What was your first computer

Mine was a Sinclair ZX81 (one of the first mass produced home computers in the UK), bought by my Dad in, you guessed it, 1981 for £70. Those of you who are too young to remember it or just never owned one, it had a staggering 1k of memory and a clock speed of 3.25 MHZ. We eventually upgraded the Ram to 16k via the expansion port at the back, but anyone who ever owned one of these packs will tell you, that it was the most hated and cursed piece of equipment ever manufactured in the history of computing. Two or three hours of coding, and then, all gone, Noooooooooo, the dreaded RAM pack wobble, God I hated that RAM pack, the slightest movement, the wind blowing in the wrong direction, a full moon, was enough to crash the system and lose hours of work, enough to make a 13 yr old boy cry like a baby.
God I loved that computer.

My first one was a 286 based system with 5.25" disc and 20mb of harddisk back in 1990 or the like

Amstrad CPC464, 1986.

Unless we're including consoles, then it'd be an Atari 2600, 1981.

I vaguely remember a Commodore from dad, waiting on a game took forever, and that's all I remember apart from the game Pitstop and Pole Position. Conscious computing began with an MSX1, then MSX2, currently MSX2+, and a OneChipMSX (FPGA machine) is on pre-order. First PC was a 486 DX2/66.

Amstrad CPC 464 in 1989

ZX81

ZX81 too, my 16k memory pack was held on with velcro
technology eh lol

ZX81... Solved the rampack problem with Araldite, I had the memotech ram pack (much more stable than the official sinclair one) which continued the expansion port out the back of it so you could plug in extra stuff after it.

C=16plus4 and I've still got it somewhere in the loft.

Commodore Vic20 in 1983

TI-99/4A

Atari 500XL

LOAD "Commodore 64",8,1

Ready.
SYS16384

First I played on was Uncle's Dragon 32.

First I owned was a ZX Spectrum 48k.

Ah yes the old man had a ZX81 shortly after they were released. He had the kit version which saved you a few quid but required soldering. I only have 2 memories of it.

1) Some text adventure where you had to pick a small chap up with rubber gloves, otherwise you would die for some reason.

2) Getting excited about the 16K ram-pack because you could then play space invaders.

First computer that was actually mine, a CPC464. King of the 8-bits. Still reckon computing was more interesting back then.

At school a Commodore PET and at home a C64.

Amstrad PCW8256

Vic-20

First one I used was a TRS-80 Model 1 down at the local Radio Shack.

First family Pc for us was in 1988 - Ibm XT 8086 4.77Mhz (10Mhz Turbo) 640k RAM, 2 5.25" Drives, 20MB Hard Drive & Dos 3.21, CGA graphics with a 'orange-scale' monitor (not grey-scale they seemed to come in either orange or green back then) (with GWBasic which is where my programming experience started). Last time it was used/seen by me was in 2003 - my favourite games on it were Hero's Quest (which became Quest For Glory 1) and Might & Magic 2 (which took me 4 years to complete because I failed to check a single grid square in the entire world map in a particular dungeon - although my characters were ludicrously powerful after 4 years of 'grinding' through levels - spells doing multiple tens of thousands of hitpoints of damage, knights with 10000-15000 hitpoints - the only problem being that the 'protection from magic'/'elements' spells looped from 255% effective to 0 at high levels meaning I had to hire 'lower' level characters to cast these spells.)

First computer that I owned myself was some PC Pentium 2 or something. First console was either a second hand Atari 2600 or ColecoVision with very unusual controllers.

Me and Bro saved up all our hard earned cash from paper rounds and odd jobs and with the outstanding amount paid for by our parents we went into town and got hold of a brand spanking new Sharp MZ-80K... must have been about 1980 or so... wow.. 1/4 of a century ago !

Mine was a calculator type thing, followed by a C64.

1988 - Amstrad PPC-512

the monochrome screen was great until anything on screen moved, this made playing games like Digger and Jason Jupiter a challenge until we got a proper monitor.

Well, I started out with a TI-99/4A back around 1985 or so, then my first REAL PC didn't come until the 6th grade (circa late 1992 - early 1993), which would be a local-brand 386 DX-40 PC, not even sure if it was Intel-based at all... Ran Win 3.1, DOS 5.2 - 6.0, something like that...

My first was a TRS-80 Model 1 with 4K of memory and Level 1 BASIC back in 1979. Quickly upgraded to 16K memory with Level 2 BASIC. Oh happy days!

Learned how to program from the manual and a magazine called 80 Micro-Computing.

C64

Oric-1, I was a rebel back in those days.

Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K

MSX - 3.4Mhz, 64Kb RAM, 16 colors, 3 sound channels... it blew away the competition at the time ;)

I just love MSX - I still make games for it :) :)

As for consoles, I had an Odyssey2 as my first ever gaming machine... I lost a lot of time playing "Attack of the Timelord" :)

We were poor and my parent's couldn't afford to buy me one when I was a kid. So I had to wait until I joined the military. I then proceeded to buy myself a 386SX 25 Mhz! Weeeee!

God, I had that experience... I tried making a game on a 286, with an EGA card (4 colors), monochromatic monitor, a pc speaker and BASIC (it was the machine I first actually worked on)

All the flickering on the screen was making me crazy... and all I could think was why PC didnt have hardware sprites like MSX - and every 2D console - had =)

First (and last) console: Atari 2600
First computer: Apple IIc

Slotman! Small world_ :D

Zx-81 too but then my dad brought home a 32K BBC-B, so he bought me a zx-spectrum to get my off the thing..

He only 50% succeded basic programming was more interesting on the BBC (and it had a disk drive) :)

You mean evil CGA, a choice of (@320x240):

Palette1-Cyan Magenta black white
Palette2-green red black yellow
Palette3-Cyan red black white (on some cards otherwise it used pallette1)

EGA had the same exact palette as text mode (16 colors) and a 640x480 mode.

ZX16 with a 32mb ram upgrade to 48k. Didn't do much with it. Truth be know I probably used an Amstrad CPC464 before that, borrowed from my uncle.

Borrowed a ZX81 from a friend, my first computer was a Spectrum 48K. Oh the fun I had coding a battleships game in basic..... I think the tape's still knocking about - whats the odds it would work - 23/24/25 years old ???

My mum bought me a ZX81 for Christmas, I moaned, she swapped it for an Oric 1 (ping! zap!), I complained, she swapped it for a Spectrum 48K, I was very happy.

Amstrad 464 CPC with a green screen monitor.

Locomotive BASIC rulez! ;)

happy days! :)

Dabz

Mine was a Commodore VIC-20... Ooooh... a whole 3k of ram... those were the days ;)

Vic20 - 1982. 3.5k of ram quantum. don't sell it short. :)

LOL... ooops!... yep! your right!... how could I have forgotten it ;)... sorrrry lolol

I had a Vic 20. You could plug cartridges into it wiht game son them.

I also had a tape drive connected to it. You put actual cassettes into it to load games and stuff. Took about 20 minutes to load a game.

vic-20 here, followed by a C64, Amiga 500, Amiga 1200 and then I picked up an A600 for virtually free.

First PC was a buggy/faulty Cyrix 586 based thing which would give all sorts of errors when trying to install MS Office and was really slow at Quake.

Upgraded to an Intel 200MHz something-or-other. Then replaced with a K6-2 350MHz machine. Gradually upgraded the graphics to, eventually, an nVidia card which was one of the first 2D/3D boards.

Various upgrades later and I'm where I am today. The Amiga's are long lost and WinUAE does a better job of being an Amiga than my real Amigas ever did.

Vic20 here too - although I did have the 5K RAM expansion, so I could play all the really big games. :o>

Commodore 16 ( not the Plus 4. )

Flameduck was that the red one with the switch

I bought a 5k expansion too at one point but I could never get it to work.

Ah, 5k and 16k RAM expansions - reminds me of the times when every byte really did have to count. Not like todays bloatware. :/

TI-99 4A - Extended Basic rocked!

the first i joint owned was a commodore 16+4 me and my brother got between us.

the first i owned myself was a c64 then onto the amiga 500/600/1200 then a pc(reluctantly) as i loved my amiga 1200.

kev

My First Console was a brick like thing. I had 2 games, Smurfs and LadyBug. That was back in 1984.

My mum then bought us an Atari 2600 and eventually moved on to a C64. After that it was a Snes.

Then it was a 486/DX266 then a Pentium 60 then a Pentium 100 tyhen a Pentium 133 then CPU Speeds rocketed, Voodoo Cards died and..........

The first computer I ever used was a TRS-80 model 1 at my schools computer lab.

The first computer I bought was a Vic-20 in 1983 and six months later I bought a C-64.

I made a fair amount of pocket change off of the C-64 writing little games and selling them to Compute's Gazette and LoadStar.

Anyone remember those?

First console i owned was an acetronic, shared with my brother.
First computer i owned was a c64.

I started late with an Atari ST1040. It had 1 Megabyte Ram, an 8 MHz (that's Megahertz, for the younger :) ) CPU, no harddrive and only a 3.5" floppy drive. Omicron Basic and GFA basic were pretty good. GWBasic and QBasic on the PC was a huge step back.

spectrum 48k then an Amiga 1200. then a P75 oh god that was slow windows 95 oh what fun :OP

The first computer I purchased myself was an Amiga 2000, 17 years ago.

But I first taught myself programming in GW-BASIC in 1988, on one of these:

4.77MHz, 512KB RAM, 10MB HD, 2-color CGA display without backlight, built-in printer (printing to rolls of thermal fax paper)

Dell Dimention 2350

Hmm, never heard of Wang, looks like a high-end Brother or Smith Corona to me.

Colour Genie, 32k Z80 Machine, sort of a TRS80 knockoff with better sound, had hires graphics, but they where awfull so most games where written using custom character set generators.

Resulting movement was one char at a time, the Hong Kong company that made it, EACA, went bust about a month after buying it, but what was cool is there where bugger all games for it, so as a kid me and a couple of others had to write most of our own.

It's emulated in MESS by a guy called Juergen Buchemuller, who amazingly enough wrote most of the commercial games with it way back when.

The rich kid across the road had an apple ][e, lucky scumbag, playing wolfenstien (The original), and aztec amongst others.

Good days.....

Wang Laboratories was an American company, founded in '51. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories

They made calculators and word processors and the likes before venturing into computers. That particular laptop was an XT which ran DOS. Only PC I've ever seen with a keyboard that went up to F16...

An Amstrad cpc464+green screen bought for the Christmas of 1985 for £199.95 by my parents(god bless there cotton socks!)

Mine was an Acorn Electron. I can't believe the amount of time I lost playing Elite.
I used to play to Elite rating and then start again from harmless. Total madness, especially as there were no missions in this version, the most powerful weapon you could get was a Beam laser, no witchspace and no Thargoids.

Chronological order:
1986: Amstrad 464 - Green screen monitor
1988: Amstrad 6128 - Colour Screen!
1992: Amiga 500+
1994: Amiga 1200
1997: 486 DX33
1999: Zenith P133 Laptop
2000: AMD 500Mhz K6-2
2002: Athlon 1.4Ghz
2004: Athlon 2400+
Present day: Athlon 4200+ dual core, 2GB RAM, 250GB HD, Nvidia 7600GT 256 Gfx, 22" widescreen TFT monitor, 20Mbit cable internet connection.

OMG. I love moores law.

I got both my first and second computers the same year, 1981, when I was six:


First computer:


Second computer:



The TRS-80 was black and white and used a tape drive. My dad got it for free. I think it took something like 30 minutes to load checkers, and only about one in ten times the tape would load properly.

The Ti99/4A cost about $600 back then which was probably like $1200 in today's dollars, and could display 16 colors with sprites that had one color each. Games came on cartridges though there was a tape drive to save your basic programs which never seemed to work right.

ZX Spectrum 48K - 1983.

Oh yeah, the TI-99/4A was quite powerful, made some rather decent programs and games in TI BASIC, too. There were times when I was hoping that I could convert TI BASIC to more modern code like in Blitz or C++, but that would take too long, since the structure was so old, that it would almost lose me in the translation.

Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K - Those were the days... :)

Atari 400 with 16K and cassette drive, followed by almost every other Atari computer and perhipheral there ever was (printers,plotters,tablet, remote joysticks, disk drives, Muppet keyboard, RS232 controller, monitor etc).

I still have most of them too - although I ditched the STFM and the STE along while back.

The best 2 compuetr books I ever bought "Mapping the Atari" and "Atari Arcade Graphics and Game Design" - I still have both here - brilliant.

IPete2.

Atari 800 with 48k Ram, and casette drive. Looking back the load times were terrible (but who cares) for games like Zaxxon and the like but what fun I had... and the typing in the programs from Compute! magazine and such. Those were the days. :-)

Sinclair ZX81 with 1K RAM, later expanded to 16K.