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What was your first computer?

my first comp

my first comp

my first computer i got in 1988, when i was 4. it was a Leading Edge brand 4.77 MHz 8088 (without a x87 coprocessor) with an ultra-leet CGA graphics board.

i remember playing games like Janitor Joe (aka Jump Joe) and pacman on that thing with an old school Kraft brand joystick. i also used a word processor program called Electric Desk quite often. anybody remember that program? i don't know how popular it was.

the next comp i had was a 12 MHz 80286, which incidentally was also a Leading Edge. that's when i finally got a VGA card hehe. i remember playing Ultima 6 for hours and hours on that system.
 
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January 1995: 486 SLC 33 MHz with 4 MB of RAM. 264.1 MB of hard drive. Trident ISA video card with 512 KB video memory. No sound card (for about a year, when I got a Pentium 133). Came with DOS (probably 5.0) and Win 3.1.
 
It was in the early 1980s I got my C-64.I worked as a freelance writer and it proved to be a very good word processor.We can't forget the games it ran either Ultima,Wasteland,Zork and my all time favorite WWII submarine sim "Silent Service".
I used that PC until the early 1990s when it was replaced with a Compaq 486DX2-50 with Windows 3.1.
cgrape2
 
at christmas 1983 I got my first machine... a Commodore 64 with Datasette. At september 2009 i have it back in my colletion :D
 
My first computer was a commodore plus/4 when I was in second grade. It was 1991/1992, and my dad had already moved onto the IBM PC. He had a 386 for his own use, and the 'family computer' was a 286. After I learned some basic, my dad introduced me to gw-basic on the 286. After that I was set. I loved that machine, and used it as my primary computer until 1998. I was a freshman in highschool, typing essays on Geoworks! (My friends made fun of my for not having windows 95 on it!)

Anyways I loved that 286, and I still have it's case. It's currently occupied by a k6-2 with a real voodoo card. I just use it to play Glide games in native mode :)
 
Toshiba satellite 200CDS. Pentium laptop. Windows 95. 1GB hard drive. 40MB RAM. First computer i ever used was probably either a late 486 or early Pentium system.
 
An Apple ///. A freebie discarded from a local insurance company. External 5 1/4, Visicalc, Prodos, 48k Apple II+ emulation disk. Used it for about a year or so until the keyboard quit responding and I tossed it in the alley. Been kicking myself ever since. I remember it had a nick in the anti glare mesh right in the center of the screen. Drove me nuts.
 
The first computer that I consider mine was an Olivetti PC1. Technically it was my dad's, as he bought it for his office; however, a combination of his inexperience and the system's lack of user-friendliness caused the PC1 to never really be used in the office. I had to fight hard, but ultimately it went to me - and I still have it, fully working! :D

The year was... well I dunno really, but it had to be the early nineties. Computer technology used to come to Italy very late back then...

I was... eight to ten years old, I think.
 
Mine was a TRS-80 MC-10. Must have been about... 84/85 or so - I was 11. Just recently found a nice one on eBay in its original packaging, its actually on display in the house :)

-Lance
 
The question was, as originally posted Aug. 8, 2006
What was your first computer, when did you get it, and how old were you?

Well, my 1st machine was the Radio Shack Model 1.

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I bought it in 1978 when I was 34. Spent all my time with my nose in this book learning how to use it.

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I was first exposed to computers back around 1979 or so when my class took a field trip to a local university's computer center. One of my classmates' father worked there so we got a cool tour. They had a mainframe (don't recall which one) but we got to play with the card punches and we played some games on a TTY there. I distinctly remember seeing a baby blue ADM-3A on a console.

In 1981 when I started middle school the school got two TRS-80 Model III's. I'd hog them during math class and after school so much that I got yelled at for not sharing :(

I had an Atari 2600 and wanted the BASIC cartridge for it, but what I really wanted was my own computer. So in March 1982 for my birthday I got my first computer - a VIC-20. I remember one of the coolest things was one of the BASIC programs in the owners manual that used the keyboard to play notes. I started hacking the program to make different sounds for it and ended up soldering my own speaker output so I could record it. That's around when I started getting heavily into electronic music, like Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk. Then in 1984 I got a VICmodem for it, and my friend introduced me to BBSes. I also got my first synth, a Korg Poly-800. Thus my first two hobbies were born: computer/electronic music, and BBSing. That was also pretty much when I decided I wanted to get into I.T. and networking.

In 1986 I got a C64 when they were starting to go really cheap and ran several BBSes on the 64. After high school, I went to a 2-year tech school before starting college and they got me a job with a start-up company that made a laser foil printing system. Their original design used a bare 286 motherboard, hard drive, printer controller, power supply, and floppy drive, all built into a god-aweful ugly formica cabinet. They had lots of old motherboards around from various R&D experiments, so I took them home and built my first PC clone. I've built my own systems ever since.
 
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My first computer was an IBM XT, it had a CGA display, 360k 0Drive and IIRC a 10Mb HDD and was running MS DOS 3.3. That would have been in 1990 (I was 10). And I seem to think that it was actually an 8086 processor (not an 8088 ).

Where there any IBM machines that had 8086 processors or is my memory a bit off on that point?

I tore it up on that machine, mostly writing GW Basic programs and batch based menus. I don't think I ever even realized there was Rom Basic on the machine.
 
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My Dad bought the first computer in our household in 1987: an Olivetti M24 (known to the American forum members here as the AT&T 6300). 8086 CPU, 2 5.25" drives, no hard drive, CGA (plus proprietary high resolution 2 color) graphics.

It was gradually upgraded over the years:

  • Had one of the 5.25" drives replaced for a 3.5" 720KB drive
  • Added a joystick controller
  • Added an Intel AboveBoard EMS card (1.5MB)
  • Added a hard disk card
  • Addd a serial mouse
  • Swapped the 8086 CPU with a NEC V30 CPU
  • Added a 8087 coprocessor
  • Briefly added a sound card

As for the first computer I technically owned myself, that was a 486DLC clone (somewhere between a 386 and a 486 in performance) that I proudly built myself. That must have been some time around 1991 or 1992 or so. Ah, memories.

The clone is long gone (gradually upgraded and replaced over the years), but our M24 is still running fine, and will always have a special place in my heart. As a matter of fact, in my spare time, I'm still looking to add a few more upgrades to it: upgrading the ROM BIOS to the latest version, adding an EGA-compatible video card, and possibly also a CompactFlash drive as a hard drive replacement, hooked up to one of those spiffy new XT IDE cards that are being developed by the fine people on this forum. ;)
 
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The first computer I programmed was an HP 2000. It was about 1976, I was 23 and was working on an AA degree in Electronics. I took a class on computer repair where we used the HP with no peripherals whatsoever, all we had was the front panel. We had to program it in machine language in Octal thru the switches on the front panel then hit run and watch the blinky lights. Our only feedback as to whether our program ran successfully was if we got an RC of 0. I came out of that class thinking computers were useless.

In 1984 at age 30 I took a management position at IBM and was given an IBM PC to use. It sat in a corner of my office for months unused until my boss "ordered" me to learn how to use it. I started fooling around with it and became fairly proficient with DOS and Lotus 1-2-3. I then decided computers were pretty cool so I bought an IBM PC for home, within months I gutted the PC and built a clone 8Mhz "Turbo" XT. Since then I've owned and used countless computers.
 
Way to revive an old thread! :p

It all depends on how you define "first", of course.

The first computer I ever used was an Apple II in elementary school. (Not sure, but based on the timing, it was probably an Apple II+.)

The first computer I had in the home was a Leading Edge Model 'D', one of the early 8088 PC clones. My dad paid $500 to upgrade from 512 to 640 K of RAM; and another $500 to upgrade to CGA. Later when more computers entered the house, this one became my personal computer in my bedroom. Sadly, my dad got rid of it when I was away at college.

The first computer that was indisputably "mine" was a Compaq Portable II. My mom brought it home from work when they were getting rid of it, and I got to have it in my room. (Later replaced with the Leading Edge when we got a 486 as the 'family' computer.)

Finally, we move to the first computer that I paid for with my own money. A Pentium 90 MHz system from a local builder that I paid for with earnings from my first job. It was subject to the Pentium FDIV bug, which I actually experienced; in that my CAD program would randomly throw lines around on screen from time to time. When I got my replacement from Intel, that oddity went away. By then, I was disassembling computers and rebuilding them just out of curiosity, so I could have just bought the parts and built it myself, but decided to pay the extra $50 to have them do it.
 
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