Your First Computer?

Another year dawns and memories come flooding flooding back.

My first computer was a TI 57 programmable calculator in the early 80's. I was at school at the time and I'm sure we had the teachers impressed working out all those equations he had set, little did he know that the TI was busy dealing cards in a game of pontoon (21). Who cared if you had 5 aces in a hand

That small black box introduced me to the world of computers and I quickly upgraded to the Sinclair Spectrum 16k (just missing the era of the zx80 and zx81). I've never looked back since and many an Amstrad/Sinclair/Commodore have came and went (some have still managed to stay albeit in their dark boxes rarely seeing the light of day)

Anyway, I thought it would be good to share initial memories of computers for those that care.

But for everyone Have a very good 2009.

 

My first was a Compaq with a 486SX and 4 meg, yes thats 4 MEG of RAM and Windows 3.11

I didnt get serious about computers until I got my TI-89 (which has more computing power than the 486SX). I started programing it. Not only will it solve long hideous equations, it will show me my work. When a professor would clear its memory (for a test), I would simply hit F1 and the memory was restored.

 

My first real home computer was a 286. I had a TRS80 prior to that on which I mostly played a game called Trident or something lile that (it was a fun text game I wish I could find again). At that time at work we were using I think z128s or something similar to that using peachtext software.

 

My first Computer was a Commodore Amiga 64, and I had a whopping 1mb of ram in it, it was great for games.

 

Amiga Rocks, Atari *****

Sorry didn't realise that was a censored word, it isn't meant to be offensive. And I would never give an Atari 5 stars for anything

 

I started late in life...Generic 486DX4-133 64MB RAM running Win98SE.

 

wildfire, a happy hogmany to you. You've started something here which may thrash the brain/memory for some time. My first comp was ex the wife's work an Asus with 16mb RAM and no sound card and 300Mhz CPU and 3.5Gb HDD. I upgraded everything I could and then my son gave me a birthday present with enough bits to put a comp together in a tower case I had to buy. Six years later and 5 comps and 2 notebooks I fill in retirement very easily. I got the build bug and sit in my study now surrounded by monitors and printers etc. It's never too late to start so my memories are reasonably fresh and still learning. A Happy New Year to all. Neil.

 

Boy, do I feel young. My first system was an IBM Aptiva. Win98, 166MHz, 64MB RAM, and a whopping 2GB drive. I thought I would never fill that thing. It was huge. Now days, I have about 700GB of space. Any ways, that first system lasted just over 10 years. Hardly ever a problem with it.

 

An XT w/ I believe a 10 Meg Hard Drive. NO idea how much RAM, but I'm sure it wasn't much. It had a pretty cool menu that you used to access programs.
Put games on it like Commander Keen and such. Back in the day of downloading games from a BBS.
I had never used a computer before this, so the guy that built and sold it to me gave me some instruction when he delivered it. It all seemed so strange and foreign at the time.

 

When I first bought an Amiga the guy was kind enough to give me his BBS number (he ran his own and it was a small idependent store), my first taste of online communications and shows the benefit of personal service rather than shifting boxes.

 

Yeah, I remember when a local shop here did the same. I think there were also local grps that had BBSs also.
Those old BBSs were pretty helpful.

 

First computer

Osborne 1, brown case, single density, 4MHz processor, CP/M, still have it, and it still works.

 

An Osborne, years since I saw one of them . I've a few working relics of my own from Spectrums (+,+2, +2a & +3 no original though ) to Commodores (a Vic 20, C64 and 64C and a couple of Amigas 500 & 1200), as well as a couple of Amstrads (CPC 6128 and PCW 6512) and an old BBC model B with Dual Floppy.

The two Amstrads and the Spectrum +3 have CP/M, the BBC could do it but you need a Torch Z80 2nd processor which I don't have.

 

C64

The game Beach Head for the C64 was one of the best games I ever played, especially the level firing ack ack alternating barrel 4omm at attacking planes.

 

Don't know if River Raid was avail for Commodore but that game rocked!

 

A Commodore VIC-20 in 1983. I later upgraded to the Commodore 64 a year later.

Then bought a PC in 1996 from Zenith data systems.

$1600 for 16MG, 100 MGZ, 1.2 GB, no sound card. Okidata 600 printer.

Believe it or not I still have some of the components from my original PC and the Okidata printer still works. I've printed off a stack of pages a foot high and the toner still hasn't run out yet!

I still have yet to find a descent C-64 or VIC-20 emulator for the PC. Much less how to transfer all my files over to a PC hardrive.

I still have most of my Vic-20 games I spent so long typing in and all my C-64 programs.

 

You can always download Stella and the ROMS and play it on your PC.

Stella is about the only Atari 2600 emulator that I've found that will run on Windows XP.

All the old emulators that ran under Windows 95 and 98 like Z26 and PCAE that were DOS based run too slow under XP.