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What was your first computer?

my first computer

my first computer

First I used was a BBC Micro, in reception at primary school, around 1994 when I was 3-4.
First I owned personally, was an Time AMD machine, no idea which one, with around 60mb RAM runnning windows 98 in 2002.
 
My first computer was a TI 99/4A that my dad got me and my sisters when I was about 2 ~ 3 years old. A whopping 16kb of memory and the coolest sounding storage media on earth (I used to put the casettes in my sister's stereo to annoy her).

Then later on (few years later), he bought an IBM PC XT with a 30 meg MFM drive and 2 half-height 5.25" floppy drives and 640kb. I remember filling up the root directory with games before I learned to create sub-directories (after finding out the hard way that FAT didn't like that many files in the root). :oops:

I remember being jealous of one of my friends a few years later when he got a brand new Tandy 1000 RLX for his birthday! I mean, wtf? :mad:
 
The first PC that was mine to keep was a good Ol Tandy 1000RLX in its 256 color glory, at the time the only games we could find in the stores that would run in 512k were Jill of the Jungle and Test Drive II around 1992/93. Ran right off the floppy on everything, loved that slow machine and used all the built in software, I made that thing do amazing things.

The first machine I ever got to play on a little was when I was about 4 or so, it was the original IBM PC green screen, my uncle had it because of his admin pos at the boys ranch. I played many games of the original Paratrooper game were you shoot the stick figure paratroopers and airplanes.

At home my first video game was a Fairchild channel F circa 1976ish. Played that thing until the wire for up broke (first in controller 1 then in 2) and still figured out ways of playing.

At school I grew up on daisy chained C64s they all shared one set of floppies and I remember how frustrating it was to wait literally 5minutes or more for the next screen to load because someone else got ahead of you.
 
My first post this week;
Nobody noticed that spam in this page? :razz::eek:
A gold star if you can spot it.
 
jersy - account's first post, verbatim copy of your earlier post in this thread, links to commercial European sites in signature.

I think you noticed it first because he copied you! :)
 
Hurrah!
Well done dreddnott, first prize. All the rest of you, sit in the corner for the rest of the day.
 
I was in grammar school in the mid 80s and all I knew was the Apple IIe. We had apple IIs in school, and would use them there. I was just a young kid, and wanted a computer. I think I was only like 7 or 10 or something, and asked for a computer for christmas. Well, christmas came and I was ready for my new Apple computer. But thats not what we got. My Dad got us an Amiga 500. It was just released. I never saw one before, and was absolutely amazed. It blew away those apples, which seemed like boat anchor, pathetic junks in comparison to me. The Amiga was the first computer I ever saw to have a mouse. I didnt know anyone who had any other kind of computer previously, but at about this time many other people were starting to get computers. Most friends had gotten IBMs, and I thought they sucked, too.
I was SO proud of our Amiga. It was a very good computer and we used it for years! Finally in the early 90s, like 92 or so they got an old Windows based Gateway 2000, and that was my parents new computer. I still liked the Amiga better, though.
 
In 9th grade my electronics teacher gave me an old Mac Classic II that the school retired after they got some new LC's and IIsi's. I had found a 14.4 modem, some Internet software and used the little Mac online for 5 years. Not long after the Mac i recieved a AST Bravo 4/25 486 with 16 mb of ram. Both Machines were used back then for various things and i soon relised how reliable the Macs were and how finicky Win9x machines were. I still have "old Reliable" as it is now part of my Vintage B/W Mac collection.
 
Ok, first computer I got to use, that was BOTH an Atari 400 and a Commodore Vic 20. Neither of which were mine, they were both my fathers - the Atari 400 was his "toy" to play games on (and he had quite a collection) and the Vic was so my brother and I could grow up and not be afraid of computers, learn to program, etc. Somehow we managed to go through 3 Vic-20s in the space of a few years, I do remember my brother sticking toast in the cartridge slot.

This was back in 1983/84/85 and I was just starting school (the tender age of 5 in 83) and could already "program" the Vic-20 when I started school, which my father would proudly tell anyone who showed any sign of listening. Mind you, that meant I could key in a basic listing, save it to tape, load it back in, run it, and make a few very minor changes, but to be fair, the groundwork had been laid.

Then in 1988, my parents seperated, and my father kept his "toys", so my brother and I had no access to a computer, asides from at school, Apple IIe machines with those horrible green and black screens that seemed so primitive after the colour displays of the Commodore and Atari machines.

Fast forward a few years to about 1991, and I purchased another Vic-20 off a friend of mine, complete with tape drive.

Not long after, we were given a Amstrad PC2286/40 - wow, 1Mb RAM, 40Mb Hard disk, 12MHz 80286 Processor, 14" VGA monitor and even a mouse! That seemed like a super computer, but my bother and I constantly fought over whos turn it was to use it. I still remember the two of us paying half each for a guide book to the police quest games so we could finally complete PQ1 on that machine. I also remember that it came with DOS 4.01 and Windows 2 286, and we even tried to run Windows 3.1 on it once, but that was not a good experience - it wouldn't run for more then a few minutes without crashing, and you could watch it draw each individual line - it took it a matter of seconds to just draw the outline of a window. My brother and I also paid half each for a Sound Blaster card and a set of speakers to go with it, and thought that was awesome!

Then I started earning my own money, and decided it was time to get my very own computer. So I looked around at what was available, and the Commodore Amiga series of computers caught my imagination. 4096 colours when the Amstrad 286 could only do 256! Stereo sound when the Sound Blaster was mono! Multitasking! IBM and Mac compatibility with suitable add-ons! Then the Amiga 1200 was released, with the improvements it brought (14MHz 32-bit 68ec020, 2Mb RAM, 262,144 colours on screen at once, etc.) and my mind was made up, I wanted an Amiga 1200.

But I couldn't afford one, it took me months to save up for my first mountain bike, and that was only $150.

Then Commodore Business Machines Australia went under.

On my way home every night after school, I used to always go into the local second hand store and look through what computers they had. Stock changed fairly rapidly, and I saw lots of computers I had never heard of. Atari 600s, Sega Computer 3000s, Commodore C128Ds, and so on. Then one day, I went in there, probably a few weeks after Commodore had went under. There, in the corner of the shop, setup and running, was an Amiga 1200HD40 with a 1084S stereo video monitor. It was exactly what I wanted, and even came with a disk box full of various disks. I straight away paid the deposit so they'd put it away for me until I'd paid it in full, and then every day I was back there paying however much I'd earnt since I'd last been to the store. I walked everywhere instead of catching the bus or train, so I could put those dollars towards my new computer.

Finally, I finished paying for it, and took it home, telling my brother he could have the 286, I've got my own computer. It was very interesting, some games ran much faster on the Amiga (for example, Syndicate), yet others ran much faster on the (technically slower) 286, such as Civilisation. That got me interested in why that would be so, and regained my interest in programming. I figured out that the port of Civ to the Amiga was a poor job which hadn't been converted very well to run on the Amiga.

But I was happy, in general use the A1200 ran rings around the 286, and compared to what software could be run on the 286 (particularly gfx and sound) it was years ahead.

Since then, I've owned almost every model Amiga (A1200HD40, A2000, CD32, A500, A600, A4000/040), as well as several different Macintoshes (SEs, LCs, Quadras) and various PCs from that Amstrad 286, a 486sx33 (which I upgraded to a 486DX33, then a 486DX2/66, which I then overclocked to run as a 486DX2/80, then a Pentium 100, Pentium 233MMX, AMD Athlon XP 1800+ and then my current Athlon XP 3200+. I also still own the Amiga 4000/040, and will one day replace the dead hard disk and floppy drive, re-install Workbench and all my old programs, and marvel at how little progress has been made since that machine was made in 1992. :cool:

Oops, that was a bit of a long post, sorry. :lookroun:
 
The first computer my family owned was a TRS-80 Model III. We had two neighbors that had Model I machines. When my dad went to buy one we were told that the Model III was "just around the corner", so they (our local Radio Shack) put our name on a waiting list, and we got the first one that came into town. I believe that was the summer of 1980, so I would have been six-years-old, about to turn seven.

We had a lot of "family" computers over the years. The first machine that was really MINE was my Commodore 64 that I got in 1985.
 
Bill_Loguidice said:
Let's see, I'm 33 now, so that puts me in the somewhat "old" category. In the late 70's my parents had a Sears branded Pong system that I got to play with sometimes. When I was around 8 or 9, I purchased an Atari VCS with my Communion money. Not too long after that, my parents got me a Commodore Vic-20, my first computer.
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I guess we central NJ guys all have similar stories! I'm 31 (almost 32), started with Intellivision (only had the Pong game for it) in the late 70s. Then we got a VCS (before it was called the 2600) in the early 80s, and then we moved to an Apple IIe in the mid-80s. LOL, the only difference between my story and Bill's is that it was Chanukah money for me, and the Apple was a bar mitzvah present. :)

Me and half of my friends all had some variety of the Apple II, with the other half of my friends all having some variety of Commodore. There was one strange kid who had an IBM (sorry Erik!)...
 
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Jersey again .. I detected a bit of attitude in your posts, and now I know why .. ;-) [Note: I'm from Queens]

To keep this on topic:

Timex Sinclair 1000 (1981)
PCjr (1984)

No game consoles really. I vaguely remember a TeleStar (made by Coleco) much earlier, but those weren't built very well and it didn't last long. I was too young to appreciate it as well.
 
First computer I used was an HP 2000, via dial-up on an Andersen-Jacobsen acoustic coupler and a Teletype. Disk storage was so expensive that we after we'd typed in and debugged our BASIC program assignment, we were required to punch it to paper tape, then delete it off the system.

Later I homebrewed a CRT terminal with some sort of terminal board, a Keytronics keyboard, a surplus 12" green CRT (no case) and a MicroMint 300 baud modem. (I think I still have this modem board if anyone's interested). I spent quite a bit of time on The Source and CompuServe with that one.

For quite a while, my only computer access was whatever I could connect to with my Lear Siegler ADM3a (drove over an hour one-way to pay $300 for it and thought that was a steal). It was uppercase only until I found a "lowercase kit" and installed that. While I could suddenly see lowercase characters on the screen, there were no true descenders so letters like "g" and "y" rode higher in the line, disturbingly so.

I think the first computer I owned was an Apple ][+. All my friends had Apples, so we all ultimately filled every card slot: 16K RAM board, Hayes Micromodem ][, 80-column video, Z80 card, Super Serial card, etc. and a color composite monitor. I'm pretty sure all we did was play games and call BBSes.
 
DoctorPepper said:
With the 25th anniversary of the PC looming up on us, I thought this might be a good time to reflect some on the past.

What was your first computer, when did you get it, and how old were you?

Mine was a Commodore VIC-20. I got it in mid-1982, and I was 22 years old at the time. I was in the U.S. Navy, on my second tour of duty, teaching the F-14 Tomcat Avionics to new "Tweaks" as we were called. Several of us decided to buy the VIC-20, and for a while, we had a nice little user group there.
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Hmmm. The first computer I "used" was either a TRS-80 Model I at the local Radio Shack or a Commodore PET when I was in junior high school. My parents bought me a VIC-20 in 1981 or 1982, and that was the machine I used until I graduated from high school.

The first machine I bought myself was a "Fat Mac", and that was in May, 1985 when I graduated from high school. I remember...I paid $2795 for the unit, $495 for the ImageWriter I, and $495 for the 1200-baud modem. I bought MacTerminal, the 68k Development Software, Microsoft Word, Microsoft MacBASIC, a bunch of cables, the numeric keypad, the carrying case, and an external floppy drive.

All told, I think I was into this system for almost $5000. I used it for 5 years until I had to buy a PC because no one in the financial industry at the time used a Mac.

It was a lot of fun. I still have that system in the shop, along with an SE/30, IIci, and a //+.
 
alexkerhead said:
I was 14yo, it was in year 2000. It was a Zenith 386DX 20MHz with 4MB RAM and a 80MB HDD...lol
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wow, somebody gave you a 386 in the year 2000? lol, whoever gave you that is a sadistic bastard. even pentium 1's were obsolete by then! :D
 
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