Your First Computer

[hopmedic]

So Mary Jo Foley posted a blog about her first PC, so I thought it would be neat to hear about others' first PCs as well.
Thirty years ago: My first computer was an IBM PC | ZDNet

My first exposure to a computer was in 1981 when my middle school obtained two Bell + Howell "Black" Apple ][ computers. They were more Apple ][+ than Apple ][, but didn't carry the plus designation. The difference was the language. The Apple ][ used Integer BASIC while the ][+ (and the Black Apple) used Applesoft BASIC. I was in love.

Of course, I couldn't get my parents to buy me a computer, so I would use it during lunch, study halls, and occasionally stay after school. In the summer, the school system moved all of its computers to the school system's Media Center Service Center, which was one of the old elementary schools that was no longer used as a school. My parents would drop me off in the morning and pick me up in the afternoon. Yeah, I was 100% geek.

I don't recall if it was 1983 or 84, but we picked up a Commodore Vic 20, had that for a few months, and then traded it in for a Commodore 64. I was in heaven. I had my own computer. It was even better when I got rid of the tape drive and got a 1541 Floppy Drive.

While I was in the Navy, it was four years of not touching a computer, but when I got out, I built a 286, my first PC. :smile:

 

[jmshub]

In the mid 80s, my grandmother worked in the data processing department of the local hospital. She was my first exposure to computers, and she had a computer in her house. This amazing device, an Amiga 500. I lived next door, so I was over there all the time, tinkering with it, playing games on it, and messing stuff up from time to time. She'd never get mad at me, she would just make me fix it to the way it was, however long it took. I tinkered for the first time with AmigaBasic, and I played the crap out of this Joan of Arc game. It was so epic. A few years ago, I ran an Amiga emulator and got hooked on this game a little bit again.

The Amiga was handed down to me when she switched to an IBM compatible PC, and then a few years later, my family got a 486 DX2 running at 66 MHz. That was my computer through high school until I built my first PC, with an AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.0 GHz.

 

[hopmedic]

In the mid 80s, my grandmother worked in the data processing department of the local hospital. She was my first exposure to computers, and she had a computer in her house. This amazing device, an Amiga 500. I lived next door, so I was over there all the time, tinkering with it, playing games on it, and messing stuff up from time to time. She'd never get mad at me, she would just make me fix it to the way it was, however long it took. I tinkered for the first time with AmigaBasic, and I played the crap out of this Joan of Arc game. It was so epic. A few years ago, I ran an Amiga emulator and got hooked on this game a little bit again.

The Amiga was handed down to me when she switched to an IBM compatible PC, and then a few years later, my family got a 486 DX2 running at 66 MHz. That was my computer through high school until I built my first PC, with an AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.0 GHz.

Wow, from 66MHz to a Gig - that's quite a leap!

Never touched an Amiga, but since you mentioned games, those that I recall at the moment are Ghostbusters and Lode Runner, though I know there were a lot more. Back in the days before I knew (or cared) about copyright, we had a computer "club" which was essentially a bunch of people who would meet a the public library one Wednesday night a month, bring our computers, boxes of blank disks, and lists of what software we had to "offer." We'd go from table to table with blank disks, getting the person who had the game we wanted to make us a copy of it. Not proud of that now, but it is what it is.

 

[jmshub]

I skipped the whole hundreds mhz, and the pentium and p2 era! My dad's work situation was a little tough while I was in high school, so I made due with the 486. The 1 GHz chips were just coming out when I had my own money and my friends and I got into the computer show scene and all built PCs.

 

[Guytronic]

In 1995 at the age of 42 I bought an IBM setup from Staples in Auburn CA.
The whole thing cost $1800.00.
Included:
Tower, IBM keyboard, IBM mouse, pretty good IBM speakers.
15 inch crappy monitor.
Some kind of weird NEC printer (Olivetti) that broke down right away.
...and my favorite Windows 95 (this began the tormented and expensive relationship with Microsoft )

I spent hours and hours surfing with a 56K modem on Netcom dial-up (surfing back then was like trying to get the last squeeze out of a tube of toothpaste)
We dearly loved computing back then.

 

[hopmedic]

I spent hours and hours surfing with a 56K modem on Netcom dial-up (surfing back then was like trying to get the last squeeze out of a tube of toothpaste)
We dearly loved computing back then.

Yes, we did. There were times when I'd leave my computer online all night long to do a download that I can now do in under a minute.... Only to find in the morning that the connection had dropped and I'd have to repeat the exercise that day, leaving the PC online while I was at work. Thank God for unlimited AOL at the time. :grin:

 

[Guytronic]

Yes, we did. There were times when I'd leave my computer online all night long to do a download that I can now do in under a minute.... Only to find in the morning that the connection had dropped and I'd have to repeat the exercise that day, leaving the PC online while I was at work. Thank God for unlimited AOL at the time. :grin:

:smile:
I remember at work we would all complain about AOL.
It was eventually renamed "SOL" because of it's slowness ...

Man thems was the days.
Cracks me up anymore when folks complain about inadequate tech.
So glad I was around semi early in the game.

 

[aitt]

I had a Tandy that had Windows 3.1 can't remember the model but this was probably back in 92-93 ish

 

[azcruz]

Radio Shack Color Computer

Sent from my LT25i using Tapatalk

 

[hopmedic]

I had a Tandy that had Windows 3.1 can't remember the model but this was probably back in 92-93 ish

I didn't realize Tandy made a Windows PC. Huh.
My first exposure to Windows was a 3.1 PC that we had at the volunteer fire department that I was a member of, and we used it to create/print (no database back then) our fire reports, and of course to play Legend of Kyrandia or something like that. :wink:

:smile:
I remember at work we would all complain about AOL.
It was eventually renamed "SOL" because of it's slowness ...

Man thems was the days.
Cracks me up anymore when folks complain about inadequate tech.
So glad I was around semi early in the game.

Yeah... I was a paramedic at the time that I was on AOL, or AOHell, as we called it. Remember chat rooms on AOL? I used to be found every evening in one called "EMS Chat". Oh - and then there was VP - Virtual Places. Good times..........

 

[Reflexx]

My first computer was a Commodore 64 with a 1541 disc drive. I was about 11 or 12 yrs old. I mainly used it for playing games and learning Basic programming. I also did some desktop publishing. I kept that until I was about 16. Then I got an Amiga 500 that I used for pretty much the same stuff, but I also added some multi-media to it with Video Toaster. I also liked how it came with a speech synthesizer. When I was using the Commodore 64, I liked playing with S.A.M. (synthesized automatic mouth)

I bought my first PC when I was in my mid-twenties. It was an IBM Aptiva. 166 mhz. 2 GB hard drive. I spent about $3000 because I bought a 21" monitor. I bought it to learn 3D Studio MAX. Though I ended up using it for games a lot too.

 

[xandros9]

Some old white Packard Bell.
It packed Windows 95, a 133 MHz Intel (I believe) and a 10 GB Hard drive.

Until I broke Windows by deleting system32 among other things, I wish I was kidding. (I was young!)

Yup, I'm not as old as a lot of people here.

 

[1MoreFord]

Kaypro PC XT Clone. 8mhz NEC 20 (Intel 8088 clone), 768K of ram, with a 20 Meg hard drive running MS-DOS.

 

[hopmedic]

Some old white Packard Bell.
It packed Windows 95, a 133 MHz Intel (I believe) and a 10 GB Hard drive.

Until I broke Windows by deleting system32 among other things, I wish I was kidding. (I was young!)

I had a PB at one point... I think I bought it around 97, IIRC. 133MHz, 1.2 GB drive, and I think 512 MB RAM. Never had another PB after that.

Yup, I'm not as old as a lot of people here.

I'm not sure how to take that...... :wink:

 

[QwarkDreams]

I don't remember the brand but it had an Intel Pentium CPU (I think the Pentium II with about 300MHz). I really wasn't into the details back in the day (just in the middle of elementary school), heck, I didn't even know about the internet!

 

[neo158]

My first computer was a Packard Bell with a 486SX processor and 8MB RAM. If you want me to go further back than that then it would be the BBC Micro.

 

[Laura Knotek]

My first experience with computers involved dumb terminals connected to Unix servers. The public library where I worked in the mid 80s ran Dynix.

 

[gedzum]

Wow quite a few Packard Bell's here. PB was also my first PC and it also ran Win95. My next PC was actually another PB that ran Win Vista that I recently updated with new hard drive and Win8. Now I moved to building my own.

 

[Laura Knotek]

Wow quite a few Packard Bell's here. PB was also my first PC and it also ran Win95. My next PC was actually another PB that ran Win Vista that I recently updated with new hard drive and Win8. Now I moved to building my own.

It's interesting that Acer acquired both Packard Bell and eMachines.

 

[N_LaRUE]

My first experience with a gaming console was Pong but this was my first computer:



For those who don't know what this is, it's a Timex Sinclair 1000, circa 1982 first 'home' computer.

At school we got these:



Commodore PET circa 1977 - yes it was around this time that I used them too.

The first computer I ever bought.



Atari ST 512 circa 1985

The first IBM PC I ever bought. Was ridiculously expensive.



IBM PS/2 circa 1987 (Windows 3.0 - circa 1990, which was put on this machine eventually)