What was your first computer ?

[mwillett]

My first computer was a Packard Bell 386SX25 with 2 meg of ram & a 40 meg hard drive. Windows 3.1 just came out not long after I bought it pre-loaded with Windows 3.0

[chilly55]

My first computer was the powerful Commodore 64. Loved playing that Jumpman game. My first Windows PC was a self built 286-12 mhz. 40 meg hard drive with a 5 1/4 floppy. Soon upgraded to a 3 1/2. Had a whopping 4 meg of ram at the time. Whoopie!

[trackmaker]

In 1980, A- TRS80 Color Computer from Radio Shack w/4k (yes 4k) of memory, tape recorder storage, (later upgraded to 16k of memory) connected to family color TV set. Had to teach my 3 kids to code in "BASIC".

[Boxster2001]

Altair 8800B Full Panel (kit), 48K static ram, (2) 8" single sided, single density Pertec hard sectored floppy drives, SOROC IQ120 RS232 terminal (they were drinking beer when they named this one, guess which one), Qume Dasiwheel printer.It changed my life. The sales guy (Altair Computer Center of Ft. Worth) took a phone call while I was checking it out. Turns out he was looking for a computer tech. The guy who called was a TV repair guy and didn't know digital from dirt, whereas I had just gotten out of the Navy with a bunch of radar tech training and experience which included things like Boolean Algebra, analog and digital computers, and the marvelous little IC's generally referred to as 7400 series TTL. To make a long story short...-Hired on as a part-time PC tech in Ft. Worth-Moved to the Dallas store when the Ft. Worth one didn't pan out-Taught myself to program & wrote a word processor called "QuickType" that was the standard for the Pertec PCC2000 that replaced the Altair after Pertec bought out MITS.-Became half-owner of that store-Moved on when Pertec went under, but did some contract development including a mouse/macro driver for Act! DOS-Ended up going to the company that bought Act! where I continue today as a project manager for their security and problem solving software.All because I happened to be standing there when the phone rang.Today I run an Alienware Area 51, but I sure wish I'd kept that old Altair.

[bdavis]

First computer used: Commodore 64First computer owned: IBM PS/1 w/ 386, 2 mb RAM; 20 mb HDCurrent computers: Dell Latitude P4 1.8 Ghz, 512 mb RAM; 30 gb HDDell Inspiron P3 1 Ghz, 256 mb RAM; 20 gb HD

[shirleeac]

My first computer in 1981 was an Atari. Didn't do much--you had to know how to program in Basic to get it to go anything. Graduated after that to a Sanyo which at least had a very basic word processing program. Seven computers later I'm still trying to frustrate myself with them

[deebee]

The first computer I logged into was in 1970. A DEC PDP/8 located at the University of Calgary with terminals in a trailer at my high school. User programs were stored on paper tape.The first computer I purchased was an IBM XT/8088 clone puchase in the early 80's. If emeory serves, it had a 40 MB hard drive. It the standard 5 1/4 inch floppy. People said I had wasted my money when I added a 3 1/2 inch floppy as well.The case on the XT eventually housed a 286 then a 386 system. Finally upgraded the case when I went to a 486 - no cache on the motherboard - turn it on, go make coffee, pour yourself a cup and it might be finished booting.......

[Grasshopper]

First used:Apple IIe's in Computer Science class in 8th grade, 1986, about the time of the Challenger accident.First surfed net:In college, 1995, doing some research for a paper.First computer purchased:Gateway P5-200, March of 1997

[epp_b]

My First Computer:-IBM 386 (not sure what speed the processor was, but it wasn't fast)-4 MB RAM-260 MB Hard Drive-Ran Windows 3.1 fairly wellMy Current Computer:-ECS K7SEM with onboard everything (video, 64MB, audio, LAN, USB, CNR for modem...)-AMD Athlon XP 1300-512 MB SD 133 RAM-Runs Windows 98SE quite qickly

[kentwood]

my first computer was a used trs-80 model 3. it had 16mb ram and a cassette tape drive. i upgraded to 64mb (max) and two 5 1/4" floppies. i had about $2500 in it. i bought it from someone who had just bought a brand new ibm pc with 256mb ram and two floppy drives (no hd). he paid over $5500 for it.my current pc is a p3-866 with 512mb ram and 40gb and 30gb hd (self-built).

[snoepie]

At the time my parents got married, they started their computer-hobby. As a result of their marriage they got me and as a result of their hobby they collected a huge pile of computers. Infected with the same virus I "played" them all. The very very old ones are (and all still in working condition!):Sinclair ZX80 (with a "no keys" keyboard)Commodore Pet 4032Osborne1 (the first portable)Commodore 64 (the one I used the most as a little girl: the first game-machine, we still have about 800 5 1/4 game-disks; do you remember "attack of the mutant camels"?)Apple IIePhilips P2000C (which I used understanding CP/M)Furtermore a bunch of old 8080, 8086, 80286AT, 80386 and Pentium machines.My very own first machine was an AT, my current computer is a self-build and self configured P4 3Ghz with Asus P4PE board, Plextor CDRW, WD-HD 80Gb & Seagate-HD 40Gb, Geforce V8420 graphics/128Mb, Gigabit Ethernet, Iiyama monitor, HP-laserjet and ADSL-connection.I'm very curious about the future of computing. I think the PC coping with all the present tasks is "out" and will be replaced by dedicated machines. Currently I'm experimenting with removable harddisks. One dedicated for multimedia, one for the internet (unsafe browsing!), one for my e-mail work and letters, one for gaming and in the near future one for Linux. It cost me only a few euros on harddrives and it looks like I own all different machines!But what I want now most (a nice cup of tea) no computer can give me!

[curtcalhoun]

Two answers on first computer:1 - first one I used/programmed a REAC Reeves Electronic Analog Computer (you didn't say Digital Computer ) 2 - first owned computer a Wang 620Present latest of four is self built P4 2.4 GHz w 533MHz FEB, DVD+R/RW, CD-R/RW, 800 GBytes HD

[plkrp]

My first computer was an IBM PCjr with 64k of memory and a 5.25" 360k floppy drive running MS-DOS 3.0. It also had a wireless keyboard also known as a "Chicklets" keyboard. I guess this was because the keys looked like pieces of chicklets gum. The monitor was a 12" b&w TV.Oh, I forgot to mention that it had NO hard drive. MS-Dos fit on one of the 360k floppys. I think it's still around here somewhere.....Now I have a P4 2.5 ghz, 512 meg of ram, 80 gig HD machine.

[John Pulliam]

Hi zox! Thanks a million for that information! Your second guess turned out to be exactly what was causing my problem! Even though I had made sure that all of my KMixer settings were turned all the way up, I still had no sound UNTIL I found another mixer called Aumix in the KDE menus and turned its settings all the way up. Suddenly, I have sound!!! So, why do both Aumix and Kmixer have to be turned up in order for there to be sound? BTW, I was glad to see that CUPS is the default printing system in MDK 9.1. In MDK 9.0, the default printing system was still LPN (??), and I never got that to work, so I had manually switched to using CUPS in 9.0.And does anyone know how to enable 3D graphics acceleration in MDK 9.1? It was on by default for my system in MDK 9.0, but it's off in MDK 9.1. TuxRacer stutters along slowly and horribly in MDK 9.1, and I can't find any settings in the Mandrake Control Center to enable 3D acceleration.

Be careful!!!! I ran Mandrake 9.1 on my 1.2Ghz Tbird system, and it killed my monitor--TWICE!!As best as me and my Linux guru can figure, we think that the nVidia drivers for my GF2-200Ti killed my KDS Avitron 19" monitor. If the system went to sleep, and came out of sleep mode, the monitor went "pop", the screen compressed into an hourglass, then went black. ANd it died IDENTICALLY on both the first monitor ANd the second RMA one. We think that sleep mode (APMS enabled in BIOS) shut down the monitor, then when the "restore" signal came from the mouse, the driver told the card to send the wrong video mode to the monitor, taking it out of range, and killing a weak component.So be careful, all I gotta say. ;-)

[henderrob]

My first was a Radio Shack computer that used your TV as a monitor. Then I took a big jump to a 386SX20. Then I had a 486DX2/66 that I upgraded with an AMD586 faux Pentium chip. From here I got an AMD K6-2 450 then a Duron 950 and now I think I've finally arrived with an AMD 2100+ (1.73GHz). I've done pretty much all the upgrading by trial and error. (Lots of error!!!)

[tgeddes]

My first computer was a DEC PDP 9 with paper tape input and output (no disk drives or Mag tape) in 1970. I had to enter code with a teletype (that punched out paper tape). This tape was then read by the PDP 9 along with a compiler tape. A binary tape was then punched out by the computer. This was then fed back in along with library tapes of routines and then the program began to run (this was around 20 minutes after feeding in the first tape). Of course if you then found an error in your code you had to begin again! It took a lot of patience.I later moved up to a PDP 15 (an 18 bit machine) with DEC tapes and then a PDP 11 with floppy disks - it seemed like heaven.These days I use an Athlon 1800 with Windows XP and a Pentium IV 1.8 GHz with Windows 98 SE but there have been an awful lot of steps in between!

[AndyBurns]

I bought my first own computer in 82, an IBM-PC with an extra 8k memory (bring it up to a total of 16k) so I could accommodate a FORTRAN processor. It boasted two (full height) 360K disk drives and ran on PC-DOS 1.1!Buy my digital machine computation experience began in 1958 with the (large room full of) IBM 650 when the introduction of FORTRAN allowed working engineers to expoit "modern" machine computation without the intercession of that tiny priesthood to which access was previously reserved (tho I do owe a debt to one of those "priests" who provided much helpful nursing services in those days when the only available diagnostic routines consisted of comparing output to manually computated results).

[lunatiq]

It's almost funny how there's such a spread of experiences here. It's pretty clear that most folks jumped into PC's when they were getting popular .. but there's still a good number of "old timers" too :)First computer I got to toy with: Texas Instruments TI-99/4A with a color monitor, a HUGE expansion chassis (could hold like 8 cards!) with a floppy disk drive!First computer I learned to program in BASIC with: Apple IIe.First computer I got of my own: Commodore 64 + tape drive and modem. This got crazy over the next several years. It ended up as a C=64 with:o the FastBus II adaptor (I think it was called that, it had an IEEE-488 interface and two other ones I can't remember). Attached to this IEEE-488 port was two Commodore 4040 disk drives (dual 5¼ disk drives, each storing 1.2mb, total of 4 disks).o two 1541 disk drives (360k 5¼ disks, single sided)o two 1581 disk drives (1.44mb 3½ disks)o Hayes Smartmodem 2400all this running homebrewed BBS software I built myself using some assembly and mostly basic ... you wanna talk about peeks and pokes, how about the "sys" calls to actually jump to assembly code machine language? ;)o Dual SID chips, yes, I had stereo MOD-file playback and the tunes people made were great (All those linear power supplies actually kept my room warm in the winter .. turned off the radiator) That was my first overboard computer. Getting a 300 baud (not bps, but baud) modem with it originally .. that changed my life and I've been big on computer communications ever sense :)Notables I've had over the years:Commodore 128 ... 80 columns on what was essentially a TV screen? My eyes hurt. And my friend with his Apple IIGS made me jealous as **** On the other hand, the VCR hooked up perfectly to that Commodore monitor!Leading Edge PC/XT ... with that 20 gig Seagate ST225 that they made a gazillion of (and boy was Norton Utilities useful then! Not like today when it's eye candy.) 640k RAM! Hercules monochrome 720x480 video! Capable of two shades of grey: halfway bright and full bright!Someone I got to know had an actual working minicomputer the size of a three-drawer filing cabinet with "Mohawk Data Systems" on it. The back of the unit had this huge 18" hard disk with smoked plastic cover. You could see the 4 platters inside. The motor that actuated the heads was the size of the motor that drives the radiator fan in most midsize cars! YEESHZenith 286 ... best D*** keyboard I ever owned. The PC was a total piece of junk. I enjoyed torching it some years later with gasoline and an M80 :)AMD 386's .. and an AMD 486DX2 running at *gasp* 120 megahertz! HOLY COW THAT WAS FAST! Intel never got beyond 100MHz.AMD's Pentium competitor -- the NexGen chip, that was the first to have a heatsink so big it was scary. You could heat your house with it! And floating point performance was worse than a slide rule!I've most always had Intel CPU's so don't flame me for liking AMD, because I have also always had AMD cpu's around. My current setup:1.5mb/384k DSL, a Linky wireless switch router, and a Netgear router (I have two IP's). Home server is Athlon 1800+ with 384MB PC2100, Voodoo3 3500TV, mirrored 80gb Maxtors, 20gb WD Caviar, running Win2k/Apache2/Mercury/Squirrelmail and two NICs. Main box is an Athlon 2600+ with 512mb PC2100, dual Maxtor 40gb ATA133's on a motherboard-based RAID controller in striped mode (WOW is it fast), GeForce4 Ti 4200 32mb, SB Live!, DVD burner, pre-modded case window with blue-green electroluminescent rope light and a HUGE orange vantec CPU cooler with all fans dialled down to get rid of the Rolls Royce Jet Engine noise feature

[quint]

Lunatiq, welcome...what a great history lesson!

[johncampanale]

The first unit that I played with was an Exidy Sorcerer specs:Computer: Sorcerer Brand Exidy Incorporated CPU Z80 4MHz Memory 16 Kb-64 Kb O.S. Basic, CP/M Year copyright 1977 Additional information uses ROM Packs connectors:parallel serial video (some models do have a UHF modulator) microphone/ear for cassette recorder Expansion bus (for S-100 expansion unit) graphic resolution 512 x 240, text 64 x 30 disk drive expansion (optional) 77 tracks, 16 sectors, 256 bytes/sector (315-Kb) hard sectored It used ROM pacs for basic and word processor and such,pics of one are here Exidy Manual The first one that I purchased was on 8/28/91 for a 286/12, 2 meg memory, 1.2 and 1.44 floppies, 90meg HD, 2400 baud modem, 256k video card, dos 5.0. windows 3.1 (not even 3.11)--it was fast at that time, you could do memory tricks to make it faster than some 386's(real vs. protected mode) The price was $1122.00 and it was a deal at that time. Brings back memories, I still have the invoice for it.And now my currect system is a P4-2gig with 60gig HD, burner, 512meg memory, Cable modem. Now that is a change from the beginning, PS>> I had a timex sinclair with the 16k expansion pack on the backJohn Campanale

[johncampanale]

The first unit that I played with was an Exidy Sorcerer specs:Computer: Sorcerer Brand Exidy Incorporated CPU Z80 4MHz Memory 16 Kb-64 Kb O.S. Basic, CP/M Year copyright 1977 Additional information uses ROM Packs connectors:parallel serial video (some models do have a UHF modulator) microphone/ear for cassette recorder Expansion bus (for S-100 expansion unit) graphic resolution 512 x 240, text 64 x 30 disk drive expansion (optional) 77 tracks, 16 sectors, 256 bytes/sector (315-Kb) hard sectored It used ROM pacs for basic and word processor and such,pics of one are here Exidy Manual The first one that I purchased was on 8/28/91 for a 286/12, 2 meg memory, 1.2 and 1.44 floppies, 90meg HD, 2400 baud modem, 256k video card, dos 5.0. windows 3.1 (not even 3.11)--it was fast at that time, you could do memory tricks to make it faster than some 386's(real vs. protected mode) The price was $1122.00 and it was a deal at that time. Brings back memories, I still have the invoice for it.And now my currect system is a P4-2gig with 60gig HD, burner, 512meg memory, Cable modem. Now that is a change from the beginning, PS>> I had a timex sinclair with the 16k expansion pack on the backJohn Campanale

[CHiP2sum]

Wow, I didn't think anyone had even heard of the old DIGI COMP - 5 I built one of those when I was very young--in the late 50'sI think it was. I had to save for a long while to scrape upthe $5 or so it cost at the time.I got it all built and functional and then discovered that I had no clue what it was doing I dragged out the hardback book that came with it and satdown to learn binary math.The next computer I used was an IBM 360 at school.That put me off on computers for quite awhile Next was the infamous TRS-80 as I was working at Radio Shack at the time I got to play with it quite a bit and discovered a "Star Trek" type game that could be input viaBASIC and then saved onto a cassette. That was fun and alsodiscovered that by setting a small AM radio next to it while thegame was running you suddenly had AUDIO ! Got quite a crowd watching in the store everyday--the manager loved that! I then was given a portable type that had a z80 and 512k ofmemory.I finally bought a used 486sx 25MHz with 4MB RAM and an80MB hard drive.I have built quite a few and still have the last 5 the most recentof which is an ABIT with an XP-2100 and Corsair Memory and ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500DV which I use for gamingand converting my camcorder movies into divx digital formatand then burning to CD. Oh yeah--also as a Tivo type device.

[siebkens]

Gateway P-100 w/Win95 in 1995. Just retired it after many upgrades, overclocking, recasing, etc., etc.Kinda boring, I know, but I'm a relative newcomer to this computer stuff.

[dlopan]

My first was a IBM 1620. (common isn't it). Me and 2 of my friends put one together in high school from recycled parts from LANL. (lasl at that time).They gave it to the school in large chunks. We got the manuals and put it together as our electronics project. Loads of fun.My first owned computer was a TI 99 4/a, I still have 2 expansion boxes in my garage. Their for sale if you want them.I got rid of that in 84 and bought a Mac 128 (k that is).Since then I've had every IBM (original and clone).I had a chance years ago to buy a 4341 IBM mainframe for cheap (10k)http://www.angelfire.com/or/paulrogers/Ibm1620.htmlthe link is a picture and history of a 1620. ours didn't have any fancy stuff, drives, paper tape, cards, printers..

[Dale Ray]

In seventh grade (1967) we had a terminal in our math class for 1 day. It was connected to some kind of network (wire plugged into wall) and used punch tape. We actually got to add on it.First computer I owned was a Commodore 64. Now have self-built with Athlon 1700+on a GigaByte 7DXR+ motherboard.My Toshiba Pocket PC is 300 times faster and has 1,000 times as much memory as the C64.

[rick5127]

Great idea! The first computer I ever bought was a Tandy Radio Shack Model 4P, the portable version of the "Trash 80."The first computer I used as a daily driver was the TRS-80 Model III. The Trash-80s used an OS called TRS-DOS. It was pretty simple, but not all that different from CP/M or PC-DOS/MS-DOS.Prior to that, though, I used just about every computer available in 1982-1984 timeframe, including Commodore 64, Apple II/e, earlier Trash-80s, IBM PC, IBM PCjr, Atari, Color Computer, Kaypro, and many others. My first publishing job was for small publishing company that offered magazines specific to all these individual computers. Our company worked out of an old farm house and converted barn, and we had computers everywhere. I was just a bit late to the party to claim I was into it early enough for the Timex Sinclair, HeathKit, or any of the other very early computers.  -- Scot

Well the first computer I ever worked on was an IBM 1440 circa 1965 or so ... ye ole punch cards etc. Then worked mostly on custom computers for A-6 aircraft courtesy of Uncle Sam and the United States Marine Corps. In the Seventies played with many.. but mostly stayed with Apple II, I even had a hard drive for it and in those days that was a big deal. hehe. Had some TI 99's that used cassette tapes for storage, 300 baud accoustical modems, oh and in the early days... 8K of memory... and I upgraded to 64K for a small fortune. lolLets see ... left the Apples sometime around the 80's to pc's from then on. Owned most processors even spent some time with a PDP-11 system... dont ask. lolNow have Dually system, dual Pentium III 1.4ghz tualatins, raid hard drive system, running 4 monitors for a large desktop, 2-19"ers and 2-21"ers at the moment. 2 gig of ram etc etc..Having fun still playing with hardware and software although I dont program much any more.

[Fuddster]

Lesseee,First, I ran through the Commodore line: Vic20, C64, C128, C128-D, Amiga 1200, Amiga 4000.Then came a used IBM PS/2 55SX machine. After that, they were all PCs that I built myself, in addition to other folks leftovers that I took in trade for working on their machines.Definitely more than my wife would like to see around the house...

[PupuleHaole]

My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81 Kit, 1982. Soldering it together was a lot of fun. I used it at work with a Basic program to spit out the answer to an environmental test routine. Went a little overboard, subscribed to several mags for it, added an external chiclet keyboard (didn't like the touch pad! ), cash register tape printer. Still have it in a drawer in my file cabinet.Next was a 486-25 that I had built for me at a local garage-a-tronic shop. That was in 1991.I've built several since, actually upgraded that original one to the one I'm using now. Only the laser printer from that first one is still in use.Now I've built a K7S5A with a 1900XP cpu. I've had no problems with the MB. But heat is a huge problem in the Arizona desert! --John

[Denali]

Lesseee,First, I ran through the Commodore line: Vic20, C64, C128, C128-D, Amiga 1200, Amiga 4000.Then came a used IBM PS/2 55SX machine. After that, they were all PCs that I built myself, in addition to other folks leftovers that I took in trade for working on their machines.Definitely more than my wife would like to see around the house... 

Hi All,Just stumbled onto the Forum so this is my first time posting. Please excuse any faux pas.My experience is very similar to fuddster's. However, my interest in computers really started with (yes, I do remember) the WANG OIS 130 with it's 64K NETWORKED (who knew what THAT was way back then?) workstations and decentralized printers and the HUGE (18" diameter with a 6" hub) 5, yes five, megabyte harddrives. Used the WANG at the office and was System Administrator by default, back in those good old acoustic coupler 300 BAUD modem days. Did lots of WANG BASIC programming and decided I needed something like that at home.So I looked into the Timex Sinclair, the original TRS-80 and some others I can't recall at the moment. I found that the Commodore VIC-20 fit my budget the best. Later, after much scrimping and saving, I added RAM and, of course, a cassette tape drive.After that I pretty much followed the same path as fuddster's with the addition of the C=16 and the SX-64 which I used for presentations at User Group meetings.Regressing a little, I did see EXCEL running on a MAC and decided I had to have that program. After much searching I found the MS spreadsheet for the C=64 and made do with that until (Remember?) the Bridgeboard became available for the Amiga 2000 which allowed the Amiga to run "IBM" software.Anyway, I was President of the Anchorage Commodore User Group for many years and became the only Authorized Commodore Dealer in all of Alaska.I mention all of that because I want the reader to understand that I was dragged, kicking and SCREAMING into the wonderful(?) world of "IBM compatibles" and exist there today. Remember the short lived IBM PC, Jr.? well I WAS smart enough to NOT buy one of those thanks to a constrained budget. So I Used a Commodore built 386 PC until I purchased a Toshiba Infinia desktop with my CompUSA employee discount in 1995.Today I use an HP 7865. It's pretty much stock except for some extra (256M) RAM and a new ATI 9100 video card. One of these days (I retire, again, at the end of September) I may get around to assembling my own PC from components but I keep hoping and praying that someone will bring back the Amiga OS so I can pickup where I left off with the Amiga in 1995.Does anybody remember the Commodore CDTV? http://amiga.emugaming.com/cdtv.htmlI'm sure that I'm having a "Senior Moment" and forgetting somethings, but thanks for asking and making me remember "The Good Old Days.'

[Guest Loque]

First computer was an Apple II C. Then moved to the PC's and have had a bunch of them, mostly clones. I think I'm addicted.