Do you remember the first computer you used?

Site Notices

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Do you remember the first computer you used? (Page 1 of 6)

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:43:01 PM EDT

For me, it was a family computer. I don't remember much about it. It had a 386SX processor (no math co-processor). I remember it was called 386SX, because it sucked! It had DOS on it, and it was a beige box.

And you?

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:46:03 PM EDT

[#1]

I dunno. When I was in kindergarten in the '70s, we had these big machines, some made by a company called "Cray" and the other kind made by "Hoffman" that were kind of like computers but showed stories and were interactive in some way. It's a very vague memory.

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:46:48 PM EDT

[#2]

Honeywell. Yeah, I'm old.

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:47:04 PM EDT

[#3]

Commodore 64

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:47:15 PM EDT

[#4]

Apple IIe

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:47:17 PM EDT

[#5]

TRS-80

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:47:26 PM EDT

[#6]

Atari 400, still have it upstairs.

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:48:04 PM EDT

[#7]

Packard Bell with 60mhz Pentium

Looked exactly like this:

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:48:12 PM EDT

[#8]

some sort of typewriter (output onto paper instead of a screen)
has to schedule time on the U mainframe just to run a basic program...

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:48:14 PM EDT

[#9]

Timex-Sinclair ZX-80

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:48:39 PM EDT

[#10]

Quote History

Quoted:
TRS-80

View Quote

Same.

First computer I owned was a Commodore VIC-20.

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:48:47 PM EDT

[#11]

Quote History

Quoted:
Commodore 64

View Quote

Same. I crushed it at Odell Lake, Lemonade and Oregon Trail.

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:48:50 PM EDT

[#12]

TRS80

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:48:51 PM EDT

[#13]

Dad bought a Vic 20 then a week later took it back and got a Commodore 64 with a $%^& tape drive. My interest did not hold.

I didn't own a computer again till College and it was a Compaq 486DX2 50mhz with a 270MB hard drive.

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:48:51 PM EDT

[#14]

Apple ][

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:48:53 PM EDT

[#15]

Wang 2200

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:48:54 PM EDT

[#16]

We had a TI-99 used cartridges for programs and an audio tape drive for data storage, next an Apple ][+ (first floppy drive), next a Zenith 286 (first hard drive), friends Commodore 64, another friend's Tandy 1000, then various Apple ][e/c/gs (first 3.5" drive) at school, then a Packard Bell 386 which brings me up up to 1990...

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:48:56 PM EDT

[#17]

Quote History

Quoted:
TRS-80

View Quote

This.

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:50:14 PM EDT

[#18]

TRS-80 with a tape recorder drive.

Then upgraded to a Apple IIc.

Tony

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:50:23 PM EDT

[#19]

Quote History

Quoted:
Wang 2200

View Quote

I reluctantly clicked on that figuring it was a joke.

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:51:41 PM EDT

[#20]

When I was in high school the dorks spent all their time on this thing that wasn't even a computer, but was hooked to a real computer thousands of miles away. You could "program" it to do stuff like add numbers together. Early-mid seventies.

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:52:32 PM EDT

[#21]

Quote History

Quoted:
When I was in high school the dorks spent all their time on this thing that wasn't even a computer, but was hooked to a real computer thousands of miles away. You could "program" it to do stuff like add numbers together. Early-mid seventies.

View Quote

That would have been a dumb terminal connected to a mainframe, or a mini computer. There were no PCs in the early-mid seventies.

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:52:53 PM EDT

[#22]

Tandy 1000 if I recall correctly.

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:53:58 PM EDT

[#23]

Apple IIe in first grade. Some spelling and math games, and Oregon Trail.

Played on some IBM PS/1 computers at my new school in 2nd grade when we moved. I remember Reader Rabbit, Tron, and Heartlight, that some other kid brought in.

First computer as a family machine was a hand me down 486DX2 with some ~500MB HDD, 3.5 and 5.25 drives, and windows 3.1. Late 90s. I was a scrounger and a beggar and built my own pcs in high school from parts.

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:54:54 PM EDT

[#24]

Tandy 1000 - 8088 processor with 512k Ram and two 5.25 floppies.

And yes I paid about that much back in the 80's

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:55:07 PM EDT

[#25]

Apple in 1989, but owned C-64

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:55:17 PM EDT

[#26]

Quote History

Quoted:
TRS-80

View Quote

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:56:00 PM EDT

[#27]

Quote History

Quoted:
Commodore 64

View Quote

This. Bought it at Target. Had it hooked to my 13” B&W TV.
This was in 82ish or 83ish.
Didn’t get my first home PC until ‘07. I don’t even use a PC at home anymore. Do everything on my iPhone.

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:56:06 PM EDT

[#28]

I don't remember what it was, but it was in the math department at the University of Texas in Austin back around 1975 or so. We played Star Trek on it.

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:56:09 PM EDT

[#29]

Had a Commodore Pet at home. Then a VIC20 and C64. Also had an Apple IIe.

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:56:36 PM EDT

[#30]

Still have it.... and it still works!

Attached File

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:56:54 PM EDT

[#31]

Although I used very old Apples in school first, my family got a Tandy Sensation when I was about 12. I remember it had DOS, windows 3.1. and with 4 megs of RAM

Posted: 12/5/2018 5:59:11 PM EDT

[#32]

Quote History

Quoted:
Packard Bell with 60mhz Pentium

Looked exactly like this:

http://pbclub.pwcsite.com/wiki/images/thumb/3/35/Legend_18CD.jpg/300px-Legend_18CD.jpg

http://pbclub.pwcsite.com/wiki/images/7/75/Legend-100CD-ad.jpg

View Quote

I had that exact pc with windows 3.1. I paid 900 bucks for it used from my best friends brother. He paid over 2 grand for it the previous year.

Posted: 12/5/2018 6:00:31 PM EDT

[#33]

Quote History

Quoted:
TRS-80

View Quote

Posted: 12/5/2018 6:00:45 PM EDT

[#34]

1989 when I started my gig with the .gov. Big beige CRT with a black screen and fuzzy green letters. The screen actually blew up on me!

I thought home computers were a fad.

Posted: 12/5/2018 6:01:03 PM EDT

[#35]

I was the first person I know to get an actual computer. It was a 286. I loved being the first person in my class to turn in a printed term paper. Got an A+. Ironically enough, it was about the air quality of indoor gun ranges.

Posted: 12/5/2018 6:01:08 PM EDT

[#36]

Yes. An IBM mainframe accessed via a phone coupler modem, circa 1972 ish, to play blackjack. 1st home PC was a Tandy something circa 1977 with a Z-80 chip....an integrated circuit chip! Was also a computer tech in the late 70's for a company called Mohawk Data Science and worked on the NCR/MDS 6400 data recorder, the first key to tape machine and had magnetic core memory. Those were the days when I fixed computers with an oscilloscope. Man I feel old.

Posted: 12/5/2018 6:02:02 PM EDT

[#37]

TRS-80, junior year of high school. The entire school had 2. We used it for chemistry and math stuff, and played "Lunar Lander" and "Tai-Pan" on it.
Lunar Lander is still a bitch of a game to win.

Posted: 12/5/2018 6:02:32 PM EDT

[#38]

Analog computer programmed by plug-in jumpers, capacitors, inductors, and resistors. The readout could be either a 2-axis X-Y plotter or oscilloscope.

Those are vacuum tubes on the top.

Posted: 12/5/2018 6:02:41 PM EDT

[#39]

ALTAIR 8080 I think was the model. Maybe 8088...

It had 8" floppies, we had to boot it manually via toggle switches on the front panel, and used and old TTY (ASRxxx) to type stuff. Also made use of the tape reader!

Posted: 12/5/2018 6:02:42 PM EDT

[#40]

IBM PS/2 I think, Mom was a medical transcriptionist and worked at home and I wasnt allowed to touch it, I remember she let me type a paper for school on it and I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Posted: 12/5/2018 6:04:09 PM EDT

[#41]

A terminal connected to a mainframe for a BASIC class.

The next step was to write FORTRAN programs on cards.

Yep, I'm old.

BTW you whippersnappers, we didn't have any of that fancy binary you damned kids use nowadays, we had to write our code using only zeros!

Posted: 12/5/2018 6:04:55 PM EDT

[#42]

Mid 70's. I got to insert punch cards and push buttons on massive mainframe computers at AT&T in Manhattan. In the mid 80's, I used a university computer that typed messages on paper from other universities. No screens. It was so big you sat inside of it.

Posted: 12/5/2018 6:05:05 PM EDT

[#43]

At school, a DEC PDP-11, and at home I started learning programming on a Sharp PC-1211

Posted: 12/5/2018 6:05:12 PM EDT

[#44]

Apple IIGS

Posted: 12/5/2018 6:07:59 PM EDT

[#45]

TI-99/4a was our family's first home computer.

I'd messed around with other ones, though, at friend's houses, stores and school. When my dad bought the TI computer I really wanted an Atari 8-bit (400 or 800) becasue I'd been playing games on one at a friend's.

Posted: 12/5/2018 6:10:10 PM EDT

[#46]

TI-99

Posted: 12/5/2018 6:10:42 PM EDT

[#47]

Commodore 64

Posted: 12/5/2018 6:11:42 PM EDT

[#48]

Quote History

Quoted:
That would have been a dumb terminal connected to a mainframe, or a mini computer. There were no PCs in the early-mid seventies.

View Quote View All Quotes

View All Quotes

Quote History

Quoted:

Quoted:
When I was in high school the dorks spent all their time on this thing that wasn't even a computer, but was hooked to a real computer thousands of miles away. You could "program" it to do stuff like add numbers together. Early-mid seventies.

That would have been a dumb terminal connected to a mainframe, or a mini computer. There were no PCs in the early-mid seventies.

Yup. Just a terminal.