QOTD: What Was Your First Computer?

[tuannguyen]

IBM PC Bus, ISA, EISA, math co-processor, floppy disk. So many forgotten terms, from years ago.

QOTD: What Was Your First Computer? : Read more

 

[hrudy]

My first computer was a Motorola M6800 Evaluation board that I assembled myself. It connected to a teletype and used a M6821 parallel interface adaptor to talk to the tty as the 6850 serial part was not ready. It ran Mikbug monitor and you had to program in machine code.

 

[Guest]

My first computer was a COSMAC Elf 1802, then a Commodore PET

 

[Guest]

I started with a AT&T 8086 with (2) 5.25" floppies and 640K of ram. I remember installing our first 10mb hard drive in it a few years later.

 

[gcaughey]

I got this kit new back in 1986/7.

SpectraVideo SV-328
64Kb RAM 16Kb video (80Kb advertised)
ROM slot
SV tapedrive
two joysticks
A bunch of tapes and one ROM cartridge

I still have all of it, if anyone wanted to make an offer.

 

[Dax corrin]

I had a 12 Mhz 286 with "turbo" switch, an ISA simm memory expander and it's first HDD was not even IDE, so when it failed, I had to replace both the drive and the controller as the older drive tech was no longer available. I think it was a 20 MB drive. "Wow, you'll never fill that up!!!"

 

[Onus]

Hmmm, technically I think my old SR-56 Texas Instruments programmable calculator may have been a "computer," but more consistent with the intent, I think, was my Apple ][+ that I got used I think in 1980 or 1981.
First PC was an IBM PC with 2x360K floppies, and 640K RAM (256K mobo + 384K AST SixPackPlus). I got the color card because the composite output worked with my existing monitor.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

My first computer was some old Amstrad machine that was a hand-me-down. It ran the GEM operating system - I was fascinated by the paint program. What I would call my first "real" computer was a 486 DX4 100MHz, a DIY job. That was a beauty of a machine. I don't remember exactly when this was though, mid nineties. The Pentium was only just out and wasn't doing too well compared to the 486s of the time.

 

[scryer_360]

Apple Lisa. Still have it, but as you can imagine its practically worthless.

Well, in terms of productivity anyway. Had a guy offer me a grand for it... I figure if its that much a collectors item in 2008 then its just going to go higher.

 

[mike fe]

A (don't laugh!) Sony HitBit MSX2 Computer. No Harddisk, but a nifty GUI, despite only having 256kB RAM. Without tricks you could only access 64kB (Yes, that's right KILOBYTE) though.

 

[daft]

all i can remember of it was that it was housed in a printer housing that i used as a type writer most of the time

 

[smartel7070]

First ever computer was a Commodore Vic-20. First "modern" computer was a Mac LCII (don't laugh ... I got it really cheap) but a year later I got fed up with not having any good games to play on the Mac so I bought my first pc - AMD 486 DX4 100mhz, Acer board(with 2 VLB slots !), 8mb FPM ram, 500mb NEC hdd, Trident 1mb video card, SoundBlaster, Lava parallel and serial card, 14" SVGA monitor - all for a cost of $2700 CAD. Finally I could play Doom II !!

 

[Guest]

Sinclair ZX-81, 1K RAM, cassette tape interface

 

[robcat2075]

A Commodore-64! Prior to that I had only used computers in school and yes, we had to input our programs via punch cards or paper tape. Text-only printouts. No video graphics at all.

By comparison the C-64 with a built-in language that didn't need to be compiled, stored data on floppies and could display color graphics on my TV seemed like having the future in my hands.

 

[sublifer]

Tandy 1000 with 32KB of RAM, no hdd. It had 3.5" and a 5.25" floppy drives

Second one was an IBM PS2 with a whopping 20MB hard drive. I learn BASIC on that machine

 

[SneakySnake]

I'm only 16 so my first computer is my homebuild I have right now:

E2160 @ 3.2 GHz
4 GB DDR2
GTX 260 core 192
vista 32 bit
22" Samsung Monitor

 

[jstrode]

Mine was a Texas Instruments 80. Everything was loaded off a cassette. Load, run, etc. The monitor was like 7" BW. Then came a Commodore 64, yes, with a wopping 64 KB of memory and a 5 1/2" floppy. Jumpman FR and Wizards were the games of the day. I got serious in 1996 with a 486 and a 2x Cdrom so I could play Doom.

 

[erikstarcher]

Atari 800 FTW!!! It even had a full 48k of RAM. My dad had an Apple IIe at before that, but I wasn't allowed to use it (I was only 9 years old). I still have both :}

 

[kelbo]

well, it seems I started a little bit modern, compared to some folks here...jejeje
but here I go.
Pentium MMX 133 mhz
32MB RAM
120 MB hard disk
CDRom 2x
Nvidia TNT video card.
windows 95

 

[Grandizer]

My first computer was an Atari 400 with the membrane keyboard.
My aunt's boyfriend won it for being the best Space Invader player in the country.
Since he had an Apple II at his house, he left it for us at our house.
4 Player asteroids for hours!!!
I then brought a cassette player / recorder for it for 149.99 and then of course I had subscriptions to ALL of the Atari Mags back then, Antic and so many others... I remember my brother and I typing in the Zaxxon game they published and not turning the system off for 2 weeks. The same with Tron...
At Xmas a few years later, I brought the floppy disk drive for 419.99 from Toys R Us, 399.99 and 20.00 tax...
No one could believe I would spend that amount of money... I shut them up when I loaded games in seconds rather then minutes from the cassette tape though!!!
Mule being played by 4 players was awesome!!!

I doubled the 8K memory to 16K using a hack from Antic, cut a trace on the memory board and solder one wire and you had double the memory!!!

I then traded that system away for the Atari 800, the one with real keys and 2 cartridge slots!!!

Those were the days...

 

[gosefroba]

my fist computer that i owned was a compaq with
2.2ghz amd xp
512 mb ram ddr
5500fx geforce

comp i own now
i7 @3.8
6gb ddr3
2x 8800gtx

 

[Guest]

I had a C-64. Recently a lady brought her computer to me to fix. It was an original Compaq 8088. Go figure.

 

[jsloan]

first computer i used was trs-80 model 1
first computer i owned as atari 400 w/ 16kb ram and tape storage!

since then i have owned z80 cpm, pc/xt, 286, 386, 486, ect... to present.

oh, by the way my atari 400 was the best and funnest computer i ever owned. today's vista, osx, linux riddent don't hold a candle to it. ;-)

 

[Guest]

I was too little to remember the first computer we had, but it lasted a long time. My dad was always taking it in to be upgraded. First was the hardware/software upgrade from MS-DOS to Windows 3.1 & the addition of the 3.5" floppy drive & 14.4 kbps modem. Then we added a CD-ROM. Eventually we tried to add Windows 95 to it but by then there was so little memory that we couldn't do much with it. That thing was great for playing Kings Quest on the 5.25" floppies though.

Then we went out and dropped $2,000 on a Packard Bell computer with an Intel Pentium MMX CPU @ 233 Mhz. 48MB of RAM. 4GB HDD.

 

[nobrainer]

OoOooH - I'm not old enough for punch cards, but I did learn on a 8086. Good ol dos! I do kinda miss the days of messing with the autoexec.bat and config.sys