I remember how proud I was when I bought it for something like $3 grand....a Compaq Intel 486 at 33 Mhz with 8MB Ram! The internet...what the heck was that?? It was running DOS! Can't recall the hard drive size....but was around 100MB if I recall correctly. What was your first pc? :)

hmmm, TI something... It's been a while. That was followed by an 8088 (Tandy 1000 I think). :)

the year was 1987 i was six years old and my dad bought an IBM PC-XT clone. Thats right 8088 processor (8.125MHz?) 640kb of on board memory with no RAM, 2 5.25 floppy drives and a 3.5 floppy drive, internal 20MB HD, EGA video card (16 beautiful colors), external 1200bps modem (yep there was internet in 1987 although it was all text based), and MS-DOS.

Total rockage

built 486 dx2 50mhz with 32 meg ram, 1 gig harddrive got it second hand, then proceeded to upgrade every 6 months til my current rig, athlon 64 2800+ oc'd to 2.4 ghz, 512 ram, 250gb hd

This (http://oldcomputers.net/vic20.html) was my first computer. It along with my second computer, the Commodore 64/128 (http://www.softwolves.pp.se/cbm/rt-ev-recension/pics/c128.jpeg) is at my dad's house...and they both still work. ;) :D

Same with neueryche, i think my parents have a picture of me playin on the keyboard ( i was 5/6). I think my dad still has his in storage.

An IBM PS/2. CGA Graphics and 512KB of RAM. Splurged for 2 3.5" Floppy Drives which, at the time, was like having a Dual-64-bit-CPU setup today. Copying Disk-to-Disk on 3.5s was like the coolest thing in the world and virtually unheard of. It ran DOS but I also had Windows 1.0 (the only version to date that I've actually legitimiately owned) which offered little over DOS at the time and even Word 1.0. It had an add-on 20MB Hard-Drive that, as I recall, was close to $1,000. And the whole thing cost as much as a decent car at the time.

To this day its' keyboard was one of the best I've ever had. Weighed a ton, probably a good 5lbs, made of stamped steel with heavy keys that gave a lot of feedback. And that computer ran reliably forever. I used it daily for over 10 years.

oh yeah that computer cost something like 5000 dollars

A trs-80. this was like, 1980. We spent $400 on an expansion chasis to hold 16 k of ram. Floppy drives were looked at like a hard drive today.

Second was an atari 800.

Wifes first waw an apple II, followed by an IBM 8088.

My favorite is still the amiga. So far ahead of its time.

Macintosh Classic - 9" B&W screen. External Floppy that never worked.

In 1986, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, with 48 KILObytes of memory, from which 8K was reserved for the display :D
I still have it... great little toy. Even have a floppy drive for it which was actually a big thing at that time. Tons of cool games too (all pirated of course).

first computers i ever used was an apple II, in school, used to write programs for it in basic, this was back in 83-84, and my neighbors texas instruments ti 99

Radio-Shack TRS80. Powered by the amazing Z80 processor. I got the "expanded memory" -- a whopping 16 kilobytes of RAM. And the LEVEL2 BASIC in ROM, the BASIC interpreter was copyright by none other than Microsoft! I loved taking programs and seeing how tight and fast I could make them. Absolutely horrid code, but it was fun. I had a basic program where all the work got done in 1 line. I'd tokenized every command to 1 character and the line had some monstrosity If-Then-Else loop with like a dozen nested IFs, 10 NOTs, 8 ANDs, etc... Totally impenatrable, but oh-so-fast :p Later I did some Assembler. That was fun too -- the manual gave you the number of processor cycles and time in microseconds for each mnemonic instruction. I'd taken a BASIC program that originally took 48 hours to run; squeezed it down to about 4 then rewrote it in Assembler and it ran in 5 minutes. Lol, this was still a period where it was expected that we'd all become programmers to use our "personal computers".

Before you laugh about how far we've advanced -- the TRS80 "booted" in about 1/4 of a second.

The first computer I used was an old IBM AT 286 I think. I mostly played adventure games on it or messed around with Windows.

The first computer that was considered mine was a 486 with a generic Trident VGA card. My dad bought that one for me though.

The first computer I bought with my own savings was a PII 233 with a Matrox Millenium. Much slow Counter-strike was played on that machine...

The first computer I bought with my own money that I earned working at this crap hole I call a job is my current computer. I'm due for a hard drive storage upgrade. I'm thinking about getting some SATAII drives. I'll test out the whole RAID thing when I do that.

Computers!!?? I don't tuch the blasted things!

But I got my abacus at the age of 3. That counts right?? :D

Radio-Shack TRS80. Powered by the amazing Z80 processor. I got the "expanded memory" -- a whopping 16 kilobytes of RAM. And the LEVEL2 BASIC in ROM, the BASIC interpreter was copyright by none other than Microsoft! I loved taking programs and seeing how tight and fast I could make them. Absolutely horrid code, but it was fun. I had a basic program where all the work got done in 1 line. I'd tokenized every command to 1 character and the line had some monstrosity If-Then-Else loop with like a dozen nested IFs, 10 NOTs, 8 ANDs, etc... Totally impenatrable, but oh-so-fast :p Later I did some Assembler. That was fun too -- the manual gave you the number of processor cycles and time in microseconds for each mnemonic instruction. I'd taken a BASIC program that originally took 48 hours to run; squeezed it down to about 4 then rewrote it in Assembler and it ran in 5 minutes. Lol, this was still a period where it was expected that we'd all become programmers to use our "personal computers".

Before you laugh about how far we've advanced -- the TRS80 "booted" in about 1/4 of a second.

Kewl, Mine was the exact same thing. Love them trash 80s. BTW, Wrote my own CAD program on it. I could use the arrow keys to draw shapes, color them, and then create other objects and save them as shapes.

Still have the less than 100 line source code.

What took so long was the tape backup (it was a real cassette tape) YUK.

It was around 94-95 when Pentium went out on the market, it was like a 60 Mhz processor had 16 MB ram, a giant 512 MB HD (that I was told I would NEVER be able to fill up). It was totally top of the line, paid about $2700 for it I believe.

This (http://oldcomputers.net/vic20.html) was my first computer. It along with my second computer, the Commodore 64/128 (http://www.softwolves.pp.se/cbm/rt-ev-recension/pics/c128.jpeg) is at my dad's house...and they both still work. ;) :D

me too!

remember that bruce lee game? and kung fu?

What took so long was the tape backup (it was a real cassette tape) YUK.

tape backup is still cassettes...and still dreadfully slow.

my first computer was a 486 dx33 (onboard math coprocessor baby), 8mb ram, 1meg video card, no sound. no cdrom. 3.5" floppy. highschool graduation gift. i think my dad bought it for around $800.

upgrades in order: 8-bit sound card, then a blazing 4x cdrom, then a 100mhz dx4 upgrade chip, then a 4mb VLB video card (cost a small forturne), then i got serious...motherboard, 133mhz 586 AMD chip, with 16mb ram. can't remember the upgrades after that...been too many to remember.

First Computer was an Atari 800XL

First PC was Pentium 233 Mhz with 1.2GB, 32MB RAM, and 16MB S3 Trio Virge video. I organized my files properly since disk space was an issue.

Texas Instruments TI 99/4A A stainless beauty. I had it running from 82 -2002.

Loved that machine, damn it , now I'm going to have to pick one on ebay...

Couldn't afford the Apple's of the Time,

Later I got Used Apple IIe and then a Commodore 128

Atari 400 (what was it... like 1.79MHz? 6502 chip or something?), then 800, then an Amiga.

I miss the days when you actually had a grip on what the OS was doing. I miss Poke and Peek. Sigh.

My favorite is still the amiga. So far ahead of its time.

I used an Amiga ten years ago, to run Toaster and render NTSC animation.

It would run for 2-3 days just to render 60 seconds of video!

I loved that machine too. (back to ebay...) :D

EPSON QX-10. Paid $3K for it. Now the processor can be found in my microwave oven. :(

me too!

remember that bruce lee game? and kung fu?


Commodore 64 for me also.


....remember the game Jumpman?

here you go scarroll

http://www.99er.net/ti.shtml

I don't remember much more than it was a Zenith with a 16 color screen, one 5 1/4 drive, and the only things I used it for were word processing and my only game was one to practice typing on.

The hard drive was very cheap and small, because I never ever used it.

Commodore 64 for me also.


....remember the game Jumpman?

yep had that one too! forgot about that one. that game was sicky sick :D

first one i used was the apple IIe, the first one we got was a 386, then a 486 about a year later, then a 133mhz Pentium Compaq, after that I started building my own machines....my current desktop is a P3 copermine 933MHz 1gb ram, 2x 120gb 7200rpm HD for storage and a 40GB 10000rpm for booting. SBLive, Nvidia GeForce4 256mb Running windows 2000 server.

I just got a laptop, 1.8ghz centrino, 1gb ram, 80gb 5400rpm HD. windows xp pro

they both do me good

I don't even remember what it was, but I was 5 at the time :(

Next one I remember was a 286, followed by a 386, then a 486, P133, then a cool PII300, those are the coolest looking of the processors.

Texas Instruments TI 99/4A A stainless beauty.


Me too! I got VERY hi-tech and added a tape-recorder to record programs. :) Then an Atari 800 XL with add-on Floppy drive.

20 years ago, 8088 (Leading Edge was the manufacturer I believe) 10mb HD, 5.25 Floppy, Hercules graphics. Played first MSFS. Later built 80386, been building ever since (3ghz P4 now)

Kewl, Mine was the exact same thing. Love them trash 80s. BTW, Wrote my own CAD program on it. I could use the arrow keys to draw shapes, color them, and then create other objects and save them as shapes.

Still have the less than 100 line source code.

What took so long was the tape backup (it was a real cassette tape) YUK.

Lol, I wrote a game that kept the high scores on the same cassete as the program. A little routine that would write some dummy data to sync the tape and then the score records. I figured it was too clumsy to work, but it did fine. When developing a program, I'd keep adding revisions to the same 120-minute cassette. If you left enough blank space between them, you could use the little tape counter to locate the version you wanted.

me too!

remember that bruce lee game? and kung fu?
Yep, I remember those games. Don't forget Beachhead and Load Runner. Oh and Qix. :D

Commodore 64 for me also.


....remember the game Jumpman?

I had a TON of games for the C64. A lot of them were more fun, in their way, than games now. Just of the top of my head

Elite - maybe the best computer game of all time
Boulderdash - spent endless hours trying to min/max some of those levels
Drol - an odd little game, fun play and also humorous, the name was perfect
Ultima III, V (VI?) - fantastic graphics-oriented adventure game I got the music playing in my head now. I got a 2nd floppy drive so I didn't have to keep switching diskettes
Flight Simulator II - I kept crashing, which led me to read "Stick and Rudder", and then go on to learn to fly for real.
Chuck Yeager's Flight Simulator -- fun to race the other planes. Chuck would come on to chastise you.
Qbert - maddening but addictive
Qix - I could make it freeze the machine
Under The Root - a unique game that I got with (ahem) no instructions. After considerable mucking about my friend and I figured it out and had a lot of fun. Trying to parse what the game was about added immensely to the game play. They should have sold it originally without the instructions.
Jupiter Lander - like the old Atari "Moon Lander" arcade game. There was one "cavern" where you couldn't land because the file had become corrupted and there was "surface" floating around. I hacked the program to find where it was. Each time I had to boot up the game and fly into the cavern to see what the results were. Hovering above the debris trying to jot down info before the fuel ran out. Great fun.

Yep, I remember those games. Don't forget Beachhead and Load Runner. Oh and Qix. :D

Oh yeah, I forgot Lode runner. We had a level-editor and put the little dude into some awful situations :)

TRS-80, then a TI 994A with the box that held the "cards" for the printer and monitor etc. which were about the size of 8 track tapes.

I always wanted the bally astrocade. And the coleco adam, even though it failed and took the company down with it, it was advnced for the time.

A friend of mine didn't want to spend the bucks for a TRS-80 so he bought a "Sinclair" -- a computer for under $100. It had 1K of memory and no way to store programs. We had to type it in from scratch each time. It would typically overheat and freeze just after we'd finished typing. We took to sitting it on top of a bowl of ice. Shortly thereafter he picked up a C64. I scoffed at the machine because it only held 40 characters on a line. I was still stuck in "program the thing" mindset, and the color graphics and sound didn't seem to be a big deal. WRONG! - In its day it was the biggest-selling computer on the planet.

In 1985:

AT&T PC6300.

8086 chip, running at (I think) 4.77MHz.

Dual floppy drive; no hard drive.

640K of RAM

$3000

Commodore 64 here... Go Bard's Tale and Ultima!!! Oh yeah how about everyone's favorite game Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy... 'You wake up and everything looks blurry. You try to stand and suddenly feel a wave of nauseau. Your head is pounding. What do you do next?'

I had a TON of games for the C64. A lot of them were more fun, in their way, than games now. Just of the top of my head


Probably because about the same resources are given to games by their producers, but much more of it now is put into the graphics engine and ragdoll physics. Most modern games have lost their concentration of great level design and creating fun for the player.

Commodore 64 here... Go Bard's Tale and Ultima!!! Oh yeah how about everyone's favorite game Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy... 'You wake up and everything looks blurry. You try to stand and suddenly feel a wave of nauseau. Your head is pounding. What do you do next?'

It's all coming back to me. The text-based games were terrific. HG2G, the Zork series... My favorite was one called "Suspended". You're in some kind of deprivation tank and can only interact with the outside world via several robots. You're trying to get them to release you. The interesting twist was that you could give each robot specific tasks that could take many moves to complete. So they are all in the middle of some activity at any given time, and getting them to "cooperate". "Scheduling" the tasks so they were completed in the necessary order was very interesting.

I got an Osborne, and then got the kids a Commodore 64. I used to tune my piano by generating pure tones on the Commodore and working the string tension until it was beatless against the tones. Once I got the first octave done the rest was easy. I still miss Wordstar.

Altos 586 running Unix (Xenix, actually), in 1983, I think.

A friend of mine didn't want to spend the bucks for a TRS-80 so he bought a "Sinclair" -- a computer for under $100. It had 1K of memory and no way to store programs. We had to type it in from scratch each time. It would typically overheat and freeze just after we'd finished typing. We took to sitting it on top of a bowl of ice. Shortly thereafter he picked up a C64. I scoffed at the machine because it only held 40 characters on a line. I was still stuck in "program the thing" mindset, and the color graphics and sound didn't seem to be a big deal. WRONG! - In its day it was the biggest-selling computer on the planet.

i had a sinclair too. i had a book that went with it that had programs for games you could type in line by line then play. you could save the program for later use by attaching a cassette deck and saving it onto a cassette tape. lol

IBM System/360.
My Dad was an operator. He took me to work and sat me in front of the punched card reader and said "When this light blinks, push this button". That was 1966.
In high school I learned to program on a TRS-80. Pong.
The first one I ever bought was an AT. 12 MHz or something like that. 1987 I think.

First computer was an APPLE II C .. with the puke green moniter set up.

the year was 1987 i was six years old and my dad bought an IBM PC-XT clone. Thats right 8088 processor (8.125MHz?) 640kb of on board memory with no RAM, 2 5.25 floppy drives and a 3.5 floppy drive, internal 20MB HD, EGA video card (16 beautiful colors), external 1200bps modem (yep there was internet in 1987 although it was all text based), and MS-DOS.

Total rockage

LOL.. same here 8088's RULE!! but I got one up on ya... I had a CGA video adapted(Colour Graphics Adapter)... four, count em FOUR colours on the screen at one time from a palette of a whopping 16 colours. You know you are the don when you got cyan, and magenta on your screen on a regular basis

But before that I had a Commodore Vic 20..... BOW TO ME

GEEKs!!

my first computer was a ti99, and then i read about the sinclair and thought how cool it would be to hook it up in the car...who whould have thought?

http://www.axess.com/twilight/sock/graphics/coco6.gif

Tandy Color Computer 3, with 128k ram, cassette drive, external floppy, game cartridges, etc.

Built my own Heathkit H-89, with monochrome terminal display, dual 105K floppies (you know, one for the operating system, and one for programming), and an interface to the blazing 300baud acoustic modem. I used it in college, mostly as a remote terminal, and was able to do most of my programming assignments from my dorm room. I have no recollection of how much memory it had. Should have donated it to the Smithsonian - I saw a lot of familiar equipment when I was there this summer :D

dude... i got a dell...

My first real PC (where I could actually have internet access) was an IBM aptiva..it had a 166mhz....16MB ram.....standard floppy disc w/CD rom...it had 2 hard drives...one with 1G and the other had 1.3G....14in monitor.... I believe it had a 28.8 K modem for dial up....my IP was compuserve which was fantastic....never any down time like AOL.....
if you ask me what my very very very first computer was...I would tell you it was a Commodore 64 and asteroids was my favorite game..
shinks

A Compaq Portable (http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/compaq/). Actually it was my brother's but it's the first PC I started really using. It's a weird setup. Kinda like the father of the laptop.

A Compaq Portable (http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/compaq/). Actually it was my brother's but it's the first PC I started really using. It's a weird setup. Kinda like the father of the laptop.
haha...that's a portable? :eek: ;) I like the posts here....some of you started out with some ancient beasts!

I guess we're dating ourselves!!! :D

A Compaq Portable (http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/compaq/). Actually it was my brother's but it's the first PC I started really using. It's a weird setup. Kinda like the father of the laptop.

God DAMN you......I read through 4 pages and no one had mentioned this yet....I am almost ready to post and there you go posting MY computer.

I was luck, my dad is a computer scientist and got this ^ bad boy in 1983 (I was 7), then I got it 2 years later when he upgraded. When I first got it, it only had 2 5in floppy drives and no HDD. Then after about a year my dad upgraded his HDD and got a 80mb (for about $1000) and gave me the old 20mb HDD. That computer lasted me over 10 years (with several others in-between...c64/TI).

I mostly played games on it, though did do some basic programming.

I miss that old thing :)

I had a TRS-80 in 1980 when I was in 7th grade. I taught myself BASIC, and wrote a few basic programs for it. My worst memory of it was typing this huge program for a Star Trek game I really wanted to play, copying it out of a book. Of course you had to type everything perfectly, even one punctuation mistake would be fatal. Of course it took me a few days to type it all in, and then the damn program wouldn't run after all that effort.

I had a C-64 after that, and I used that as a word processor in college. In the early to mid 80s, few students had computers in college if you can imagine that, and most everyone still used typewriters to type their assignments. I actually got counted points off on a paper because the professor didn't like my dot matrix font.

I built it myself...

Here she comes...

Pent II 266mhz
256MB memory
20gig hard drive
STB 265 Bit 4MB video card
17 inch monitor

I was flying baby!

My first computer was an IBM PCjr. It had a 4.77MHz CPU that shared its cycles with the video card (16 color 320x200 CGA graphics, as I recall), a single 5 1/4" floppy drive (no hard drive, kids!), and a whopping 64k of RAM (which I upgraded to 128k with an add-on "sidecar" attachment). I paid $1800 (educational pricing) for this amazing piece of technology in 1984 when I started college.

click to see a picture of this thing (http://www.old-computers.com/museum/photos/IBM_PCjr_System_1.jpg)

Altos 586 running Unix (Xenix, actually), in 1983, I think.
(I use to service that machine)

1981 Homebuilt Z80 processor - 48K RAM - 8" 256k Floppy Drive - CPM Operating System

The company I was working for was scrapping out a bunch of word processing and photo typesetting equipment. With a change of a couple wires on the CPU board, we were able to boot the OS or the original word processing software. The only game I had was Colossal Caves.

This processor is now running stop lights and elevators.