What was your first computer?

[pepegot1]

Radio Shack Model 3 with a tape drive.

[kato51]

Sinclair ZX-81 kit. BTW, Zilog Z80a ran at 1 Mhz. 2K ram internal. My last non-pc was an Amiga A-3000. Had to use raw ram chips for memory expansion. Amigas were amazing computers for it's day with dedicated graphics chips and multitasking.

[pepegot1]

TRS 80 Model 3 Radio Shack with cassette tape drive and Z-80-2 MHz
Sorry for the double post-Mia Culpa!

[redwudz]

I had many dreams of buying a MITS Altair 8800 computer way back then, but no way I could afford it, about $1200 for the full setup. Programming was done via toggle switches. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_8800

Anyone out there ever used one or still own one? They were arguably the start of the PCs we use today.

A decent TV movie you may still be able to find called 'Pirates of Silicon Valley' chronicles the start of PCs, with Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs as the principals. Maybe not historically correct, but interesting, nevertheless. Bill was likely not amused with the movie.

[edDV]

"Mine" was an IBM 360 followed by a CDC 6800.

[Gramps]

I got my start programming on a Digital PDP-11 mainframe running RSTS back in the mid-70s. I remember the college bought a 4 color pen plotter for $35,000. We spent the next couple of month programming it to draw spirograph designs.

The first home computer I had was a VIC-20 with the cassette tape drive. Later, I got a Commodore 64 with dual 1541 disk drives and a 300 baud modem. I bought my first 8086 PC-XT in 1984 or 85.

[prouton]

My first mainframe (since the topic seems to have grown ) was an IBM 370/145 running DOS/VS (6 partitions) and CICS, in a whopping 1.25 MB of main memory. The company had picked up the computer used from the company that made the add on memory unit, which is part of why it had so much. I was an evening computer operator during Senior year of high school, and signed on as a programmer after graduation. It beat all hell out of working at a deli like a friend of mine.

[grossjamesh]

Altair 8800 and then a SWTP 6800 with 2K RAM and TTY interface.
BTW the SWTP 6800 is still working.

[lordsmurf]

Commodore Plus/4, but never used it.

First x86 computer owned by family was 286, I forget Mhz of it. Blazing fast 640k RAM upgraded, EGA card, 1.2B floppy. Big stuff at the time. Most folks still had not heard of hard drives, 1.2MB floppied (360k was norm), 256k, CGA, etc. This I used, more or less, as needed. A friend of mine had an 8088 at the time, it was pretty slick too.

We had 386, 486, 586 -- then I jumped to a P4 and removed the "we" from the equation, it was 100% mine this go-around.

[Epicurus8a]

Apple II+
It had one 5 1/4" disc drive, 32k RAM, a 9pin Epson printer, and no hard drive. Eventually I bought a second 5 1/4" disc drive, an additional 32k RAM, and a 300 baud modem.

[FulciLives]

My first computer was a Commodore VIC-20 which sucked so bad that I somehow convinced my mom to shortly afterwards buy me a Commodore C-64 (which was the shit).

My very first computer game was a cartridge for the VIC-20 called ADVENTURE LAND which was an all text game ala the Infocom games like ZORK etc.

I could be wrong bu I think ADVENTURE LAND was written by Steve Jackson who was famous for his paper/board games back in the day.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Kayembee]

My first computer was a Commodore VIC-20 which sucked so bad that I somehow convinced my mom to shortly afterwards buy me a Commodore C-64 (which was the shit).

Kids. javascript:emoticon('') My 1st was an Apple ][ (no "+"), purchased Feb., 1978. Stuck with ][s
till 1987, when I got an Amiga. Broke down and got a peecee in 1996, though by then I'd'a rather
had a UNIX box.

My 1st real program was written about 1959, and ran on an IBM 709 (vacuum tubes!). It was a
special class I entered, summer following 6th grade.

My very first computer game was a cartridge for the VIC-20 called ADVENTURE LAND which was an all text game ala the Infocom games like ZORK etc.

I could be wrong bu I think ADVENTURE LAND was written by Steve Jackson who was famous for his paper/board games back in the day.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

The original "Adventure" was written in Fortran and ran on some minicomputer, probably some
sort of PDP, by Crowther and Woods, and came out way back, maybe as early as 1969.

[betwixt]

Mine was a home soldered Nascom 1 around 1977/8.
It had a Z80 running 1MHz, 1K of static RAM and was programmed in hex!
Still booted faster than Windows though !

Brian.

[DB83]

Just like several on here, my first was a C VIC-20.

I even invested major money in getting those add-ons(graphics, memory) which, if memory serves me, were each bigger than an ipod.

A neighbour, who was into electronics, even rigged up an extension board, bigger than today's mainboards.

But the best thing of these earlier computers was writing in line after line of code for that great game as published in a magazine which took three times as long to debug

[rhegedus]

Acorn Electron
BBC B
Atari ST

Then PCs

Pentium 133, Pentium 233MMX, P3 700, P4 2.4 and now Q6600.

[träskmannen]

Sinclair ZX-81.

[painkiller]

(If red doesn't mind my posting twice ...)
After my Sinclair adventure, I got in to Atari product line.
I had an Atari 800XL, STe, Falcon and their 'luggable portable' Stacy (still have that).
Sold off most of the Ataris.
I was gifted a Pentium II, which later was replaced with my first P4.
Now?
Well, look at my computer details ... guess I qualify as a technogeek junkie ...

[rcguy1]

My first computer was a abacus... no only kidding. It was a x86 store bought no name computer back in 1987. It had a blazing speed of 2.7 with a turbo that moved it to 4.0MHz. I had two 5 1/4 floppy drives, 640k ram and a 40 meg hard drive. I also bought a 15" color monitor with the computer and all for about $2100.00. About a year later I bought my first Dell. It was a 286 and had one 1k of ram and a 90 meg hard drive. At that time it cost a $1000.00 a k for RAM. Today I assemble my own computers.

[Slapstick]

Atari 400, little brother to the 800. First IBM compatible was a Kaypro running a Nec V20, (8088) with a little switch in the back to bump it from 4.77 to 8 MHz. Whoa what speed. Anybody else remember having bring along MS Flight Sim to check the claim that the PC was 100 % IBM compatible? (whole program fit a 5 1/4 floppy)

[aedipuss]

atari 800, commodore 64, atari 800xl, ibm pc-xt 64K ram full height floppy, 1982 sharp pc5000 30lb laptop w/ bubble memory carts, 1983 visual full size portable, 1984-on built my own, early ones with the use of an eprom burner to make pc clones that would run programs that checked the rom for the "©ibm" text.

[TJK1911]

I still have a copy of the invoice for my first machine, a 486-66 PC bought from Pal Systems in Redmond, WA in August 1994. It cost $1931.38.

486-66
8MB RAM
420MB HD
14" color monnitor

I had a friend who had been using and playing with PCs since the original IBM Personal Computer came out, and who had spent untold thousands on dual-monitor setups (green for text, color for play), dot-matrix printers and the like. He kept trying to get me interested but I just couldn't see it being at all worthwhile.

Then he showed me DOOM.

I bought a PC within the week.

Oddly, although it was first-person shooters that initiated me into computers, I pretty much stopped playing after getting through Duke Nukem. I never cared for the online play of Quake and such, and anyway the first-person movement gives me vertigo now. Even though I played DOOM and Duke for hours on end, I can only stand a few minutes of either one now before I get woozy. Just too damn old I guess.

[Wile_E]

Okay, I didn't see anyone mention this one...My first computer was a TRS-80 Color Computer, from Radio Shack. It was nicknamed the CoCo by users and still has a great following today by hobbyists. I still have my CoCo 2 (64k), and a CoCo 3 (128k upgraded to 512k), tons of accessories, and a library of Rainbow magazines for the CoCo.

I was lucky, in that my parents owned a small home-town TV Repair shop, and later bought a Radio Shack Franchise. So I got to play with all the different models of computers in the 80's. But I liked the CoCo the best!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Color_Computer

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[TJK1911]

Okay, I didn't see anyone mention this one...My first computer was a TRS-80 Color Computer, from Radio Shack. It was nicknamed the CoCo by users....
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I thought it was nicknamed the Trash 80. At least that's what we called it at work where it was used to keep track of drafting change notices.

[FulciLives]

But the best thing of these earlier computers was writing in line after line of code for that great game as published in a magazine which took three times as long to debug

Yes I fondly remember buying computer magazines with games that you had to type in although I seem to recall only having the patience to actually type them up only a couple of times or so.

I also had several books (sadly I think they are all "lost" now somehow) about how to program text only adventure games ala Infocom's ZORK and I really tried my best to program such a game myself using these books. However I was frustrated by the fact that they were all based on IBM Basic and I was using a C-64 at the time and C-64 Basic did not have IF - THEN - ELSE ... it did have IF - THEN but not the - ELSE part. It made the long programming process even harder and more aggravating as you had to use some "tricks" to mimic IF - THEN - ELSE

The closest I got was a mini-game with about half a dozen rooms that you could walk around in with a few objects you could manipulate and a few though not nearly enough verbs and nouns.

I never programmed with anything but Basic. Well unless you count HTML

Oh wait I do seem to recall buying a book about ASSEMBLY language for the C-64. I read some of it. Played around a bit with it. Decided that typing in HEX numbers was absolutely ridicules and gave up on it!

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[stiltman]

TRS-80 M1
TRS-80 M3 with expansion memory

skip a few years

IBM 286

[freebird73717]

Okay, I didn't see anyone mention this one...My first computer was a TRS-80 Color Computer, from Radio Shack.

I remember when my brother brought his home. I thought it was "cool".

[t0nee1]

First PC for me was also a Packard bell which I bought used from a friend for $300.00, it was a 486 with DOS installed..had to buy the DOS for Dummies guide....I finally installed Win 3.1 , yahoooo!

[tmw]

Apple II+. Only uppercase, and now lowercase, except for when it printed. Somehow it printed in both upper and lower case. So, the word processessor would put the "uppercase" letters in inverse, and lower case letters in regular type so I could tell how it would print.

And, I remember the typing code from magazines. That sucked. But, actually being able to get easily to assembly language and understand the level 1 coding was pretty cool. Something most people today don't even understand.

The thing was so much fun, I spent "years" playing Wizardry. It's probably a good thing for me the internet wasn't around back then.

[dwill123]

Timex Sinclair 1000 which still works today

[cfi512]

Like a couple other posts I've seen, my family started with a Commadore Vic 20. Anyone else buy a "Glossy magazine" for the program inside. You would half to hand key it in, and save it to Cassette tape. fun.