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What was your first Computer


mobilenvidia

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When I was a pimply 14 year old and should have been looking at girls (they came later(phew)) I ended up geeking over computers.

I had been playing around with the Apple I for a couple of years at school.

But after saving my pocket money for ages, I spashed out on a Commodore Pet (1980).

It was a 1977 model with the pokey keyboard and tapedrive build in and a black and while 10" screen stuck on top.

The thing weighed a ton, but I reckon to this day I had the best fun on this baby.

The Specs:

1Mhz 6502 Processor

24KB or ROM (Basic build in)

8KB or RAM (1KB used by system)

A 40x25 line display that could with special graphics characters make 160x100 lego sized pixels.

There were no programs for this machine, so I wrote my own.

I got to know Machine code backwards and even wrote my own Assember/disassembler in machine language.

Made my own games (including a Defender type game way before it became hip)

And worst of all, I used to write code to calculate the first so many thousand prime numbers for 'Byte' magazine to beat their Basic programs.

One day it stopped working, I hunted high and low for a circuit diagram, I found one finally, worked out the chip that packed a sad (fried it self).

Then bought a new one at the Electronics store, soldered it on (when this was possible), and it actually worked again.

I sold it 2 years later for a wee profit.

Since this I had countless computers and IBM clones, but that is another story.

Now how about yours.

Pieter.

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I was 7 when we got our first computer so I have no idea what the specs are. I think we got it in '93 or around that time. The case had a simple LCD display like the ones on digital clocks that would show what appeared to be the CPU speed which, if I remember correctly, was 66Mhz. It has Windows 3.1 installed and the only game I had was a crappy Prince of Persia clone.

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Guest Korpowski

I got my first computer in 1995. It had a 486DX2(!) with 66MHz, 4MB RAM and a 420MB HD. After I could clock it at 80MHz. Some time later I bought a second 4MB modul for about 250.- SFr. (=166 Euro). It was a great machine...

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Around, hmm 1983 or so, Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k, no idea what the computer speeds where, and my Dad updated the computer a bit later to have the 128k housing (was a nicer case, had solid keys, not the floppy plastic keys).

My first PC was a green screen IBM 8086 with two 5 1/4 inch floppy drives (no hard drive) I don't recall the speed, it was a real plus when we got a 10mb hard drive, an even bigger one when we managed to get a second hard drive for it...

Ahh those where the days

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I dont know how old i was but it was..1984? possibly so i would have been.. geez.. 8 i think and it was an MSX, a Toshiba HX-10 i believe, MSX was one of the first attempts to make a PC like standard where other manufacturers could make a machine that was compatible with MSX's made by other manufacturers. Very nice little machine, i think i was the only one in our area with one, everyone else had either amstrads, spectrums or commodore 64s.

It had 64k memory, tape drive.. ZZZzzz... and had a built in BASIC interpreter made by none other than Microsoft!! :o

My overriding memory of it is making my mum type in all the really long and dull DATA statements in the programs in the back of magazines whilst i got on with the fun bits!

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I was 7 in 1981 and got a TI-99...

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Guest JFranks0987

i dont really remember the specs

but it was a packard bell and it was 120 Mhz

i got it for christmas when i was in 7th grade

then my friend got a gateway 2000 that same christmas and it was 200 mhz

i remember how much better his was than mine

CAUSE MINE WAS A DUMB PACKARD BELL

lol

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Guest citrixcl

Apple IIGS... Badass mofo with Donkey Kong and Oregon Trail and Paint Shop Pro... It came with a FAN BASE!! I think I kept the fans.

And we got an IBM PC prepentium that played MECHWARRIOR2 and Jane's Flight Sim.

Before all that my grandparents had a Tandy x386S or somthing with like some ridiculously tiny ram and 45 Mhz. I still keep it in my room so i can rip it apart one day.

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TI-99! woowoo! :) Picked up magazines and programmed the supplied code for games.

then...

386DX-25 with 5.25" and 3.5" drive, 10MB hard drive, 1MB memory

- later upgraded to 40MB Hard drive and 4MB memory for a hefty price

- math co-processor, pro audio (?) sound card, 2x cd-rom with caddy!

then...

Gateway 2000 133Mhz,

Dell 733Mhz with RDRAM <_<

Played with the Motorola 68HC11 and assembly in college.

For senior design my group created Nexus, a massive storage car audio device (aka a laptop hard drive attached to a mp3 decoder chip) which involved Atmel chips. Very nice chips.

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Guest Scotch

First computer I owned (not counting a HP41C with magnet card reader) was a 386SX. Clockspeed was 16MHz, a huge step up from the 286's 12MHz. RAM was 1MB, which I later upgraded to 4MB. It had a 125 MB Harddisk, I had thought I was never going to be able to fill it even half. It was running Windows 3.0. That was 1989.

Prior to that however, I was working with a IBM PC. It had an amber monitor, two full height 5 1/4 floppy drives, and no hard disk. It had 256 oder 384K memory, and I think I was running it on PC-DOS (or was it DR-DOS?) 3.0. Whenever I wanted to run certain programs that required more memory, I had to use a dressed down DOS 2.1 that would take up less memory just for the OS. Applications were sort of limited, there was dbase II and dbase III+, I think the word processor was called PC Write or something. That was 1986 or 1987.

Even before that, we were programming in BASIC in school. The programs were compiled and run on a huge cabinet-size Kienzle machine (that was back in Germany). The machine was operated by our teacher, I don't remember any details about the thing. Once we had to write a little "chess program", you would play with 3 pawns against 3 pawns on a 3x3 board. My program had a bug in it, it took my teacher a whole weekend to figure it out. In the end he was so proud he found it that he still gave me an o.K. grade. This must have been 1980-1981.

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:)

I bought myself a first-gen TRS-80 from money I earned working at a grocery store (1977 or 78). It had 4k (!!!) of RAM and saved/loaded BASIC programs from cassette tape. The display was similar resolution to the PET but text was capital letters only! (this saved one bit per video memory word) A whopping 16k upgrade cost $300. I did a bit of machine language programming via manual assembly and "poking" the program into memory via the BASIC interpreter. I also learned to write unreadable programs since saving every bit of whitespace, limiting variables to one-character names, and reusing variables (!) all contributed to fitting within 4kb.

Before the TRS-80, I programmed the TI-99 and also wrote basic programs on a teletype-style (paper output) terminal hooked up to a distant university mainframe using a 300 baud acoustic modem (i.e. the modem has a microphone and speaker configured so you can set a regular telephone handset on them to make the connection). Later in about '82 or so, I got a chance to play with a Commodore PET for a few days. (BTW: "PET" stands for Personal Electronic Transactor -- the term "PC" was still a few years off...)

Oh yeah, in High School I also built a small 6502-based computer, with touch-plate hex keyboard and a 2-digit hex LED display. This was part of a music synthesizer kit (one of the first digitally scanned music keyboards). The MIDI interface didn't debut until about 1985 or so.

Later in 1985, I bought and Atari ST, which I used until about 1995 or so. It had a great user-base which made all kinds of freeware (mostly UNIX-like) available. It also ran MINIX (a UNIX clone before the days of LINUX -- Many MINIX users looked down on the first LINUX as a messy "hack"!). I finally joined the PC world in 1996 when Win95 came out.

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  • 1 month later...

I started with a cbm64 with tape recorder (TurboTape rules!). I still have it upstairs...one day I'll play Jet Set Willy again! (although I can do that on my iPaq in the emulator).

After that there was a TwinHead 386sx-16, with 1mb ram, 256kb video mem and a 40mb Maxtor hd (soon replaced by 120mb Conner). I still have my Taxan MV-795 Trinitron monitor :)

Nowadays, besides my Latitude D800 I'm also running a Precision Workstation 650 (Dual Xeon) with SBS2003. I still have an old amd k6-2 machine to run my X-Tracker music program in Dos.

oVan

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Guest zeroflux

My first computer was a C64. It still works perfect and I still play it from time to time. I have 4 backup Joysticks and 3 Backup Keyboards, which is the CPU as well, and 1 backup Drive (5 1/2" Floopy)

I still play Jumpman, Raid over moscow, Archon, Wizard of War and spy Hunter :)

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest mobile risk

I got my first one when I was about 7 years old; around 1984.

It was an Apple Macintosh 512k, it was one of my Dad's spare computers and he gave it to me one day. Those days I had no clue what to do with that kind of thing :)

The specs are (I still have it!!!): 68000 CPU with 8 (eight!) Mhz clockspeed, 512 kb of RAM, Mac OS / Finder. The resolution of the internal monitor is 512*384 with 2 (two!) colors.

It came without a hd, but had an interface for it or a secondary floppy! So my Dad got me a hd with 15 Mb. There was only one game I could play on this unusually fast machine. Something like tank destroyer or similar.

Besides this machine, I still have an apple G5 and a powerbook for work.

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Guest EdsDeathMachine

My first "Computer" was the ADAM family home computer (AKA Coleco with a tape drive), this is not the first computer I bought though, that would have been a P3 450 with 128 mb of ram, a voodoo 3 2000, 10 gb HD...it was a monster at the time.

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Kontron Ruggedized Lunchbox portable running Unix...

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Our first PC was a C64 that came with a Data-Cassette Drive (just like a music cassette) and no monitor (but to plug on the TV ) :)

I was about 6 years old :)

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TI-99/4A. cassette recorder for storage. great games: parsec, munchman, tunnels of doom. was very sad a few years ago to take it out of a box and find it would no longer fire up. however, it seems emulators are available. yeah, typing in programs in basic from magazines was crazy. took hours and hours for laughably little result. had a great time making up a program to trick my brother into thinking i was hacking into some kind of government mainframe though, even though we didn't have a modem!

follwed by the Apple IIgs "woz edition" (first model), which was great and could have been really great had apple not hobbled/abandoned it as part of their marketing strategy.

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I had a Ti-99...the cassette deck pwnt. i would say, tho, my first "real" computer was the the Apple II GS...much like the market today, it had all the graphics and sound capabilities, and no one programed video games for it :)

-D6

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Guest citrixcl
I had a Ti-99...the cassette deck pwnt. i would say, tho, my first "real" computer was the the Apple II GS...much like the market today, it had all the graphics and sound capabilities, and no one programed video games for it :)

-D6

what i had donkey kong and some cool paint programs and somthign else

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  • 1 month later...
did nobody of you guys ride the greatest of all, the COMMODORE VC 20, as i did? really can t remember how old i was...  :)

That's the VIC 20 and came out the same time the Commodore 64 did :)

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest Navarro

I got my first one at 96/97.

..this time we started to work with pcs at school..

and after i asked my parents every day for nearly 2 weeks..

can i have my own...can i have my own...can i have my own...can i have my own...can i have my own...can i have my own...can i have my own...can i have my own...can i have my own...can i have my own...

... if finaly got it.

P1 200 Mhz

16 MB EDO-RAM

2 GB HD

4 or 8 MB ATI Graphic Card

4x cd-rom-drive

soundblaster

OS: win95

~Navarro

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

NEC Ready 9010

-Pentium 90Mhz overclocked to a 100Mhz (just by changing the FSB with one jumped back when there were crazy jumpers on mobo's haha)

-812MB Seagate HDD

-40MB of RAM (odd numbers I know)

-Cirrus Logic GD5434 1MB Video Card (SciTech Display Doctor helped me run VESA 2.0!)

-Boca SE1440 14.4kbps Modem with onboard sound 1 channel output

-Mitsumi 4x CD-ROM Drive

YAY! :) I loved that thing

John

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