought home the first IBM PC (Portable Computer). 7 inch mono screen, the size of a small suitcase, weighed about 50 lbs. We used it to play probably the first Star Trek video game. Involved plotting coordinates, speeds, etc. Anyone remember that one?

First PC I personally owned was a Packard Bell Pentium in '94 or '95. Prodigy, CompuServe, AOL... It had it all!! And yeah, I still have that thing sitting at the bottom of a closet.

Hell, the first full-time job I had out of high school was at TI assembling boards for the TI PC. That thing was actually top of the line at the time. Color display, voice recognition, blazing fast. It totally failed and we were all laid off... LOL

Posted: 11/18/2012 8:05:24 PM EDT

[#38]

Mine was (and I still have it) TI-99/4A with a tape recorder and speech synthesizer.

Posted: 11/18/2012 8:07:32 PM EDT

[#39]

My first was one of these. I even had the cassette drive.

Posted: 11/18/2012 8:08:54 PM EDT

[#40]

We had a Franklin (iirc) I have no idea how much it cost.

First portable computer I remeber seeing was a friends mom. She had some Apple machine that would fit ina carry-on sized suit case.

Posted: 11/18/2012 8:19:39 PM EDT

[#41]

The first one I got to play with was a DEC PDP-11, IIRC. I learned to program on it when I was 10. We printed out the code for Lunar and decided that if they could do it, we could do it, too. It was hard to make an entertaining simulation on a dot matrix printer with no monitor, so after I wrote a couple of crappy games (they did work, but they were awful.) I wrote a program to process checks and another one to manipulate the letters in words and compare them to a database.

Then in 1981 I decided that computers were prohibitively expensive. I said to myself, "No one is ever going to give a shit about this stuff," and studied English. I regard that as the most monumental fuckup of my life. Oops.

My own first computer was a Macintosh Plus, which I won because the WPU book store made me enter the contest to get a Matt Groening poster even though I had no desire to win the computer. I don't remember my handle on the boards on Compuserve, but I had a 20k hard drive.

I was a badass.

Posted: 11/18/2012 8:27:40 PM EDT

[#42]

Quoted:

l'll have to drag that old POS out tomorrow, wipe it down and take a pic tomorrow, just for shits and giggles.

Don't forget to check the cartridge slot for Ruger mags.

Posted: 11/18/2012 8:32:06 PM EDT

[#43]

Wait, they had computers before windows 98 came out?

Posted: 11/18/2012 8:58:14 PM EDT

[#44]

Quoted:
Wait, they had computers before windows 98 came out?

Thanks for making me feel old.

Posted: 11/18/2012 8:58:53 PM EDT

[#45]

IBM PCjr.

ETA: I am 34. Elite!

Posted: 11/18/2012 9:18:14 PM EDT

[#46]

Quoted:

Commodore VIC20. I still have it, tape drive and all.

I just threw a Vic20 away the other day. Are they worth anything?

My late father built a Sphere kit computer, tape drive and all. I programed space invaders into it. Talk about poor resolution.

Posted: 11/18/2012 9:32:58 PM EDT

[#47]

Whippersnappers!

My first computer was an 8080 machine I designed and built myself with wire wrap on perfboard. It had 1K of static RAM, 8K EPROM (mostly empty), a 17-key keyboard made from calculator parts and a 4-digit, 7-segment LED display. Oh, and a toggle switch. I still have most of the chips, but the boards were scavenged years ago.

I had no schooling or training of any kind to back me up (the first computer ever seen in my HS was one that I brought in). Everything I learned came from Popular Electronics, the Digi-Key catalog, a smattering of books and a massive pile of datasheets, product guides, and app notes obtained by writing letters to every semiconductor manufacturer that had a mailing address. I typed a lot of letters on my dad's Smith Corona typewriter too.