Your first computer

[Gillhunter]

I don't remember my first home computer, it may have been a Gateway with a 286. The first computer that I spent a lot of time on was at work. I was an engineer, working for a small manufacturing company that designed and built a lot of their own equipment. It was not uncommon for engineers to be required to know how to draft (on a drafting board, using paper). When I was about 33 we purchased our first CAD system. As I recall it was a Texas Instrument desktop running a TI processer with a 10 meg hard drive and 2 floppy drives with a HP plotter. It ran AutoCad 2.0. There were no windows or drop down menus so you had to be proficient with dos commands. The system cost $16,000 in 1985 as I recall. Was it slow? You bet. Of course everyone smoked in those days. When you put in a large, for the day, command it could take 10 minutes to complete. Plenty of time to light a smoke and gab a cup of coffee. There was no 3D, just wireframe. If you were going to create a wireframe you did it just before you went home and let it run all night. 

We have come a long way.

Anyone else have any memory of their first computer?

Edited September 9, 2023 by Gillhunter

[HogHammer]

Company-supplied IBM laptop.  It has to weigh at least 15 pounds.  All metal construction, 5 1/4 floppy required to boot the device, the screen just displayed amber-colored type - that's it.  After about two weeks no one touched them again.

[Wolfswetpaws]

14 minutes ago, Gillhunter said:

Anyone else have any memory of their first computer?

I played an early text version of "Star Trek" when my Dad brought me to work for a "take your kids to work" day at his place of employment.

The first computer purchase with my own money was much later in my life, a x386 based laptop purchased from Sears in their retail store for about $2,000 USD.
The LCD screen was not color, but could provide shades of grey.  The mouse was a track-ball type that clipped to the side of the laptop.

[Frostbow]

30 minutes ago, Gillhunter said:

Anyone else have any memory of their first computer?

It was a desktop powered by AMD 386DX with 40Mhz speed, 4MB RAM, 40MB Conner HDD, 5.25" and 3.5" FDDs. It was sufficiently capable to run Windows 3.1 and a few memory-hungry DOS games such as Dune 2, Comanche, and UFO Enemy Unknown. The monitor was a spartan 640x480 Philips Mono VGA, and there was no sound card, but I had lots of happy memories with it. 

On the applications side, I spent a lot of time trying to create something from CorelDRAW! and BannerMania. For word processing, WordPerfect 5.1 was my go-to program, although eventually many of us migrated to Word 4.0. 

Those were the days. LOL

[Aragathor]

It was an Amiga 600, got it as a present in 1992. Funnily enough I remember the day I got it, like it was yesterday.

[Efros]

48 minutes ago, Gillhunter said:

Anyone else have any memory of their first computer?

Sinclair ZX80, which I had to build myself from a kit.

And yes it was in 1980.

Edited September 9, 2023 by Efros

[I_cant_Swim_]

I had a Commodore 64 (about 1983) with a cassette player for storage. Awesome machine. The first PC type I used was a x286 and MS DOS 3.1. Belonged to a friend's dad. I preferred the C64. I then got a Commodore 128, did a bit of BASIC programming foolery and dreamt I'd one day be a games programmer.

 

I mean, whose heart didn't beat faster at something like this...

 

actually, the color bars were much nicer on mine,  but this is the image I found on the net (Wikimedia Commons)

[Hiro804]

4 minutes ago, I_cant_Swim_ said:

I mean, whose heart didn't beat faster at something like this...

 

actually, the color bars were much nicer on mine,  but this is the image I found on the net (Wikimedia Commons)

That's a real trip down memory lane.  My first was a Commodore 64 followed by a 128.  The next was a PC clone.  I think it had a 286 processor by I'm not sure.  Could have been a 386.

 

[Ensign Cthulhu]

Commodore 64 for me. 

[Gillhunter]

You young guys. My son's first computer was a Commodore 64.

[Admiral_Karasu]

1 hour ago, I_cant_Swim_ said:

I had a Commodore 64 (about 1983) with a cassette player for storage. Awesome machine. The first PC type I used was a x286 and MS DOS 3.1. Belonged to a friend's dad. I preferred the C64. I then got a Commodore 128, did a bit of BASIC programming foolery and dreamt I'd one day be a games programmer.

 

I mean, whose heart didn't beat faster at something like this...

 

actually, the color bars were much nicer on mine,  but this is the image I found on the net (Wikimedia Commons)

Hey, that looks familiar. Commodore 64 was my first computer too, with a couple of those cartridge games you stuck inside, then the cassette player thingy and the trusty 1541 toaster as well. I even had a pretty useless centronics printer attached to it as well.

Many good games, including some some unofficially acquired games like Castle Wolfenstein and Raid over *cough*cough* let's say on unnamed city somewhere in the east, a game that was banned from official distribution due to political considerations at the time, and for some frigging reason involved shooting at dinosaurs, no idea why.... What else did I play on it? Bruce Lee, AD&D gold box games like Pool of Radiance, Several Microprose games too, Silent Service, Red Storm Rising etc.

After that, I graduated into the PC era. I had some 8086 processor thingy with a whopping 20 Mb hard disk, so huge I couldn't imagine ever neading anything bigger.

[Tpaktop2_1 NA]

I had the Apple II PC. Video was broadcast through the TV like a game console.  It had 64kb of memory. I had an external 5 1⁄4-inch floppy disk drive, called Disk II (140kb). You flipped the diskette over to have extra storage. My brother has the system now in his home computer museum. I paid $2k for the system if I recall correctly. I loved the beginning of the home computer age.

[Gillhunter]

14 minutes ago, Tpaktop2_1 NA said:

I had the Apple II PC. Video was broadcast through the TV like a game console.  It had 64kb of memory. I had an external 5 1⁄4-inch floppy disk drive, called Disk II (140kb). You flipped the diskette over to have extra storage. My brother has the system now in his home computer museum. I paid $2k for the system if I recall correctly. I loved the beginning of the home computer age.

Amazing how much the costs have come down. I don't have $2k in my current setup and it will run the game at 200+ fps.

[Admiral_Karasu]

51 minutes ago, Tpaktop2_1 NA said:

I had the Apple II PC. Video was broadcast through the TV like a game console.  It had 64kb of memory. I had an external 5 1⁄4-inch floppy disk drive, called Disk II (140kb). You flipped the diskette over to have extra storage. My brother has the system now in his home computer museum. I paid $2k for the system if I recall correctly. I loved the beginning of the home computer age.

Yeah, now that you mention it, flipping the floppy was a thing with CBM-64 too. Not officially supported, mind you, but you could do it. You had to cut a notch on the reverse side to mirror the top side for the drive to be able to access it.

 

35 minutes ago, Gillhunter said:

Amazing how much the costs have come down. I don't have $2k in my current setup and it will run the game at 200+ fps.

Well, late 80s prices for laptops (with Hercules monochrome displays) were just crazy. My father had a company Toshiba at that time, I had the permission to play on that in his off hours.

[Slammer58]

First computer was a C64 w/cassette drive, followed a couple years later by a C128 w/1541 floppy disk drive.  Then came a 286 I bought from a guy I worked with.  It had an 80MB (yes thats 80 megabytes!) hard drive that he said he bought for $1000.00.  🤯

When I was in college (1980s 😐), I remember a guy used to haul around this thing to the computer labs.  He thought he was so damn cool. 😄  ...but we were all green with envy.

Edited September 9, 2023 by Slammer58

[Bumblegoose]

My first computer was a Fat Mac 512K which I bought in 1983{?) when I was living in Oregon in the US (I am Australian by nationality).

I loved Oregon and I loved my darling Fat Mac.

The awesome simplicity of its games, including Flight Simulator, was highly addictive.

I still have my Fat Mac and it still works, all these decades later.

Friends for life.

[Justin_Simpleton]

5 hours ago, Slammer58 said:

Ah, yes, the Osborne I.  The first luggable computer.  I enjoyed being a member of FOG (first osborne group).

[Efros]

11 hours ago, Slammer58 said:

First computer was a C64 w/cassette drive, followed a couple years later by a C128 w/1541 floppy disk drive.  Then came a 286 I bought from a guy I worked with.  It had an 80MB (yes thats 80 megabytes!) hard drive that he said he bought for $1000.00.  🤯

When I was in college (1980s 😐), I remember a guy used to haul around this thing to the computer labs.  He thought he was so damn cool. 😄  ...but we were all green with envy.

We had one of those in my work circa 1983. Good workout lugging that thing anywhere! We were an Information Technology centre in Scotland, setup to demonstrate and promote the use of information technology in small businesses. We had the Osborne, several Olivetti Word Processors, an 8 terminal multi user system running CP/M with a shared 20 MB HDD, 16 BBC B computers on a ring network, 8 AIM65 6502 development systems, latterly an IBM XT PC, an IBM AT PC, and a couple of TRS 80s and their Centronics daisywheel printers. The daisywheel printers at full speed were terrifying, you felt as if they were going to fly off the table at some point.

[Lert]

Earliest computer my family had / I ever played with: Sharp MZ-800, a Z80 powered dealio.

Earliest PC my family had / I ever played with: Philips NMS 9100, an 8mhz 8088 machine

My own first PC: a 486 dx2/66

[Gaelic_knight]

On 9/9/2023 at 8:03 AM, Efros said:

Sinclair ZX80, which I had to build myself from a kit.

And yes it was in 1980.

my brother had the plastic zx 80 he built himself 

[Gaelic_knight]

my first computer i ever build was back in 1991 . had an AMD 135 mhz cpu 

100 MB hard drive , 3 1/2 inch floppy drive , dvd player  ,512kb memory  and a  graphics card with an expanded 512kb  memory chip insearted 

had 7 disc's with DOS on it that had to be loaded first  then 6 disc's with windows for workgroups 3.0 

18" monitor  mouse and keyboard  were cheap and nasty 

[Estimated_Prophet]

On 9/9/2023 at 8:15 AM, Gillhunter said:

We have come a long way.

Anyone else have any memory of their first computer?

I actually still have my first computer; though I haven't started it years. (Corner of my home office, under stacks of books.)

2G hard drive, (GASP! How will I use it all!) Win'95.

My last iPhone is 128G...

[KJ82]

486 DX 33, with a 40MB hard disk. A year later I traded it for a Playstation 1 and a small Samsung television, after trying out Final Fantasy 7 and Gran Turismo 1.

[Jagerbomb_2021]

I had a TRS-80 color computer 2. I got it my senior year of high school.

[MaxxyNL]

First computer? (now i feel old...🤫)

C64