| Author |
When was your first....
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| AMDWiZARD 2003-12-24, 9:29 am |
| When was your first real experience with computers?
Mine was 1993 with DOS 4.2/5.0 on a 4mhz 8088 Compaq. | |
| enforcer 2003-12-24, 9:48 am |
| 1979 a teletype hooked up to a computer bureau in chelsea via a 300 baud modem. used to do BASIC programs on it, you'd type a line and have to wait a minute for it to come back as acknowledged bfore you could type the next.
After that the school had a Commodore PET for a while, before we got a Research Machines 380Z plugged into a black & white Television using CP/M as the OS | |
| Teck Shark 2003-12-24, 10:03 am |
| My first experience was back in grade school in the early 90's with the Macintosh & Apple IIe. I mainly worked on Macs until about 1994 when my family finally bought me my first PC… a top of the line $3000 Packard Bell!
You want to talk about a kick a$$ PC... well this baby was complete with:
25MHZ SX processor (Which I promptly over-clocked to 40MHZ)
175MB Hard Drive
4MB RAM
2X Panasonic CD/Soundcard combo
Windows 3.1
3 1/2 Floppy
Smoking 2400 BPS modem
When I built my first computer from scratch a few years later, this lowly Packard Bell was far from the same animal... it now had been upgraded to:
Windows 95B
100MHZ Intel "Overdrive" Processor
36MB RAM (Maxed Out)
2GB Hard Drive
33.6 BPS modem
SB AWE64 Sound Card
24X CD-ROM | |
| Soft23ball 2003-12-24, 10:04 am |
| Mine, was in 1987, with with a small modem hook-up and Windows 3.1, but, mainly worked everything through DOS. We have the big floppy disks, that were I belive 6x8. | |
| HOOLIGAN 2003-12-24, 10:05 am |
| 1983, Vic20
3 1/2 K memory,
For games we would buy computer magazines and spend afternoons typing pages of code. | |
| darthfeces 2003-12-24, 10:13 am |
| atari pong !
commodore64 ! | |
| DaPunisher 2003-12-24, 10:14 am |
| Pong that my Mom bought my brother and I from Radio Shack
. | |
| Aussie-MCSE 2003-12-24, 10:16 am |
| In 1981, our school bought an Apple IIe with an external disk drive and about 10 inch monochrome monitor. Cost as much as a decent second hand car.
We also had TRS-80 and commodore 128. I suspect TRS-80 was only marketed in Australia, since it was a Tandy?
I bought an Amiga 1000 in 1986. Spent a fortune on that thing over the years. I ended up with an Amiga 2000, Amiga 3000 and finally an Amiga 4000. In 1992, I owned a computer store and ended up with a 486DX33 with 16Mb of RAM and a 40Gb Seagate hard disk. People came from miles around to see Comanche run in permanent green "night vision" on a 14" SVGA monitor. | |
| Forsaken 2003-12-24, 10:29 am |
| Mine was approximately in 1983 or so with apple computers in the 4th grade. Green monochrome montors with no hard drive and 5 1/4" boot disks.
After that , if i can remember..my high school years consisted of Tandy 80s and learning Pascal, Fortran and GWBASIC | |
| Ling663 2003-12-24, 10:38 am |
| haha ok guess my age::::
the arcade version of Pong, the size of a double-wide refrigerator!
then, in hi school (79-80 or so...) a Radio Shack trs-80 with cassette tape storage!
in college, a big project for a programming class (PL/1 I think) was done with punch cards! you had to manually write #'s on them in case you dropped the box and they fell out of order! each statement was on a separate card, even if it was only a "("!!
should I keep going??????
ugh i feel sooooooo old compared to all you young whippersnappers (just what IS that anyways??)
AND A MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL AND TO ALL A GOOD NITE (OK, STILL 10:30AM... BUT G'NITE ANYWAYS!)!!!!!
Ling663 | |
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| 1964 - Analog computer with zero set switches and voltage differentials for computations - Tubes that glowed !!!!
Heathkist H-8 - sprite video - CPM Color !!!!
Tandy Zenix - Radio shack i/o | |
| ChrisDfer 2003-12-24, 11:07 am |
| Had a computer in the womb back in '82.
My first real experince with computers(eg..not old apple we used for typing in school) was in '91. We started out with a 8086 with a CGA monitor and floppy. We had two games with that, 688 attack sub and Jet Fighter.
We then upgrades to a 386 when I befriended my neighbors who happened to be really into computers. So when they saw the POS we had they ended up giving us an extra 386 they had lying around. Then we were able to play real games like Wing Commander 1 and WC 2. I miss those days. David Wold Secret Agent, Mech Warrior and Death Track. | |
| Tarzanboy 2003-12-24, 11:41 am |
| Originally 1981 with an Apple IIe with dual disk drives, Epson dot matrix printer and a 14" monochrome green monitor. Eventually we upgraded to a whopping 256k of RAM and an EGA monitor. 
Cheers,
TB | |
| enforcer 2003-12-24, 11:44 am |
| quote:
Originally posted by ddvg
1964 - Analog computer with zero set switches and voltage differentials for computations - Tubes that glowed !!!!
Heathkist H-8 - sprite video - CPM Color !!!!
Tandy Zenix - Radio shack i/o
ouch!, beats me.
Welcome to the forum. | |
| freak 2003-12-24, 12:50 pm |
| 1980. My dad bought me a Sinclair ZX80. One nasty little machine I might add... | |
| ccieToBe 2003-12-24, 1:08 pm |
| I guess it must have been 1987 or 1988. That year my dad bought a screaming 386SX with 4MB of RAM and a 50MB hard drive. I have some fond memories of playing Tetris on that machine. It remained our primary PC until 1996 when we upgraded to a 100MHz Penium with 16MB or RAM, a 2GB hard drive, and a 4x CDROM. | |
| Forsaken 2003-12-24, 1:33 pm |
| quote:
Originally posted by ccieToBe
I have some fond memories of playing Tetris on that machine.
Now that you mention it..there was this helicopter simulator that I miss when i bought my first 286 called LHX | |
| jimbo2002 2003-12-24, 2:35 pm |
| About 1980, it was a sinclair MK14,(self build) I dont think it really took off. It used an SCMP processor which I believe was the cheaper version of the 8080. It had a 2k monitor program in firmware to get the thing going at power up. You had to program it in machine code (8 bit). The voltage regulator on board got VERY hot, and would just go into thermal shutdown when it got too much, I ended up building a seperate PSU. The keypad was crap so I had to get some magnetic bounce free switches and wire up a keyboard matrix, fortunately there was an edge conn. for ext. keyboard. It was limited but since it used machine code, a good learning tool. | |
| crane550 2003-12-24, 4:27 pm |
| i crashed my dads computer 286 when i was 6 yo. They still don't know how i managed to do it. i could not even read back then! some of my earliest memories include punchinh buttons and watching charachters form on that black and orange screen.
then my uncle steve gave me a 386sx (an IBM ps/2) when i was 8. i wore the thing out until i was 9 when we got a screaming 486. i sold the 386 for $60. my first pc sale. i still have one of the simms from it on my keychain. | |
| darthfeces 2003-12-24, 5:26 pm |
| ditto
i was in hs from 80-84 | |
| PCDude 2003-12-24, 6:51 pm |
| Mine was a commodore64.
I also had a Packard Bell
Windows 95
16mgs of Ram
Slow machine!!!! | |
| Tech Ranger 2003-12-24, 8:35 pm |
| Early 80s. I had a Texas Instrument TI994/A. I loved that thing. I wrote programs in BASIC. I bought Extended BASIC, but I never used it. I wish I could get another one of those machines. My best friend had a Tandy Color Computer at that time. | |
| prezbedard 2003-12-25, 12:25 am |
| First computers I used were in grade school mid to late 80's I believe. They were Apple II or something similar to that
First home computer was an 8088 my dad bought in 1988. Ran DOS 3.3. no HDD. | |
| Tennman 2003-12-25, 1:33 pm |
| I think it was 1967 or 1968, I used a IBM mainframe running Fortran 4 to solve physis problems. | |
| jeff_j_black 2003-12-26, 9:11 am |
| 78 high school programming and digital design class. | |
| Boulware5 2003-12-26, 10:32 am |
| Good ole' Commodore 64 for me! | |
| crane550 2003-12-26, 3:56 pm |
| think about the contrast from even back when I started (i'm only 18) compared to now. i have 256x the amount of ram I had, and that is only in my VIDEO CARD! I used to cruise at 33 mhz (which I overclocked to 40 I think) and now I run an Athlon XP 2600+. I used to run a 100 meg HD, and that was really cooking, but these days I have 256 megs on my keychain. QBASIC was cool back then, but now I use Visual Basic. funny how it all changes. I wonder what my kids will be using! | |
| azimuth40 2003-12-26, 4:28 pm |
| quote:
Originally posted by crane550
think about the contrast from even back when I started (i'm only 18) compared to now. i have 256x the amount of ram I had, and that is only in my VIDEO CARD! I used to cruise at 33 mhz (which I overclocked to 40 I think) and now I run an Athlon XP 2600+. I used to run a 100 meg HD, and that was really cooking, but these days I have 256 megs on my keychain. QBASIC was cool back then, but now I use Visual Basic. funny how it all changes. I wonder what my kids will be using!
More like what will your kids be wearing. When I started your pen drive on your key chain would have cost 256 million U.S. That's right 1 million dollars per megabyte. I have a 1Kbyte core memory card that I show my students that sold for $50K new. They generally find it fascinating that it was made by hand. | |
| Supertech 2003-12-26, 8:28 pm |
| 1976 - Submarine/Satellite Information Exchange Subsystem (SSIXS) and associated crypto gear. 16 bit processor with a really cool cesium beam time standard. | |
| crane550 2003-12-27, 12:32 am |
| quote:
Originally posted by azimuth40
More like what will your kids be wearing. When I started your pen drive on your key chain would have cost 256 million U.S. That's right 1 million dollars per megabyte. I have a 1Kbyte core memory card that I show my students that sold for $50K new. They generally find it fascinating that it was made by hand.
wish I had a time machine, 256 would be great! then again i could sell it for even more then that. too bad it was me who was resonsible for starting the chain recation that will destroy the human race. they should make a movie about that.
ok...maybe I should go to bed now. | |
| eljefe79 2003-12-28, 3:20 pm |
| 1977.......Fortran converting to basic in middle-school, my friends Mom (well to do) had bought her son a TRS-80 for a couple of thousand USD.
Came to LOATH computers......
Now look what I do........ 
Isn't it ironic, don't you think.. | |
| RomeoMike 2003-12-28, 10:17 pm |
| 1988 - first computer I consistently used at work was a Zenith 248 (286 processor, 1 MB RAM, 20 MB hard drive)
1992 - first computer I owned was a Gateway 486/33 with VLB, 8 MB RAM, 255 MB hard disk running Windows 3.1 atop DOS 5.0
"I got better." (From Monty Python and the Holy Grail) | |
| keq1381 2003-12-28, 10:25 pm |
| I started with a Commodore 64, then I progressed to an Amiga 500, and finally I went PC with a DX/2 66 MHz, and now my best computer is a 1.3 GHz Centrino Dell Laptop I 'got' to buy for school. | |
| karlisi 2003-12-29, 3:19 am |
| My first computer experience was in 1987 with something 'Made in Russia' with 64KB RAM and 8080 CPU, TV as monitor, external memory on tape recorder.
Then self-made ZX-Spectrum with Z80 CPU, 128KB RAM and built-in floppy (TR-DOS) in 1991.
First IBM PC 386 in 1994. | |
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| Well, in 1974, fresh out of USAF as avionics specialist, got a job with local Bell telephone company as a "switchman," working on first generation of electronic central-office switching equipment (then called No. 1 ESS--Electronic Switching Systems), first stored-program-controlled central-office switcher. All discrete logic (resistors, diodes, transistors, etc.--very few ICs). Everything prior to that had been electro-mechanical (#5 Crossbar, e.g.).
About a year later, started reading BYTE magazine and "73" which was then a ham radio magazine, which had an interesting column called "I/O" about these new things called "microprocessors." By 1977, I was hooked. Built myself a Southwest Tech CT-1024 "TV Typewriter," which let you put letters up on a screen with a keyboard, and then bought their Motorola 6800-based kit computer. Both of these came as kits that you had to put together with a soldering iron, mind you--none of that fancy "Altair" stuff for me! It ran at 982kHz and initially had 8K of memory out of a 56K address space (8K reserved for the 'monitor ROM'--roughly equivalent to today's "BIOS"). Later upgraded to 6809 CPU and a full 48K of memory. Earliest software was loaded via a cassette-tape interface. Took about 20 minutes to load an 8K BASIC interpreter. Later had a native-code 12K UCSD Pascal compiler(!), assembler, text editor, you-name-it. First printer was a POS terminal dot-matrix (also by Southwest Tech) that printed on 4-inch wide rolls of paper. Eventually had a dual 5¼-inch floppy system ($1000) and then dual 8-inchers.
Didn't give it up and convert to IBM-compatible PC til '83.
Still have the whole shooting-match in boxes
(including documentation), waiting for Smithsonian to call. |
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