What was your first CPU ?

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Z80 in a Radio Shack TRS-80 with the full 16K of RAM. All programs were stored on a casette tape (with a little fingernail polish to show the proper volume level for loading) though later some people were able to buy floppy disks that held a 180K on one disk. You could even write another 180K on the back of it, though I wasn't sure anyone actually had that much data to store.

When IBM launched the PC, I bought one and experienced the blazing speed for 4.7 MHz, which I then upgraded to a 6 MHz 286 from an upstart clone maker named Compaq.

I also remember placing telephone receivers in the rubber cup to allow my computer to talk across the phone wires. Worked great at 300 BPS but the faster 1200 BPS modems actually were installed inside the computer and the phone line plugged directly into them. They were amazing, loading data so fast that you could no longer keep up reading the text that was being written across the screen.

Ahhhh... those were the days...
Click to expand...

John,
Thanks for the great memories... man that brings back a lot of good times... how about having to wait for the processor to catch up with your typing... i miss that annoying beep...
~Cheers
 
First few:

Intel 8088
floppy drive loadin a version of Dos 3 If I remember right

C64 (paid $1200 for it new)


The first PC I really bought and modified:

386sx 12mhz
1 meg of ram
40 meg hard drive
dos 5.0 (upgraded to 6.x)

I installed a dx chip and paid $100 of another meg of ram for it.
 
Atari 800!!!

I loved the Star Raiders game. It came in a ROM cartridge that you plugged into the left ROM slot. I upgraded the RAM to 48K. Never did try to overclock it though. Check out the sig below.
 
First was a 6502 (in an acorn electron). I added a further machine and via the RS423 (i think) set the second machine up to be the graphics processor, because when you switched to hi-res mode you lost 28k (out of 32k) to the onboard graphics.
Then a Z80 in the form of an Amstrad system (two 3" floppys)
Then a Intel 386SX/16Mhz + Cyrix co-processor (they were faster than the intel ones at the time
Then a 386DX40+ cyric co-processor
Then a Cyrix 586 (or was it a 686) it was crap.
Then AMDK6 which was later upgraded to a faster clocked one (can't remember the speed).
An AMD K7 850 (slot mounted)
AMD XP 1800+ then an XP 2000+
Now AMD64 X2 3800+
 
First used, Vic 20

First built, Pentium 2 300 MHz.

Computers I've used: Timex Sinclar, TRS 80, Vic 20, Commodore 64, Coleco Adam, Apple 2, Apple 2e, Apple 2c, Apple 2g, Macintosh, 8088, 286, 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium 2, Pentium 3, Pentium 4, AMD k5, AMD k6, AMD k7.
 
First PC was 486SX-33, 16MB RAM, 500MB SCSI HDD. Since then I bought an Intel 8080 8MHz, 256KB RAM, dual 5.25 floppies. Currently using a Pentium 4 Prescott 3GHz @ 3.46GHz (stock cooling), 512MB ram, and a 40GB HDD.
 
Commodore 128 :)
Color Computer 2
386 dx40 with 16mb ram
486 something or other
Pentium 133
Pentium 3 something or other
P4 1.5 Ghz
P4D 630(current rig in Signature)
 
Tandy TRS 80 Color Computer 2, by Radio Shack. It was about 1984. It had a Motorola 6809E CPU @ 0.89 Mhz with 64k RAM. Video maxed out at 32 x 64 with 8 colors. It stored programs and data on cassette tapes!
 
First processor I ever purchased and played with was 8085.

Processors in the PC went from

8086 / 8088 -> 286 -> 386 SX / DX -> 486 SX / DX
-> Pentium 66 -> Pentium MMX / P II -> P III
socket 426 P4 / Socket 478 P4 (various cores) / 775 P4s ->
A64 3200+ for a short time -> Pentium D 830 -> Pentium D 930
-> core 2 duo 6600 and 4300 on the way
 
First PC I actually "owned" was a P100 that I built from my dad's old parts. ooh, how I miss that Viper V330 I threw in there! before that, the old family PC that I pretty much took over was a Commodore 64, Mule rocks!
 
commodore vic 20 - ran basic, played some games. My storage was an acoustic coupled tape device!

Packard Bell 8088 - no windows, phophor CRT screen. I did my college work in Pascal on this system. It cost about $1000

Homebuild Intel 486/25SX <- What I would call my first *real* cpu. It was socketed, upgradeable, and overclockable, ran Windows 3.1, ran Doom. it cost about $1600.
 
First computers I ever used were some Apple IIe's, then some Mac SEs, and finally a few Gateways in 1995.

First Computer the family ever purchased was a Compaq Deskpro 4000N, Windows 95a, pentium 233MMX, 1 stick 32MB pc66 sdram, 20x slot load CD-rom, floppy, 3.2GB WD HDD (that's now in the K6-2), S3 virge 2MB graphics card, ISA 56k data/voice modem, keyboard, mouse and 15" CRT, purchased for the sum of $1000 back in 1997. I just got this beast running last weekend with Windows ME and 64 more Megs of RAM. I'm using this rig as my dial-up web surfing/ electronic typewriter when I'm back home visiting family while the K6-2 is down for repairs.
 
My first computer was a 286 with 1mb of ram. Had a 20MB harddrive that plugged into something that looked like a ISA/PCI slot. With my dads help, I eventually upgraded the motherboard to a 386 and added an 80MB harddrive. (100MBs, could I ever fill that?!?!?!)

BTW sandman, there were 450MHz P2s. The last P2 was the 450MHz, and the first P3 was a 450MHz. They were identical in performance. The only difference between them was that the P3 had SSE while the P2 did not. (I owned both.)
 
Well the very first computer that I ever used was an old Atari thing. I believe the same one that an earlier poster stated (too young to remember). I then went up to and Amiga 500. For PCs there were a few hand me down 286s in the 386-486 days, jumped to a 386sx, then on to an amd 486-40. Next up was a cyrix-120. All of them hand me donwns.

The first real PC that I bought and built was a Celeron 300A running at 450 with a nvidia TNT card. Replaced that with a p3-600. Next up was a thunderbird 850 that lasted me 5 YEARS until i replaced that with an A64-2800+. next up was a x2-3800+ and now im running an e6300 @ 2.8ghz.

Sill have all the old macines(except the hand me downs) and they are still running except for the 2800+ which died during a bad bios update along with the motherboard.

edited for spelling
 
my first was an 8080 based s100 system.

after that was various 650x based (apple 2's and clones), various z80's, 68000 based (2 different ones, Commodore Amiga 500 with 20 meg scsi hdd, and I think it had 512 k of ram total, and a Atari ST with 512k, and 10 meg hdd.

then I went on to the pc clones.. starting with a 486dx2/66, then I jumped to a pentium 90.. wooo hoo what speed!

Currently using a p4 2.8, but build higher end stuff almost daily in my line of work.
 
First computer I owned personally...

Pentium 133Mhz,
can't remember the drive
Windows 95

first one I got to play on was some sort of mac, I was too young to remember. Then I moved to MS-DOS games and I loved it.

Ironically enough at this time my school was running Pentium 75Mhz playing Decent on a LAN like nobody's business :)
 
Z80 in a Radio Shack TRS-80 with the full 16K of RAM. All programs were stored on a casette tape (with a little fingernail polish to show the proper volume level for loading) though later some people were able to buy floppy disks that held a 180K on one disk. You could even write another 180K on the back of it, though I wasn't sure anyone actually had that much data to store.

I also remember placing telephone receivers in the rubber cup to allow my computer to talk across the phone wires. Worked great at 300 BPS but the faster 1200 BPS modems actually were installed inside the computer and the phone line plugged directly into them. They were amazing, loading data so fast that you could no longer keep up reading the text that was being written across the screen.

Ahhhh... those were the days...
Click to expand...


Exactly what I had also back in 1983-84 I think it was.

LoL every time the you loaded or recored to the cassette drive it made this screeeeching noise almost like a modem connecting, it was broadcasting all the data transfer over the cassette deck external speaker.

I remember programming my own Pick-and-choose adventures with code like...

10) Type "Welcome to the evil demons cave."
20) Do you wish to continue forth or light your torch first?
30) List A$ Continue Forth, B$ Light Torch
40) If A$ then goto line 100, If B$ goto line 150

LMAO
 
My dad brought home an Hewlitt Packard 386, complete with the turbo button. I remember playing Sim City on it. Then later I bought a SuperNES just to play Sim City on it, (and a few other games too I admit.)

But my first real system that I bought was a computer shop build on a Pentium 166. It had a sound card, a 2Mb video card, a 15" color monitor, a two button mouse, and a dot-matrix printer! I didn't play sim city on that one, it was too cool for that.
 
My dad brought home an Hewlitt Packard 386, complete with the turbo button. I remember playing Sim City on it. Then later I bought a SuperNES just to play Sim City on it, (and a few other games too I admit.)

But my first real system that I bought was a computer shop build on a Pentium 166. It had a sound card, a 2Mb video card, a 15" color monitor, a two button mouse, and a dot-matrix printer! I didn't play sim city on that one, it was too cool for that.
Click to expand...

Monochrome monitors rule :lol:
 
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