QOTD: What Was Your First Computer?

[KT_WASP]

Hmmm.. I got into the PC game a bit later then some responding here.

But I remember going to a PC store to buy my first computer,sticking to my budget of like $1000 or so. The one I could afford was a 133MHz CPU and 64MB of Ram (I cant remember what the CPU was).

Anyway, the salesman worked up a ticket and I paid in full, cash. He went to the back to get my PC and came out to tell me they were sold out. I was already checked out, so the guy said "give me a minute". He went back to the store room and came out with a different PC. He took me aside and gave me this other box... he said take this one. I looked at the specs and it was an AMD K6 333MHz with 128MB ram, better monitor and bigger hard drive.

I looked at the guy funny, and he said.. "this is your lucky day, this PC is way better... I feel bad about the mix up"

Now, back then I didn't know squat about PCs... I thought the guy was ripping me off.. like a bait and switch... but nope, it was genuine.. the guy hooked me up with a PC that cost about twice as what I paid!

Never forget that first PC!

 

[Blessedman]

C64 All the way! Best computer ever made period!

 

[hammond]

Compaq
733MHZ Celeron
64 megs of RAM (upgraded to 128, lol)
Soundblaster Live (still works)
Voodoo 3

Booooyy did I play some EQ on that thing, woohoo!

 

[Blessedman]

Back in the day my friend bought a 300 baud modem for his amiga500(I see some of you looking around confused), inside the box was a 1200 baud modem!!! SCORE! LOL

 

[KyleSTL]

Pentium 100mhz. Don't really remember everything else. It was a hand-me-down when my dad upgraded his system. I'm only 25, so I don't have nearly the computer history most here do.

 

[T-Bone]

Adam by Coleco Vision. That thing kicked ass! Learned SmartBasic, Logo, and had CPM as well! I was writing programs in 7th Grade in Basic & then Logo as well. Z-80 processor with 64KB of RAM, dual cassette drives, 300 baud modem. Later on bought a 5.25" floppy but never got the extended memory.
Next was an IBM PS/2 model 30 with a whopping 30 MB hdd.

 

[LuxZg]

Umm, forgot to mention that after that "C64 +4" I've used C64, and C64/128. And once my father bought those IBM 486 PCs for his company Iwas using those, and after a while my brother and me kinda "removed" the server that came with the whole IBM bunch and network, for our own usage That was roughly at the same time as we got that Win95 computer, but we needed another computer as we all wanted to have some fun, and faster they were, happier we all were.. and besides that new Win95 computer server was the fastest I remember that it had 1.2GB IDE drive, but also a SCSI DAT tape and a first CDROM device in any of my computers. It still relied on CD "catridges" so you had to put ordinary CDs in boxes before inserting them in CDROM drive (similar to RAM drives later on). And I also remember that we lacked space on that server, so my brother made a custom Win95 install which barely fit the empty space, and than made a tiny Office install as well (just Excel and Word).

Anyway, like I've said before, that was roughly the time when I started to actively play with x86 based hardware (and software), and the love last till today. Without those early days I probably wouldn't have become what I am today

Heh, while at it, some of those 486 CPUs and later on one Cyrix PC were first computers I've overclocked as well

Well, that's it.. gone to bed! Cheers!

 

[dwmccauley]

IMSAI 8080 w/paper tape reader

 

[waikano]

Timex Sinclair 1000....Woot, Woot with a whole 2k of RAM baby!!! Frogger here I come! I was 10 at the time. My son has it soooo gooood!

 

[anonymousbenson]

My first was a Packard Bell 386. I think it clocked at 40Mhz. It had a 5*1/4in and 3*1/2in floppy drive, 16M of RAM, and it only ran Windows when I wanted it to. I miss the days of good ol' DOS. I also remember just how much more I enjoyed it when I was introduced to Compuserve and my first 56K modem, which was an add-on. It was just[\i] powerful enough to run X-wing when it first came out. My, this takes me back... :')

 

[rooket]

Intel 386sx/25 with I think 60mb hard drive and large and small floppy drives, no name 386 motherboard, no math coprocessor, trident 256kb ISA video card probably 120 watt psu turbo/deturbo mode on the case button (deturbo was 16mhz), ISA floppy/hard drive controller, ISA serial port and parallel port controller, maybe 1 or 2mb of 32-pin SIMM RAM, no sound card, no modem, AT case & keyboard, serial mouse, Dos 5.0, Windows 3.0, automenu, 14" WEN VGA monitor, and generic mouse pad. That's about it.

 

[cracklint]

tandy color computer, with cartridge and tape cassette. displayed through the t.v.

 

[Guest]

IBM Portable Personal Computer 5155.

BASIC... Sweet. What do I do with it? One drive for DOS and the other for the games. And best of all... it was portable. It must have been funny watching a five year-old lugging one of these down the street.

 

[jwl3]

A 286 12mhz with a "turbo" button that halved the speed to 6mhz. Why in the world would anyone want to slow it down is my question. I destroyed 384k of the 1 MB memory when I attempted to remove it and found out too late that the memory was soldered on and not upgradeable. Oops.

 

[kiang]

Pentium 1 @ 120MHz
16 MB SD-RAM
2MB video card (supported up to 800*600 in 16 bitcolors, or 1024*768 in 8 bit )
1,12GB HDD
8X CDROM drive
Floppy drive
Windows 95

This thing could barely play an MP3, but it was great at the time I got it

 

[craig hallworth]

the first computer i used was called an 'adam' computer and had a cassette tape drive that i used to play buck rogers video game

 

[Guest]

Mac II E...I miss truly floppy, floppies

 

[bertschkid]

I believe the very first computer I ever used was an Apple II in the early 90's. The computer belonged to my grade school and fondly remember playing Oregon Trail on it during my free time.

 

[Guest]

First owned was an AT&T 2200 with 20MB hard drive and DOS 3.2 (possibly an earlier version)

First system ever used was one of those HeathKit systems which you had to assemble yourself.

 

[flyhne]

TRS 80, No hard drive or floppy used portable tape recorder to save the beeps, lot of fun and frustration.
Copul not afford a floppy it was $1500 if you could find one
First hard drive was a seagate 10 MB $30,000

 

[mp562]

My first computer was a Packard Bell desktop tower.
Intel 486 SX-25 upgraded to Cyrix 486 DX2-80 (this chip would smoke those Intel DX4-100's for some reason), 4 MB Ram upgraded to 8 MB Ram, 256KB Trident Video Card, 2400 bps dial-up modem upgraded to a 28.8 (US Robotics) kbps modem, 200 MB Hard Drive upgraded to 1 GB (Seagate) Hard Drive, Windows 3.1, 2x CD-ROM upgraded to 6x CD-ROM, Sound Blaster upgraded to Creative Labs SB16 and 15" CRT (1280x1024 max). That computer was so damn reliable, too back Crappard Bell went down the drain in the US. Wow, I got that computer back in 1994, if I remember correctly, I think we paid $1100 for it.

 

[Timbo70]

Sinclair Spectrum 16k with a 32k ram pack because all the 48k machines had sold out in the uk

Spent many a cold night typing in listings (in sinclair basic) from sinclair user magazine, then attempting to save the programs to cassette lol

 

[lukeiamyourfather]

The first computer in the house was a Apple Power Macintosh 6100/66 with 16MB of memory and a 500MB hard disk. Shortly after buying the machine we put about $500 into a 14.4 Kb/s dial up modem which was hot stuff back then. The first computer I used was probably a Apple II at school. Nice trip down memory lane.

 

[RADIO_ACTIVE]

Woot!!!
IBM 286

 

[Fusion777]

Apple ][ (not +) with 48k RAM if memory serves. Even had a floppy! thanks dad!
First one I can remember using in our house was a dual 8-inch floppy S100 system.. 2Mhz Z80 i think it was... still have the VT100 clone we used with it..