What was your first computer ?

[ebrke]

On 4/15/2020 at 7:48 AM, raymac46 said:

Some of us go all the way back to IBM 360s, FORTRAN, punch cards, job control lots,dot matrix printing. All that means is that we are older than dirt. We've learned a lot...and most of it doesn't apply anymore.

Ah, yes, I remember those days well. Some of us go back even further:

IBM 1130

My first tech-related job was keypunch at an engineering and construction company using FORTRAN on an IBM 1130.

 

[raymac46]

I remember a 200 statement program I wrote in FORTRAN that would not compute, no matter how many times I checked the logic. A friend discovered I had punched one statement out of alignment by starting it in the comment field. All he did was look at the deck under a bright light where the misaligned card was obvious.

[saturnian]

On 4/5/2003 at 5:48 PM, Bruno said:

Actualy wanted to start a poll, but then what choises would you give ? So I started a normal thread;What was the first computer you've ever owed ? The box that got you interested ?And what is the latest one you got today ?Mine was a commodore 64 with tape deckGot a self-build K7S5A sis735, AMD 1700+ these days, (and two old P1)Bruno

 

I didn't get my first "real" computer at home until 2001! It was an eMachines with Windows XP.

 

My early exposure to computers was back in the 70s, with some classes I took in high school and one year at college. Took a few programming classes -- loved those, and that planted a seed, turned out to be important when I got started with Linux. But I dropped out of school and didn't have much to do with computers until the 90s, when I went back to school for a bit and worked a series of office gigs. I was never very knowledgeable about computer hardware or the IT side of things, and I don't recall what types of computers I used for school or work back then as far as names, specs, etc., but that's how I started using computers again before I finally got my first home computer later.

 

Now I run only Linux on 5 rather low-spec old laptops, nothing to brag about. The newest one:

 

HP Notebook 15-ba015wm
HDD - 500 GB; RAM - 4 GB; CPU - AMD Quad-Core E2-7110
Running Kubuntu 19.10 since 10-26-19

[Bookmem]

My first computer came in kit form.  It was Z-80 based on an 18" sq board that I had to solder all the parts on.  Had an amazing 2K bytes of static RAM and 4K of eprom.  Had an addtion 2k eeprom socket for burning your own ROMs.  I/O was 6 7-segment LEDs and a 20 key keypad.  External storage was via an audio cassette recorder that recorded at 300 baud.  I actually used it program eproms for a black box I built for Hibernia National Bank.  Way back then, all Interantional Letters of Credit were transmitted via Western Union Teletype machines using 5 bit Baudot code.  The bank had just purchased fancy new Wordprocessing Machines that used 2 8" floppy drives.  CP/M OS and wp software on one floppy and data saved on the other.  They transmitted and received at 9600 Baud.  My black box took the output of the WPs and converted the data from ASCII at 9600 to Baudot at 150.  And vice versa.  Had a lot of fun building it!!!