QOTD: What Was Your First Computer?

[zdzichu]

It was Atari 65XE, with tape drive as storage. I've learned BASIC programming on this sweet machine. Then I brefily owned Amiga 600 and then entered modern era with 386DX/40. It wasn't real i386, it was and AMD chip and it was slightly faster than Intel 386DX with 40 MHz clock.

 

[akard73]

oh man, days to remember..

first computer to own was an Amstrad CPC-6128 (128kb RAM, 3" disk drive - 180kb per side), green monitor (later got colour monitor).

before that played with friend Sinclair Spectrum ZX-81, Atari VCS 2600 (ok it was a console), Amstrad CPC 464 (tape drive), Commodore VIC-20 (cartridge slot + tape drive later), Commodore C64 (tape), Atari 520ST, Amiga 500.

Next to Amstrad, I got a local OEM PC (Turbo-X PC) with 2 5.25 360k floppies.. a Hyundai 1200 baud internall modem and started my first BBS.. First floppy had DOS + Minihost BBS program.. second floppy had.. files to download.. lol.. upgraded to 84MB SCSI hard disk + controller 'cause MFM hard drives peaked at 40MB these days.. first true color VGA (Tseng Labs ET4000), colour 14" CTX crt monitor.. a sh*tload of money back in those days..

Since then I kept on going on the PC's.. skipped the 286's, went 386DX/40, 386DX/120, 486DX100, Pentium/133, Celeron 300A (overclocked at 450 -b21 pin, remember?), P II/300, 450, 600, P III/1000, P III Celeron/1200 (tualantin), P IV 2.0/2.4/2.8/3.0 and currently at E5300/2.66. Let's see where the road will take us in the next 3-5 years.. we'll see.

 

[drkim]

[citation][nom]neiroatopelcc[/nom]From what I recall, the turbo button disabled the math processor. I wasn't aware a 286 even had support for one of those![/citation]

I think what the Turbo button did was this:
In 'Turbo' the CPU ran as fast as it could. With Turbo off, the CPU was restricted back to 4.7 mHz.

Back in the day, games were written to run as fast as they could (they didn't check the real-time clock) at the standard speed of the day: 4.7 mHz

Once faster CPUs started to come out, the games would run too fast to play. So if your game ran too fast, you would switch off turbo.

 

[akard73]

oh man, days to remember..

first computer to own was an Amstrad CPC-6128 (128kb RAM, 3" disk drive - 180kb per side), green monitor (later got colour monitor).

before that played with friend Sinclair Spectrum ZX-81, Atari VCS 2600 (ok it was a console), Amstrad CPC 464 (tape drive), Commodore VIC-20 (cartridge slot + tape drive later), Commodore C64 (tape), Atari 520ST, Amiga 500.

Next to Amstrad, I got a local OEM PC (Turbo-X PC) with 2 5.25 360k floppies.. a Hyundai 1200 baud internall modem and started my first BBS.. First floppy had DOS + Minihost BBS program.. second floppy had.. files to download.. lol.. upgraded to 84MB SCSI hard disk + controller 'cause MFM hard drives peaked at 40MB these days.. first true color VGA (Tseng Labs ET4000), colour 14" CTX crt monitor.. a sh*tload of money back in those days..

Since then I kept on going on the PC's.. skipped the 286's, went 386DX/40, 386DX/120, 486DX100, Pentium/133, Celeron 300A (overclocked at 450 -b21 pin, remember?), P II/300, 450, 600, P III/1000, P III Celeron/1200 (tualantin), P IV 2.0/2.4/2.8/3.0 and currently at E5300/2.66. Let's see where the road will take us in the next 3-5 years.. we'll see.

 

[neiroatopelcc]

[citation][nom]drkim[/nom]I think what the Turbo button did was this:In 'Turbo' the CPU ran as fast as it could. With Turbo off, the CPU was restricted back to 4.7 mHz. Back in the day, games were written to run as fast as they could (they didn't check the real-time clock) at the standard speed of the day: 4.7 mHzOnce faster CPUs started to come out, the games would run too fast to play. So if your game ran too fast, you would switch off turbo.[/citation]
Well I don't think it's a fixed 4.7mhz cause I remember when I bought mortal combat 2 (first game I ever bought at full price), I used the turbo button on the 80mhz 486 to slow it down enough that I could write acculledsul or what it was I had to write on the acclaim screan to enable some cheats I have forgotten what were for. I think it ran at approximetly 33mhz or something without it - but I didn't truely know enough about computers at the time to be sure.

 

[Vorador2]

First i ever owned was a Pentium 100, but i tinkered on my father's computer before that. Spectrum 48k, a clone of the IBM-XT (dunno the maker, i forgot), and a IBM PS/2 30-Z with a 286 processor. Those were the times...

 

[plbyrd]

My first computer was a Commodore VIC-20 with a 1520 Datasette, 8K RAM expansion and Sargon II Chess. This was given to me by my uncle who had just received it from my Grandmother for college. He decided to give it to me when the family went to Montgomery-Wards to do Christmas shopping and I stayed in electronics getting hooked on a VIC-20 they had on display instead of never going and looking at toys (I was 12 at the time, and we were there for 3 hours).

I then had a long procession of computers leading up to "PCs":

1) VIC 20
2) Coleco Adam
3) Atari 600XL
4) Commodore 64C - 1541C
5) Commodore 128D - 1581
6) Tandy 286/10mhz 1MB Ram 32MB HDD (20MB MFM drive on RLL controller, old timers can do the math)

But the Tandy didn't exactly result in love for the PC, so my journey continued forward

7) Commodore Amiga 500, eventually adding a 68020/16 accelerator, 4.5MB RAM, 40MB HD, 1x CD-ROM
8) My first "real PC" - Intel 486DX 50mhz, 4mb RAM, 2x Sony CD-ROM, Sound Blaster AWE 32, Matrox ISA Accelerated VGA, 14" 800x600 VGA monitor.

Since #8 I couldn't tell you how many "PCs" have passed through my ownership. I've also collected classic computers from the 80s from Apple, Atari, Commodore and Coleco over the last few years (to the point that my Wife made me sell off entire wings of the collection just to keep everything under one roof). My permanent collection now includes an Apple IIe (enhanced), Commodore 128 w/JiffyDOS, C-One Reconfigurable Computer, and a Coleco Adam. The roster of PCs is ever changing, but I do plan on keeping my first multi-processor system, a dual Pentium III 667mhz system that I ran an entire ISP on for a couple of years Once that sucker made it to 256MB of RAM I had so much money invested in it that I could have bought a nice new car.

 

[Guest]

I still remember that IBM PCXT, 4.77mhz, 640KB RAM, 2x 5 1/2 Inch Floppy Drive, CGA Monitor (4 shades of Green), DOS 3.0 - No hard drive.

 

[FlayerSlayer]

First computer I used (shared between brother and self) was a 386 25 MHz with 16-color graphics, 4 MB memory and a 210 MB hard drive. First computer I bought and owned for myself was a Cyrex MediaGX 180 MHZ with on-processor sound and video, 16 MB memory.

 

[sanctoon]

386 40Mhz
no sound
16 color video
256kb ram(i think) upgraded a year later to 1mb for $100
stiffy drive 3.5
210Mb Fitjutsu hard drive
Windows 3.1.1, but I only used dos, started to use windows on 98

 

[Guest]

Commodore 64 with 5 1/4 floppy. Though I had used my older brother's Vic-20 before that. Go go 20k memory! He went through alot of the early computer's. Vic-20, C-64, early Apples, Amiga's (we thought Amiga's so awesome), C-128...can't remember them all. He had a tape drive for his Vic-20, and ran a bulletin board from his C-64 with a 400 baud modem I believe.
My first "modern" computer was a er...286? I remember getting my first Pentium 100mhz and "upgrading" my ram to 16meg and video ram to 2meg since I played games.

The C-64 was a great computer at the time though. So many games, use to write games for it.

 

[tenor77]

My first home computer was a IBM PC junior with a switch in the back to choose between Dos and Basic.

 

[Herbert_HA]

I dont remenber the specs, just that it was called PC AT. After that I've had a PC XT and after that it was a 286. It all started in 1990, I guess, So I was 10 years old (rence the lack of more information).

 

[Guest]

Timex Sinclair with the extra 16kb memory block.
Plugged that into my cassette player and a black and white tv.
Wrote many many ascii games in BASIC on that bad boy.

 

[Guest]

commodore 64
after that a 80286, and an Atari (one of the first with a windows-like b&w interface).

 

[neiroatopelcc]

[citation][nom]ProDigit80[/nom]commodore 64after that a 80286, and an Atari (one of the first with a windows-like b&w interface).[/citation]
I'm wondering what came first? the 286 or the amiga? I remember a c64 magazine from the late 80s advertising an amiga 500, so it must be from the 80s ....

The amiga 500 I had featured workbench, which is sort of a gui similar to the first windows versions I've seen.

 

[havo]

My first PC was a TRS80 model 1 with Floppy and a B&W TV for a monitor
The first PC I bought myself was a 386sx16 with 1MB of memory and 120MB HD

 

[Parrdacc]

I had two, cannot remember which of the two I had first, but they were a Apple IIe and a Trash 80

 

[wiyosaya]

Mine was a Sinclair ZX-80 unless you count an HP-25C programmable calculator.

 

[Fadamor]

Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I, Level I BASIC (8K RAM) circa 1979
subsequently updated to Level II BASIC (16K RAM)

Cassette tape player for program and data I/O.

I purchased an Editor/Assembler program from some unknown company called "Microsoft" in 1980 so I could do a little Z80 assembly code programming. Yes, this was before there was such a thing as MS-DOS.

 

[Guest]

The 1st computer my parents ever bought for home was a PCjr, but I had played with C64s, Vic20s, 8088s and IICs extensively long before that, at all of my friends'; houses.

 

[Guest]

I remember the day bought a Texas Instrument TI-994A. It used tape drives. Thats all I remember. It was fun to learn though.

 

[bildo123]

I recall having an older computer but was far to young to remember what it was. I do remember it used 5.25" floppies..But the first computer I remember having was a Compaq Presario...forget the model number. But it had a AMD 350Mhz, 128MB RAM, 4MB ATI integrated video, 8GB HDD. The rest of you guys make me feel young...I guess because I am in comparison

 

[macskafaraok]

First Computer: Sinclair ZX Spectrum (48KB of memory)
In Hungary (Central Europe) under the communism area, its worth approx half price of one car (or one car) !!!.
First PC: 386DX40 (or 33?) without math-coprocessor.
I used some math-coproc emulator sw from some bulgarian guys.
But it was replaced very fast to some 'beast' as 486DX2-66, 8MB of memory (or just 4? i not remember), Trident VGA, 80MB(?) of HDD, Sound Blaster 2.0, Matsushita CD-ROM (2xspeed) with controller.

 

[Guest]

First computer I worked on was a Honeywell IRIS 50 mainframe, full 256KBytes of main memory on magnetic cores That was before semiconductors were cheap enough to be used for main memory, and punched cards were used to enter programs, data and control the jobs. Amazing today, but at the time, a Fortran compiler / Linker could do its job in a 16KByte partition (not a typo, 16 KiloBytes for a compile job, took a couple of hours for 6000 lines of code, then get in que to run using the full 256KByte memory when the compile was complete). Next was a CP/M computer I've built from scratch on a wire wrap board, with twin 5.25" SD SS floppyies (90KBytes / side, 62KB usable RAM, serial interface to a VT52 terminal), Z80 @4MHz - took me about 6 month to write the BIOS and make it work using another CP/M machine.... And of course, a ZX81 Spectrum clone, in about the same timeframe, followed by a 386-25 w 4MB of RAM and Windows 3.1. Now I can run basically the same simulation I could run on the mainframe in double precision years ago, on my Phenom II quad core with 8GB of RAM and have the data shown on screen instead of printed out graphics on 132 column line printer, but nothing changed in the fundamentals