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What was your first computer?

My first computer was a Tandy 2500 XL/2, which I received from dad when I 9, 5 years ago, I have ended up paying for it through work. I have to find another Tandy FDD for it however, but it works.
 
Nick_Zravre said:
My first computer was a Tandy 2500 XL/2, which I received from dad when I 9, 5 years ago, I have ended up paying for it through work. I have to find another Tandy FDD for it however, but it works.
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My school system for some reason was standardized on Tandy computers. My first programming class involved Tandy Model III's. My second involved Tandy Model IV's. My last involved Tandy 1000's. I would have wanted to collect them all anyway, but for that reason I particularly wanted them (especially since I kept my old class disks and notes!).

The Tandy x000 line of systems were very interesting. They were originally designed as PCjr clones and competition, which is why they got such good graphics and sound relative to other PC systems. When the Tandy 1000 was released, it became it's own standard since the PCjr was discontinued for good by IBM not too long after. Still, it had better PC compatibility than the jr and Tandy had one of the best selling PC compatible lines for years to come. It was the norm for games to support IBM and Tandy standards on the box.
 
Terry Yager said:
After a couple of 'false starts' with a C= 64 & a TRS-80, my first 'real' computer waz my beloved Kaypro II.

--T
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I find that a bit odd. I own all of those systems and certainly the Kaypro II is very professional and solidly built, but it's hard to argue with the massive amounts of stuff available for those other systems, particularly the C-64. The CP/M standard has the distinct disadvantage of no graphics, no sound and no external controller options as well. Of course as a programming system and a word processor (among other productivity software), it was certainly top notch...

"Funny" story, but I remember when I reprogrammed Avalon Hill's football game (it was written in BASIC like many of their games) to work with SAM (a software speech synthesizer) on the C-64. My dad showed one of his friends what I did and my dad's friend took him aside and said he should get me a "real" computer, an Apple II. I had a friend with an Apple IIe and a friend with an Atari 800XL. We were always competitive for our favorite systems. I'm glad I outgrew all that and favor pretty much all systems equally these days...
 
Back around '83, '84, I bought the C= 64. I was still working full-time (12 hours, most days), running the garage, and I took a notion that a computer would somehow help with that effort. After a week-or-so, I realized that the thing was utterly useless to me since I couldn't do anything without spending a lot of time learning to use it and a lot more money on peripherals & software. So, I sold it to the guy who owned my building, who was also becomming interested in computers.

The TRS is a whole 'nother story...

--T
 
Terry Yager said:
Back around '83, '84, I bought the C= 64. I was still working full-time (12 hours, most days), running the garage, and I took a notion that a computer would somehow help with that effort. After a week-or-so, I realized that the thing was utterly useless to me since I couldn't do anything without spending a lot of time learning to use it and a lot more money on peripherals & software. So, I sold it to the guy who owned my building, who was also becomming interested in computers.
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Interesting. I had/have a program from Imagic on the C-64 called "Injured Engine", which, along with "Crime and Punishment" was an unusual type of edutainment "game" to say the least. "Injured Engine" showed a cutaway of an engine and basically taught you about the different parts and challenged you to diagnose computer problems. It wouldn't have been much help to you then, I'm sure, but it triggered the memory.

I can definitely see how a Kaypro II would be more useful to a business, particularly with things like bookkeeping. Besides speed, it had a plethora of professional applications. The C-64 had even more, ultimately, but few that could be considered professional grade.
 
My first was a C64 when I was real young, about 9-10.

Dare I ask, Bill, what is Communion money? What/Who were you communing with that you got paid for? Seriously, I'm at a loss.

Nathan
 
the facts are shrouded in obscurity, but I'll try to recount as best I can...
Very first experience with puters was on the membraned (-brained?) keyboards of the Atari 400. Joy to the world. They moved us up to these paper terminal things on which I "learnt" COBOL (not COBAL or even SNOBOL) and FARTRAN. LOL LOL LOL @ FARTRAN. At that point I had had enough of puters for a while...
Well...graduated h.s., got bored, started putzing around with the puters at the librarty (had TRS-80 model 3's first, then a True Blue PC, and even added a Mac...land o' goshen! The Mac was cool, come on y'all. I'm leaving something out. This guy I became friends with late in my senior year used to putz around with the Trash-80s, and was even somewhat accomplished w/regards to programming them. I guess I found that impressive. Hence I started to putz...
Ok, saved my pennies through the fall following graduation, and bought a Tandy 1000 just prior to Christmas. I upgraded to the "better" moniotor, so I spent something in excess of $1200. Discovered BYTE, and learnt I could have gotten a much better deal, especially concerning a monitor. Returned the 1000. Eh, about 1.5 years later methinks, I bought a TANDY 2000 while on sale, about $560 + shipping from Arizona? Bought a Multisync II several months later, about the same price or a bit more.
The rest is history. I won't bore you or myself with the details...
 
Like dongfeng, my first computer I played games with was the 2600, back in the late 70s... Then the computer I started to learn programing on was a Commodore PET (not sure if it was a 4032 or 8032) that a person who was living with my grandparents had. Then my parents bought a C64 with 1541 and later on I saved my pennies and bought an Amiga 500. I actually wanted an Amiga 1000 because of it's corded keyboard, but was told by the saleperson that I should get the 500.

Cheers,

80sFreak
 
My first computer was a TRS-80 Model I, but I ended up with it after it was pretty much obsolete (I was born in 1983!).

I remember running a prime number generator, watching LIFE go by, playing SARGON, and hating CLOAD in general.

Later I had a CoCo and then dad built the 386 in 1990, belatedly moving us into the world of MS-DOS.
 
My first was the Tandy 1000 SX I got in 1997 from my sister as a going away gift. It was 6 MHz, 384K RAM that I upgraded to 640K out of Radio Shack's 10 year old parts catalog in the mall, and had 2 360K drives. I used to get up on Sunday mornings and grab a cup of coffee and Play Ultima VI: The False Prophet on that thing in it's 16 color 3 channel DAC sound glory, all the while cursing diskette changes (INSERT DISK 11 TO CONTINUE), and wondering why this game ran like the Avatar was on geritol and had a bad pacemaker battery.

After that was the Flight 386, which I still have. It started off a 25 MHz 386 SX, then I put a 486 board in it after having it for 2 weeks, then upgraded it to a 100 Mhz 486 after half a year. This year I upgraded it to an AMD K-6, it does several jobs as a file server, print server, and my backup workstation, as well as my DOOM box.

flight.jpg
 
No fair, I was going to post about running Ultima VI on my 386!

I had 256-colour graphics on my PC version. I didn't have an Adlib card so I was stuck with *BEEP* and *CLICK* for the sound effects. Of course, I also bought it in 1990.

I did the floppy swap for a while too, until dad bought an ST-251 HDD.
 
dreddnott said:
No fair, I was going to post about running Ultima VI on my 386!

I had 256-colour graphics on my PC version. I didn't have an Adlib card so I was stuck with *BEEP* and *CLICK* for the sound effects. Of course, I also bought it in 1990.

I did the floppy swap for a while too, until dad bought an ST-251 HDD.
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What's so funny about Ultima VI, is that that was back when Minimum System requirements really were the Minimum System requirements. You could run Ultima VI on an IBM PC 5150 assuming you could get the full 640K on it by one mean or another.

A 386 running Ultima VI is actually the ideal thing. My sister had a 386 SX that I played the game on first, and that's how I got into computers into the first place as a week kid. Funny part was it was "my" game because it was given to me for my birthday.
 
Mad-Mike said:
What's so funny about Ultima VI, is that that was back when Minimum System requirements really were the Minimum System requirements. You could run Ultima VI on an IBM PC 5150 assuming you could get the full 640K on it by one mean or another.

A 386 running Ultima VI is actually the ideal thing. My sister had a 386 SX that I played the game on first, and that's how I got into computers into the first place as a week kid. Funny part was it was "my" game because it was given to me for my birthday.
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Ultima VI was the first Ultima game not originally developed and designed on the Apple II. It was the first game in the series designed with DOS in mind as the target platform, really starting to take advantage of the extra features possible. Of course the various Ultima ports from I - V all had varying degrees of enhancements more or less on platforms like the C-64, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST and Amiga, but generally speaking, up until VI, the PC version was generally the worst. Of course the same can be said for most PC games up to a certain point.
 
Yeah, Bill, I read once that Ultima VI was originally programmed for Apple ][ but halfway through developing the game Mr. Garriott decided to start over from scratch using the PC as a base.

If I remember right Ultima VI ran a little bit too fast on our 486DX2/66 but I got to hear the in-game music for the first time.

I've never really stopped playing the game. The first time I beat it, it took six months of in-game time. Report your feat to Lord British indeed!
 
Shoot, I'm totally crazy over Ultima VI still all these years later. I have two installations of DOSbox to run it in Tandy and normal modes. I also visit Doug The Eagles it-he.org site for all kinds of cool utilities to modify and change various things in the game, on down to making your own map.
 
Like nearly everyone else, the first computer I actually bought was a C-64, in 1984 or so. I was actually selling them at the time in a Montgomery Ward store in LA (Panorama City), along with Atari 2600's and Coleco Adams (gaaah), and I'm here to tell you that the quality control at Commodore was so bad at the time that I brought home perhaps a half-dozen - and they all fizzed after a few seconds or didn't start up at all. (The infamous power supply was to blame.) Finally, I took the floor demo model; all was well, and I still have it (although I fried the power supply by accident when I had to replace the keyboard; I'd literally worn the keyboard out).

I had used an Apple II and a home-built keyboard (probably an S-100 or equivalent; it used 8-inch floppy drives on which I used WordStar, the most gawdawful WP known to man and nerds); eventually the C-64 was replaced by a Mac Plus with a 20 mb hard drive, and I was hooked on the Mac - for life. No, I don't have the Plus, although I have several others; I sold the Plus for something like $700 to another teacher and replaced it with an LC, which I also turned around and sold for around $800 and replaced with a Quadra. I still do have the Quadra, though - one of my favorite Macs, another being the much-maligned Portable.
 
Well, I didn't own it - my first one that I programmed was a "Bendix G15". It used vacuum tubes and a drum memory (yep, 1 head per track, only had to wait for the info to come around the drum again, which was not real fast). I was learning to wire IBM Unit Record equipment at the same time (402, 407. 029, 088, 519, etc.). I learned the IBM stuff just in time for it all to become obsolete (1968). Oh ya, I programmed the Teletype to print out square roots to 90 decimal places. That was fun, it would sit there for about 1 minutes then come to life, printing long strings of numbers. The first one that I owned was a Vector Graphics/1 with a 4 Mhz Z80 in it in 1979.
 
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