Your first computer? (NOT what you have now)

[Casper]

Just chatting to Matty about our first computers and I thought it would be an interesting thread

This was mine: http://oldcomputers.net/kayproii.html

My dad actually sold these for a while and he gave me one.
Sad huh?

[Dez]

thats a beast...

the first i remember was a 386....then went to a 486....woo hoo!

[neb]

http://oldcomputers.net/c64.html

this was the first one i had... lots of fun playing on the good old commodore 64

[*rayman*]

what a beast!!!! only $1795 bucks too.... imagine what it's worth now... either a mint, or not worth sh!t.

I had a vic 20 for my first one, then the c64.... oh the days of waiting for games to load from tape..

[stiddy]

Hey im Matty as Casper calls me.. Resonably new to this forum..

My first computer was an IBM PS/1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PS/1

Im only 20, and i got the computer around 1990-91 so for me its old lol not sure about some of you oldies out there tho :

thanks,
Matt

[Casper]

Originally Posted by Dez

thats a beast...

the first i remember was a 386....then went to a 486....woo hoo!

pfft, I had an XT and then a 286 before then.

[Captain Stubing]

My first computer was one I built from an electronics magazine when I was at high school! The project was called 'Dream 6800', and I had a friend who redesigned the circuit for the tape drive (to save programs onto a standard tape deck).

I had to program it in hex, and it had an 18 key keyboard.

I just found a copy of the circuit I used to build this new-age gizmo!

Dream 6800

[loxxr6]

I've had a c64 - the games on that were awesome, atari 2600(not really a computer tho) and I think the earliest pc i remember was an 8088(processor? and pre 286 era) with bugger all ram and i think a gigantic 20meg hard drive if I recall correctly.

I remember ram used to be so expensive and now it's at the stage where damn graphics card are an arm and a leg.

[paul7v7]

mine was an old Tandy XT. No harddisk just 40k of memory 2 5 1/4 disks and monochorme monitor. After that:

286
Pentium 100
AMD K62
Celeron 500
2 x AMD 1ghz thunderbirds
1 x AMD 64

[Dez]

Originally Posted by Casper

pfft, I had an XT and then a 286 before then.

I probably had a 286 as well...the 386 is the first 1 i REMEMBER owning...my dad always had a few PC's around though

i remember mario brothers on the commodore 64. lol

[Lukeyson]

386 19mhz, 2mb ram, 72mb hard drive, it was a performer

[RED_EL_XR8]

Originally Posted by Casper

pfft, I had an XT and then a 286 before then.

XT with a HDD. Luxury!! Remember the 1981 PC the upmarket ones had 2 Drives with those tiny 5¼" floppies and the whole 64Mb of RAM. The NEC APC-03 used the more conventional 8" Disks.

First computer I could call my own was a Trash-80 Model 100, that a bag of tools and a battery powered CRO 10Mhz CRO you could fix anything.

[smciner1]

Originally Posted by neb

http://oldcomputers.net/c64.html

this was the first one i had... lots of fun playing on the good old commodore 64

Yup, still got one of those lying around somewhere. Doesn't work though.

[AUII_Forte]

http://oldcomputers.net/appleii.html

Mine was actually an Apple IIe. Picked it up second hand from my school at the time. Looks very similar to the one above only it had a monitor with it. Thems were the days!!

I then upgraded to a 386 running 8mHz, 1mb of ram and good old Windows 3.1.

Then in 2000, in an attemp to get me to knuckle down at school, Dad bought me my first 'real' computer. It was a PIII 450mHz, 64mb of ram, 17in monitor it was pretty shit hot back then.

Now I have an AMD Athlon 2500+ 1.83GHz, 256mb or ram, DVD player, CD burner nothing flash, but does me. The best bit is the 1500mbps ADSL!!

[MrQuan]

Radioshack kit. Had a Z80 CPU! Used to save my programs on audio cassettes. Monochrome monitor.

Programming was in BASIC. Graphics were simply ASCII, but I also had extended ASCII too! 512 characters whooaaaa!!! haha


Later had an AppleII and an IBM 5151 of the same era. CGI colour graphics!! OMG!!


Then I progressed to 386s, 486s, Pentium 100... etc etc

[Captain Stubing]

I bought an "old" computer around 1982/3, using money I earned while on school holidays...

Older Computer

It even had a Green Screen Monitor! No black and white for this model!

[RED_EL_XR8]

Anyone that never worked on an early 80's mini has no idea why they call HDD failures DISK CRASHES!

More metal shavings than a 2nd hand T-5 explosion.

[Captain Stubing]

Originally Posted by RED_EL_XR8

" ......., that a bag of tools and a battery powered CRO 10Mhz CRO you could fix anything.

Hey Red_EL_XR8, I've got a CRO that I bought for forty bucks about 20 years ago. I've worked out it was made in 1966, still works... I don't know if it makes the 10 MHz, though!

[MrQuan]

Originally Posted by RED_EL_XR8

Anyone that never worked on an early 80's mini has no idea why they call HDD failures DISK CRASHES!

More metal shavings than a 2nd hand T-5 explosion.

hahaha

I remember the 40Mb HDDs - How will I ever fill that up?!!

[niko]

486, back in 95' with 32mb ram, 400mb hdd, 14" crt, SKUZZY cd rom!!!!, i remember the board brand, VESA lol

[RED_EL_XR8]

Originally Posted by swanny

Hey Red_EL_XR8, I've got a CRO that I bought for forty bucks about 20 years ago. I've worked out it was made in 1966, still works... I don't know if it makes the 10 MHz, though!

If it did it would have been worth half your house in 1966.

[MrQuan]

and I thought my 8MHz was pretty hot :(

[Polyal]

I remember my dad bringing home an orange screened Wang (I think that was the brand). No games, and just a shitty dos interface to type with. A the good ole days..lol

Then I think we upgraded to a green screen..haha

[RED_EL_XR8]

Originally Posted by MrQuan

hahaha

I remember the 40Mb HDDs - How will I ever fill that up?!!

These disks were 2-10Mb and needed two to slide them into the chasis, the Minis were about the size of a small fridge. The drive actuator for the disk head had a shaft about ½" thick.

Man I am old...

[Psycho Chicken]

Jesus, 5.25 floppies, I feel old just looking at them!

[Ray]

I got my first PC back in '95... a 486 DX2-66. 4MB ram, 512MB HDD, 2x Cd rom... man, I thought it was the bees knees back then, since most of my mates had 386's...

then one of my mates got a pentium 90 and I was outdated again :(

[Peuty]

GOOOOOOOO the SKUZZY drives LOL.

[Psycho Chicken]

We had a few things, I know there's a C64 about somewhere, first thing I remember was a 286, that hung around until we got a 486. Then the Pentium 133 came along, with a whopping 20 meg of ram, 4 speed CD ROM, 1.5 gig hard drive and Windows 95!

All this MMX (?) stuff came and went, Pentium 2 and 3 came, finally got a 800 Celeron (shudder) in 2001. 18 gig HD (it's the back up drive in this thing!), 16x CD ROM, 128 meg of ram (I later chucked another 256 in it). That finally died at the start of last year, got this thing, buggered if I know what's in it, I don't even keep up with computer stuff anymore, I just use the thing.

[Captain Stubing]

Does anyone remember the Winchester disk drives... the disk's must have been 40cm diameter... I saw them at the QIT in Brisbane. I don't think they had much of a megabyte rating.

Apparently you could get in serious trouble when removing the disks when they where still spinning.. centrifigal forces took hold.

[outback_ute]

First computer was a Tandy TRsomething that plugged into the TV, although I had used a computer at school before that. We had 2 computers come to the school for a day, we each got to use one for about 3min! No idea what it was though.

My great aunt learnt some programming on the first computer at Melbourne Uni that took up the whole floor of a building.