What was your first computer and what year was it?

Ours was a used Commodore 64, in about 1988. You couldn't store things on the hard drive, only on 5 inch floppies. I had a daisy wheel printer, with tractor feed, perfed paper, and it never lined up, so I was always perfing it OFF of the page breaks. It was SLOW! All you could do was some math and a really primative word processing. No spell check, either. I think we could play Gorilla, (it was all in DOS) but that was about it. Oh, I did have a horoscope program, why that ran and nothing else did, I have no idea why.

I saw that computer in the Smithsonian Institution! Ours is in the attic or the basement. I want to keep it for posterity.

My dh is an Engineer, and he really wasn't using the thing much, and he saw me using it once, and we finally bought a 486, in about 1993 or so. Ah, the speed of that thing, compared to the Commodore was unbelievable.

What was your first one, and what year was it. My BIL had Tandys in the early 1980s and he even built on (I think from plans in OMNI magazine) in the late 70s.

No internet until 1998 for us, though. My dh said, "I'll never have clean underwear again, if you get on the internet." ROTHLMAO, He was right!

 

AMD Athlon XP 1800+
256MB pc3200
Geforce 4 mx 440
30gb hard drive.

That was custom built in 2001.

 

Just a heads up for you underplay. I too had my computer built in 2001 and recently found that the capacitors on the motherboard were systematically breaking one after another causing frequent shutdowns and reboots.

Ultimately I had to buy a new motherboard.

Just before the final collapse of my system though i did some hunting around and stumbled across a tech board (sorry dont have the link anymore since my reinstall) which pointed out that all motherboards originating from Taiwan which were made between 2000-2001 were made with faulty capacitors.

So keep a close watch for capacitors that exhibit popped out tops and brownish dried ooze. If you find even one at any point, get a new mobo right away before your entire system gets riddled with errors like mine did.

 

I had a commodore 64 as well, with a 300 baud modem in the late 80s.

I still have some old systems that I can't part

I have an old macintosh laptop, 33mhz, 8mb ram, 80mb hdd, monochrome screen from 1992, back then it cost 3000+, nowadays maybe 10 bucks or free?

 

Thanks for the heads up but that computer was replaced about 1-2 years ago.

 

It wasnt a 'pc' as such but i used to have a spectrum 48k (48 fucking k!) with rubber keys back in about '84 when i was a littlr kid, classic stuff, it had games like 'jet set willy' and 'booty.' were those around in the US?

 

A 286 PC with a grayscale monitor, running DOS.

 

Early 80s - a Commodore 16. Cheap mans Commodore 64.

It was rubbish.

Most loved and missed computer is definately my Amiga 500. What a machine!!

Memory lives on in WinUAE tho!

 

A 16?!? That's tough. I started on a C-64.

I remember building an analog calculator when I was a kid. My parents gave me a kit.

 

Oh, the Amiga, I forgot about them!

Anybody have a Tandy? I remember my sister and I messing with her then bf's Tandy when we were in HS. (He was at work LOL.) And messing the thing up badly. It ran only in DOS, had to use his TV for a monitor and used a CASSETTE TAPE player and cassette tapes for storage. I think he may have built that one from a kit, too. (He's her husband now.)

Analogue calcs, those were fun. but HUGE! Did it have those old red diode lights for reading the numbers? (Do I know what I am talking about?)

 

vic20 with a tv for a monitor. tape drive - no floppys! you would actually press play on the tape player to load a program.

10 print "vic20 is 2 legit 2 quit"
20 goto 10

 

we had a commodore 64 too, but I don't remember the year. Probably right arough 1990.

 

I see I'm not the only one that started with a vic20. I remember spending hours and hours writing video games in basic, only to play them a couple times before storing newly written games that sucked just as bad over them. I was sure excited when I got to play with a friends commadore 64. That puppy was light years better than the vic20. This was probably around 82 or 83.

 

Actualy the analog calculator I was given was three variable resistors that pointed at different numbers. You would make different connections for different operations, change your "answer" resister until the meter read zero and then read the answer off of the case of the machine.

 

This is interesting. In the UK the most common storage for the 8-bit machines (C64, Spectrum) etc, was cassette tape (we'll be talking about punch cards next! ). I'd just assumed this was the case everywhere. Funnily enough the same with the TV. My first computer with a dedicated monitor was my first x86 machine in about 1994.

Fantastic site here

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/

 

The first computer I used was my granddad's Apple IIE back in '89; I'd sneak on there when my parents weren't around and mess around on it...

...then in '90 I got my very own x386 /w 4 MB RAM...my grandfather was an engineer at a local plant, and since they throw out "obsolete" computers on a regular basis, he hooked me up...ah, DOS.

 

Gateway, I got it in 2002 but it's a 98. Her name is Sybil, she has many personalties.

 

AMD K6-2 500Mhz
256Mb Pc133 ram
integrated video
7 gig hdd

Yeah it was an IBM junker, so slow. 1998? I believe it was.

 

My first computer was of various parts, from hp to iomega. It was in a card board box. it ranged from 1993-to 1996. My brother built it for me from throw aways in the dump. He worked there. It was slow but gave me my love of computers the same.

 

Well MikeE you beat be. Figured I'd come in here with my "Build A Computer" chapter from a book in the 60's which involved 4 SPDT switches, 4 6V bulbs, and a lantern battery. But that one was digital.
Who was it that first invented the analog computer, Galileo? Michealangelo? Probably misspelled their names too. Damn fingers too lazy to click on the History Favorite.
I have a flashback memory of when Danny's brother (who worked for the government at the time) set up his TRS80 in the shop. I couldn't keep my hands off it, literally. I disassembled it, took it home, rearranged the hornet's nest he had for a power supply in order to provide the current needed for the extra memory he'd installed (it wasn't SIMM then, folks), and panicked when the interface cable between the keyboard/(CPU?) and monitor/(CPU?) went bad, went to Rad Shak, purchased a 36 conductor ribbon cable, and proceeded to refurbish the critical link using only paper sketches I'd drawn during disassembly.
(Here you're asking, did I accomplish anything? No. But I could write an entire inventory tracking program without using subroutines).
Nowadays I can barely run a computer without a mouse, but still marvel at the way all these 1s and 0s can still congeal to make our lives yet more complex than we by ourselves are capable .