What was your first computer?

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  • twistsol
    Veteran Member
    • Dec 2002
    • 2893
    • Cottage Grove, MN, USA.
    • Ridgid R4512, 2x ShopSmith Mark V 520, 1951 Shopsmith 10ER

    What was your first computer?

    I was trading war stories with some of the IT folks at work and reminiscing about old technology.

    What was your first computer?

    Mine was and Apple ][ with 16k of RAM, a 1 Mhz 6502 8 bit processor, no lower case, and no disk drive. When I finally gave it up, it had been upgraded to 64k, two floppy drives and had a Pymar lower case adapter added.
    Chr's
    __________
    An ethical man knows the right thing to do.
    A moral man does it.
  • BigguyZ
    Veteran Member
    • Jul 2006
    • 1818
    • Minneapolis, MN
    • Craftsman, older type w/ cast iron top

    #2
    Mine was an old 386 DX that my dad let me use when he upgraded to a 386 SX. I don't remember the specs, but I just remember playing Montezuma's revenge on it.

    My first real computer that was truly mine was an AMD Athlon based computer that I built myself and took to college. I don't remember the specs though...

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    • bmyers
      Veteran Member
      • Jun 2003
      • 1371
      • Fishkill, NY
      • bt 3100

      #3
      Heh, C= Vic 20.. WITH the datasette, woo hoo \0/

      Quickly moved on to the Commodore 64. When I was finished upgrading that it had a SCSI hard drive.

      B
      "Why are there Braille codes on drive-up ATM machines?"

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      • Neal
        Established Member
        • Apr 2012
        • 181
        • Williamstown, WV (Mid Ohio Valley)
        • Ryobi BT3000

        #4
        Funny you should bring that up. My dad and I were cleaning out our office recently and he stumbled across the invoices from the computers he first purchased for our company in November 1986

        Carnus (sp) AT 640K
        1.2 Meg Drive
        1 Floppy Controller
        43 Meg Hard
        360 K Floppy Drive
        Color Card
        Sony Color Monitor, Doss System.

        All this for $5,200

        As a kid in the early 80's we had an Apple II+ that only typed in all caps. We had word processing software, which you had to use [Shift][N] to capitalize words. This is how I learned to type, and it took a while to adjust my typing so every word to be capitilized didn't start with a capital "N".

        Then when I went to college, my graduation present was a word processor/type writer do dad. Thing was like a cinder block. Had a computer keyboard and a small screen to type your work. A 3.5" floppy drive to save your work. When ready to print, you had to feed a sheet of paper at a time.

        I wore it out writing papers and stuff.

        My first job in 1993, I had to BEG to get a functional PC with quatro pro installed so I could better do my job. only when there was a surplus one at the company did I land one (it wasn't new by any stretch!)

        A far cry from my smart phone (which has more computing ability than that first workstation my dad purchased in 1986) and my iPad. And far less than the desktop I use at work today.

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        • woodturner
          Veteran Member
          • Jun 2008
          • 2047
          • Western Pennsylvania
          • General, Sears 21829, BT3100

          #5
          Originally posted by twistsol
          What was your first computer?
          Mine was a homebuilt 8008 microprocessor based system - state of the art for 1970 lol.

          Later on, I built a 6502 based system, and later on when the KIM-1 became available, got one of those.

          Moved on the Apple II when those came out, then upgraded to a Southwest S/09, then PCs after that.
          --------------------------------------------------
          Electrical Engineer by day, Woodworker by night

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          • lrr
            Established Member
            • Apr 2006
            • 380
            • Fort Collins, Colorado
            • Ryobi BT-3100

            #6
            A home built 386. A friend and I were in San Francisco area for business and visited a little Asian shop and bought motherboards, cases, monitors (monochrome) and a few other components, and had them shipped home. We then bought everything else we needed at Fry's Electronics -- video cards, disk controllers, we even bought ribbon cable and connectors and made our own cables!

            I seem to recall spending a fortune for a 40MB disk drive. The RAM was $400 -- $100 each for 1MB SIMMs!

            I also hoarded AOL free disks since I backed up the HDD on floppy. Norton Backup would compress backups and put 2MB on a single 3.5" floppy -- just 20 floppies to backup your PC! (DOS of course, this was pre-Windows.)
            Lee

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            • jdon
              Established Member
              • Feb 2010
              • 401
              • Snoqualmie, Wash.
              • BT3100

              #7
              S-100 bus CP/M OS, 4 mHz Z80A, 64k RAM (a screamer at the time ).

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              • Black wallnut
                cycling to health
                • Jan 2003
                • 4715
                • Ellensburg, Wa, USA.
                • BT3k 1999

                #8
                I'm not sure how to answer this. In college I learned on both mainframes and dos based desktops in a computer lab for some business class, perhaps business communication but really it was long ago....1983. I had a close friend at the time that let me use his Kaypro 2000 which was the "other OS" and probably did as much computing on it as the other two options at the time.

                Then I mostly left them alone until a brother gave me his old Win 3.1 pc. 1998ish. That lasted a couple years at most but never was online with it.

                When that died we were loaned a Mac notebook and got a dial-up connection. That was about the same time as I bought my BT3K, 1999 IIRC. In 2001 we finally bought our first new pc. Not fast with not much memorey...iirc 128 mb ram intel processor and WinME.
                Donate to my Tour de Cure


                marK in WA and Ryobi Fanatic Association State President ©

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                • dbhost
                  Slow and steady
                  • Apr 2008
                  • 9209
                  • League City, Texas
                  • Ryobi BT3100

                  #9
                  Ti 99-4a, quickly followed up by an Atari 800XL that I used for years, up until Windows 3.1 and a 486 CX2-66 clone that a friend of mine and I built when I was in college.

                  I am currently running an Octo Core AMD box with 32 GB RAM and 2 TB HDD, and sometimes I miss the old Atari...
                  Please like and subscribe to my YouTube channel. Please check out and subscribe to my Workshop Blog.

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                  • gtoye
                    Forum Newbie
                    • Mar 2003
                    • 19
                    • Carrollton, TX, USA.

                    #10
                    Trs-80

                    My first computer was a TRS-80 Model I purchased by my Dad when they were first released. I was a freshman in High School at the time. Working on that machine led me to my current career as a software developer.

                    The first computer I purchased with my own money was a Commodore 64 system I used throughout much of college.

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                    • Egar
                      Forum Newbie
                      • Mar 2014
                      • 7
                      • Minnesota
                      • Ryobi BT3000

                      #11
                      Originally posted by bmyers
                      C= Vic 20.. WITH the datasette, woo hoo \0/
                      For those who didn't get the C=, that's a Commodore computer. My first computer was also a Vic20 also. The standard Vic 20 had no way to import or save any of your work -- everything was typed on the keyboard. When you turned it off, everything was lost!

                      After a few months, I got the pricy (almost as expensive as the computer) cassette data storage option. That was so painfully slow, you were just about better typing everything in again.

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                      • JSUPreston
                        Veteran Member
                        • Dec 2005
                        • 1189
                        • Montgomery, AL.
                        • Delta 36-979 w/Biesemyere fence kit making it a 36-982. Previous saw was BT3100-1.

                        #12
                        I guess my first computer was one of those little Timex systems that I got used at a thrift store. No external storage, and it hooked up to an RF adapter to the TV.

                        My first DOS based computer was a Wyse 286 12 (maybe 16) MHz. 1 MB Ram, with 20 and 40 MB MFM hard drives. Had 5 1/4 floppy. CGA card and monitor. I bought it used from a guy at my university to run Finale on. When I figured out that I couldn't run the software on that machine, I built a 386DX-40 using a barebones kit from Computer Shopper (the THICK one!).

                        Of course, I used an Apple II and Mac in school, but didn't own those.
                        "It's a dog eat dog world out there, and I'm wearing Milk-Bone underwear."- Norm (from Cheers)

                        Eat beef-because the west wasn't won on salad.

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                        • frumper64
                          Established Member
                          • Feb 2004
                          • 376
                          • Garland, Tx, USA.

                          #13
                          A TI 99-4A (home computer). Not much of a machine but I thought it was pretty cool at the time.
                          Jim
                          64sedan_at_gmail.com

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                          • atgcpaul
                            Veteran Member
                            • Aug 2003
                            • 4055
                            • Maryland
                            • Grizzly 1023SLX

                            #14
                            I had an 8088 with something like a 4.77MHz processor that my dad bought in 1982 or 1983. He used it for word processing (Wordstar). We bought it from a family friend who sold PCs for a living. I don't remember how much my dad paid, but it wasn't cheap. At one point, we even upgraded it to include a 40MB harddrive and maybe 1MB RAM--probably for the cost of a nice iPad or something.

                            When he got a laptop from work, I inherited it in 1990 or something when I started high school. Probably around that time I got my first modem and connected to Compuserve and another local BBS for a little bit.

                            I actually brought that computer to college in 1993 and upgraded to a 486 that year. Our dorm was the first dorm on campus wired for Ethernet. I donated that first PC to my HS computer teacher.

                            It's funny what we take for granted nowadays regarding computer technology and the internet. My freshman year I figured out how to use gopher to connect to different universities across the world. In a week's time I had penpals on all 7 continents. It was fun, but horrible for my grades.

                            Paul

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                            • JimD
                              Veteran Member
                              • Feb 2003
                              • 4187
                              • Lexington, SC.

                              #15
                              I had a timex sinclair computer. I wired in a "real" keyboard to replace the film thing and I used a cassette deck for storage. A TV was the monitor. It worked but didn't work anything like todays computers. The family never used it.

                              Next was an Amstrad. It was English and the power supply for the computer was in the monitor. It had a 8086 or 8088 processor and two 5.25 inch floppys. My late wife could never insert a floppy disk and make it work. The kids were little but I made them bootable disks with their educational games they could use fine. But she couldn't. She finally used it after I added a hard drive and peeked and poked it into the operating system.

                              I also had a Tandy portable I think might have been an "80" or something like that. It ran on AA batteries and had about 8 lines of text with a keyboard under it on the front. I added a spreadsheet to it on a chip. Accoustic couplers could be hooked to a phone to send email at 300 baud. I actually still have it in a box somewhere. I think it still works.

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