Remembering the past: your first computer system

[carsalesguy]

in the spirit of a thread about windows vista-

what was your first computer? still have it? if you do and don't know if it works, i can probably fix it for a nice "nostalgic" piece....

but i'll go first anyways:

the first PC i played on was an AT&T 6300 with monochrome green graphics and AT&T monitor...........it ran DOS, but i learned how to program in MS Basic with it................2 5 1/4" floppies, a: being on the bottom.......and double density

then the 10 meg hard card came in- $1200.....

it was my dads, and really wasn't supposed to even "touch" it, but he would let me play around as long as he was in the same room-

dad said that he bought it along with the NEC Pinwriter P5 widecarrage 24 pin printer for $8700 in new orleans when he was going to tulane. bought it on canal street actually- got the optional upgrade from 128k to 256k, and the salesman told him "why do you need 256k? you will never need that?!?"


MY first machine was a microlab 286, with dual floppies, 1 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 floppies, booted with DOS 3.1 on the 5 1/4, 1 meg of ram, 1 meg of video. only $4600, while his 386 that he just bought was a good $7500.

SoMissTV remembers, i think----BUT

we had a wang donated from FGH to our tech ed. class at rowan---i took the massive winchester maxtor HDD out of it, slammed it into the 286, and i beleve i had to get a controller card from his dad to run it---

called maxtor and it formatted down to a whole 60 megs---took 2 drive bays for this thing to mount. sounded like an aircraft taking off during spin up. loaded win 3.11 on it, and was in heaven. would get NASA photos from him and load them on my PC. Oh, the days!

[aaron]

When I was a kid we played on my mom's IBM which had a 1mb hard drive, 64k ram, and I don't know what kind of processor. I just remember dealing with the hard drive size because I just wanted to install more games. My first computer was a 386 25mhz Compaq laptop

[threekidspa]

The first one I ever had for myself was a Commodor 64. I'll admit now that the only reason I had it was for the games. I had an external 5.25in floppy, a printer and a joy stick. Hog heaven back then.

Got rid of it after a couple of years and bought a CompuAd i286 with VGA. Now I was really rockin and rollin. :)

[IGID]

My first one had a 13 gig hard drive and everybody thought that was HUGE. Mine now has a 160.

[SoMissTV]

i remember when CD-Rs were $7 apiece.

[carsalesguy]

i remember when CD-Rs were $7 apiece.

floppies were about $20 for a box of 10

[Kitty]

First computer I ever used was a Tandy 2000. With 5.25 floppies.

[TheKing]

officially my first 'computer' was a tandy 100 from radioshack

i was definitely too young for it...but my grandmother meant well

my first real computer came a bit later...it was just a 166mhz machine with like 16 meg of ram.

[wilebill]

My first computer was an Amiga 500 with 512K of ram. I upgraded it not too long afterwards to 1 meg. I then got another floppy drive, so I had 2! It was smokin.

[Ted]

. . . . . what was your first computer? Sinclair ZX81.
Hand wired and soldered from a kit I ordered from Sinclair Research, Ltd - UK.

still have it?Nope. I mailed it to a member of a Science/Tech Forum a couple of years ago. He wanted it for his collection.

Oh, the days!Yeah, me too.:)

[maxim]

OK, my first was a Tandy Z-100. Chiclet keys. After that a Commodore 128, then an IBM PC with the dual floppies. Added a 20MB HD. After that a 286, then a 486. Somewhere around there I got on the internet (right after they opened it to the public) running a Unix shell account. PINE, ELM, WAIS, LYNX, GOPHER... dot sig files and dev/null. Those were the days!

It was around then the PC stopped being my toy and became a house appliance - meaning it had to stay working, so no more "experimenting."

Drat!

[carsalesguy]

i miss the days of "exploring"

[Ted]

. . . . . and I don't know what kind of processor. . . . . . Intel 8088.

[Hermione]

Once upon a time I sold IBM PS2's to college bookstores. Some hare-brained program IBM had that eventually collapsed. The most expensive machine we sold was $8000 and had 33 mg of RAM, it was smokin' -- I used a "lug-able" which had an amber screen. Windows 3.1. Very top of the line.
My first very own was a Gateway that as far as I know is still working. It had one-tenth the pizazz as the Dell I use now, but cost more. I do long for the days when I half-way understood what I was doing, and for the internet before the criminals took it over.

[jmack]

This is really old school, but I believe it was a Timex computer. Later I bought an IBM with 256K and 512K dual floppy drives with a 10MB hard drive. I later bought a PC Unlimited (later became Dell Computers), and have been a DELL PC user since.

[just-Wynn]

Do my Nintendo wrist watch count???

[pEtAl mIsFiT]

commodre 64 here....

[Astra]

I had a Commodore 128 that was technically my Dad's. My first computer that was really mine was a 33mHz IBM clone. I think it had something like a 15Mb hard drive in it and a 14" monitor. Bits and pieces of it persisted for years as I upgraded bit by bit.

[Engelbert Humperdinck]

My first computer was an Abacus.

[chaz]

Magnavox 286, never died, just got old and faded away.

The HP II laser printer finally quit working after about 11 years in service.

[cubby 1]

Tandy 1000. Gosh I miss that thing.

c1

[justme]

Ok so I was a total nerd i guess. My first computer could be hooked up to a tv- it hooked up to a black and white tv and had something that also used cassette tapes? then next one I got was a Commodore 64 and after that it was all IBM computable kinds. Right now my home computer is on the fritz and I don't know how to fix it - it is just turning off- usually about 2 mins after I turn it on. It is only a year and a half old. My next one will be a MAC... I have been sold.

[amanda]

I fought for years to NOT have a computer in my home. I worked with them enough during the day, didn't want one at home. In '95 my boss bought me a Compaq Pesario running Windows 95 so I could work during my maternity leave and I've had one every since. It truly is amazing how far we have come in such a short period of time.

I laughed at my oldest son the other day when he was at my office. He was flipping through my rolodex which as been passed on in my office for YEARS with tons of old business cards. He found one that listed a "pager" and "car phone" number. He looked at me and asked "what's a pager and car phone?" After explaining, he had this amused look on his face and replied "you really had it tough growing up didn't you?".

[bpitt]

Hhmmm, let's see. Dad had a 'teletype' that we could dial into an AT&T database with (he worked for them at the time). I learned a little about UNIX on that thing. Next, I got a Timex Sinclair 1000 that I learned BASIC on. Then I got a Commodore 64.......and so on and so on.........

[mac]

Commodore 64 . Used the tv as a monitor.

The games, such that they were, were on big floppies, and were very difficult to load. I would go through the 40 or so steps to get one started, and it would take so long that I'd leave it to load when my mother called me to dinner, come back an hour later, and it would be ready-- IF there wasn't some error that meant I had to start again from scratch.