Ask Slashdot: What Was Your First Computer?

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: Today GitHub's official Twitter account asked the ultimate geek-friendly question. "You never forget your first computer. What was yours?"

And within 10 hours they'd gotten 2,700 responses.

Commodore 64, TRS-80, Atari 800, Compaq Presario... People posted names you haven't heard in years, like they were sharing memories of old friends. Gateway 2000, Sony VAIO, Vic-20, Packard Bell... One person just remembered they'd had "some sort of PC that had an orange and black screen with text and QBasic. It couldn't do much more than store recipes and play text based games."

And other memories started to flow. ("Jammed on Commander Keen & Island of Dr. Brain..." "Dammit that Doom game was amazing, can't forget Oregon Trail...")

Sharp PC-4500, Toshiba T3200, Timex Sinclair 1000, NEC PC-8801. Another's first computer was "A really really old HP laptop that has a broken battery!"

My first computer was an IBM PS/2. It had a 2400 baud internal modem. Though in those long-ago days before local internet services, it was really only good for dialing up BBS's. I played chess against a program on a floppy disk that I got from a guy from work.
Can you still remember yours? Share your best memories in the comments.

What was your first computer?

IBM JX

[ozmartian]

IBM JX then an Amiga A2000 followed by an A3000.

Re:

[Darinbob]

8085 based S100 bus single board computer. No case. Got used, replaced the power transistors. After a couple months it went bzzt. Oh well. I *really* wanted a TRS-80, by my parents thought it was a waste of money.

Second computer that was mine was Amiga 1000, several years later, no need to have one in the meantime since there were school computers to use.

TTL and up.

[fyngyrz]

Built my first computer out of TTL in 1970.The most troublesome challenge was the linear power supply, which was enormous and difficult to find components for. The TTL boards, wire-wrapped for the most part, took up most of a basement room in my house. I used a Baudot teletype as the terminal. I had 512 bytes of surplus core memory to play with, oh yeah.

My first commercial computer was a SWTPC 6800, purchased in 1975. Then a GIMIX 6809. Then a hiatus due to actually working for a living and having zero spare time; then an Amiga (several Amigas, actually), and finally PCs, then Macs. A Mac is where I'm at today, though I have Windows and linux VMs and a Windows laptop.

There were a couple of single board computers in there as well; an SC/MP, a COSMAC, etc. Just fooling around.

Re: IBM JX

[Z00L00K]

ZX80 for me.

That and the successor ZX81 were cheap and not very useful, but still historically significant because they started the home computer era.

DEC PDP 8/L and IMSAI 8080

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

I built up a PDP 8/L from scrap parts when I worked for DEC field service in 1972. I had to give it back when I quit. Next computer was an IMSAI 8080 with cassette I/O and a Bytesaver EPROM boards. Terminal was an ADM kit that I built.

First Computer

[Local ID10T]

First computer I owned was a Commodore VIC 20.

Re:

[suss]

That one came with the only consistently reliable cassette drive, the ones that came with the C64's were of much lesser quality...

Re:

[Spazmania]

IIRC, the C64 didn't come with a cassette drive; it was an accessory you purchased separately, the exact same tape drive as the VIC-20.

Re:

[B'Trey]

Vic 20 was my first one as well. My first PC was a Tandy 1400 LT. I was in the Navy at the time and I bought the Tandy and a copy of Borland Turbo C++, then spent the next six months floating around the Persian Gulf teaching myself to program from the Borland manuals that came with the program.

Well.. I had a few âoefirstâ computers

[Striikerr]

The first computer which I owned was the Commodore 64. However, I was a young kid in those days and I spent almost every day at the local Radio Shack and department stores using their computers which were on display. I would program different things on them, spending hours at a time doing it. It was stuff like drawing things on the screen to writing an adventure type text game. At high school they had PET computers and I would write programs on my C64 at home and then modify it to work at school on the PET

Commodore 64

[zenlessyank]

And I should have a Commodore 65535 by now. Stupid Intel and IBM ruined everything!!

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

TRS-80 Model I, Oct '78

[david.emery]

Bought at the Lawton/Ft Sill OK Radio Shack, using per-diem money from my time at Ft Sill. I've owned a computer continuously since.

Re:

[david.emery]

But the first computer I used was a TOPS-10 terminal, followed by several programmable desk calculators, in 1971-1974.

TI-99/4A

[rahmrh]

TI-99/4A 16k ram, used an audio tape recorder for storage and a TV as a display.

Re:

[walkerp1]

Haha, same. At first, I had no mass storage (think I was 11 at the time), so I quickly became adept at typing from having to constantly reenter my BASIC programs. I wrote my own games and composed my own 3-voice music (plus noise!) and generally had a blast. I eventually saved enough to purchase a tape player for mass storage and an uncle gave me an Assembler/Editor cartridge...and it was on. For my 7th grade science project, I did an assembled logistics simulator with the TI-99 and blew the volcano entrie

Re:

[Monoman]

Same. It started my love of computers.

Re:

[VicVegas]

Xmas of 1981, and when it was discontinued we picked up the expansion box, memory expansion card, acoustic coupler 300 baud modem, speech synthesizer, two floppy disk drives and probably something else. From 1983-1987 we ran our family's regional video rental chain from the computer; keeping track of inventory, rentals, sales and our movie description catalog, which would take all night to print just one copy.

Oh, the printers were S L O W back then!

In 1987 we got an Amiga 1000 which was to replace the TI,

still in the cellar, of course

[Alworx]

As my dad was at IBM there was no way a Commodore or any other brand would enter our house. So it was a PS/2, 80286 processor, 1MB RAM and 30MB HD. And a 1st or 2nd gen Type M keyboard

For many of us...

[blahplusplus]

.. it was a combination of pong clone (bentley), C64, tandy computers before the atari/NES/mega drive era during the 80's.

In the 90's my first real PC would be something along the lines of a 486 DX33.

Either way the 90's alive, modern PC is on the way out because of trusted computing and the overwhelming forces against text based executables and the mass theft the game industry has done to PC games by rebranding them mmos/f2p.

Don't remember the brand

[jacks smirking reven]

It was some type of 286, had the amber screen. It ran DOS 3.0? I was pretty young. I remember using an art program called "TPaint" that I can't find anymore but this is reminding me to look again. Also used a word processor called "Professional Write"

The more relevant computer for me was about a sometime later we got a 386SX 25MHz, VGA color monitor, 2MB RAM in SIMM slots, 40MB Conner brand HDD, 5.25 and 3.5 floppies. Eventually added a Soundblaster and 6MB more RAM. Had a lot of good memories on that,

I had Commodore 64 in the Win2K days.

[Subsentient]

My dad gave me a Commodore 64 to play with when I was 5 years old, along with some 5 & 1/4 inch floppies with games. I don't remember exactly what broke it, but I know it lasted for years. I still have the original Commodore monitor, and it still works. I use it as a TV when I need to hook something composite up. My first x86 PC of my own was a thrift store Windows 95 Toshiba Satellite Pro 405cs with a Pentium 1 @ 75Mhz and 40MB of RAM. Got it when I was 11 or 12. I still have it, and it mostly works,

Digital Group

[JaredOfEuropa]

My first experience around the age of 7 was a Digital Group [bytecollector.com] (not DEC) computer. My dad assembled it, which meant soldering countless ICs to a PCB, winding a transformer for the power supply, and building a wooden and aluminium case around it. The 2 tape drives we had with it were amazing, they were automatic and acted a little like floppy disks, with an index at the start of the tape which let you list the contents, and load the desired program, without having to actually operate the tape deck. An old teletype made for a nice printer. My dad taught me and my brothers on this thing, first BASIC, then assembly on the Z80. Home computing really was a pioneering pastime back then.

After that we got a TRS 80, which was amazing because of its graphical capabilities. Then a C64, around the same time as we got these at our high school. I loved the C64 because of the accessibility of the hardware (the Reference Manual had the schematics in the back), and I made a bunch of modifications to mine.

I think it's fair to say that computers shaped my childhood and played a big part in my intellectual development. And my dad was a big part of guiding me along that path. I miss him an awful lot...

First used or first personally owned computer?

[choprboy]

Because it makes a difference. Many of us first learned about computers in school or at a friend's house long before we could afford such a thing...

First used computer: Apple IIe, learning basic programming, logical thinking, math, and coordinates with Logo.

First owned computer: PackardBell 486-66 (whooo-hooo, turbo mode) with a monstrous 8 MB of memory and a 200MB harddrive, what would you ever do with so much space?

Re:

[srmalloy]

And sometimes they're not related at all. The first computer I used was the one we would deliver card decks in FORTRAN to, eventually to get back the deck and the printout showing that we'd screwed up a card and it didn't run. Then it was a PDP-11/45 running RSTS/E. Eventually, though, I inherited an ITT Xtra, an IBM PC XT clone

Telmac

[heikkile]

Bet most of you have never heard of it, but my first computer was a Telmac 1800, built from a Finnish kit. Loosely based on RCA's Cosmac. Running on a RCA 1802 processor, with 2kb of memory (and room for another 2kb, if someone can use so much), audio cassette tape for storage, a lousy keyboard, and using an old TV for display, all of 64 pixels wide. Me and my dad soldered it together somewhere around 1975. Later we got an extension board with 16kb memory, and a better display, 16x64 characters, and a Tiny

Re:

[t0qer]

Don't remember the Telmac, but do remember the super elf. Dad ordered it as a kit and we assembled it (I mostly put keys on the keyswitches) I remember all the goofy stuff he did with it. Started off just making LED's blink, but later on he got a monitor attached and programmed one of those cowboy games from printed sheets of paper. Later he figured out how to get a cassette tape working to save/load programs.

Not long after he got a Timex Sinclair, and would have each computer race each other in math op

OSI Superboard

[kenh]

It was a great value at the time, I've seen a few replicas, I should look into getting one...

Atari 1200XL

[FuzzMaster]

Great computer and I used it for years. I added a modem, a disk drive, and a printer and did my homework on it. I was one of the few kids I knew using a word processor when the others were using typewriters. Good times.

386 / P90

[SciCom Luke]

The first one I worked a lot on was bought by my father, and it was a 386.
The first one I bought myself was a Pentium 90. I still have the CPU.

Re:

[kriston]

I also had the Pentium 90 with the FDIV bug. First CPU scandal in history. (Of course it was a non-scandal but it was a bug nontheless).

bought used for $50

[Revek]

TI-99/4A in 1983. I spent many hours on it. Finally, a year later I got a cassette cable and could backup my programs. It was simply put a magical time for me.

My first

[jargonburn]

The first one I can recall ever interacting with was a TRS-80. I was very young, like, toddler-age. Caught my full attention. Didn't know how to use it, but was fascinated by it. But "my" first was an Apple IIe when I was 5 or 6. Spent SOOO much time on that, playing games, exploring BASIC programming (reading, writing, and modifying code), and using PEEK and POKE to muck around with the memory.

Apple ][ minus

[mschuyler]

serial # 32,000, 48K, cassette player I/O, Sony TV monitor. Turned out it made my career.

Amstrad CPC464

[PeterGM]

I still have all the programs I wrote saved to tape and the device still works. Upgraded to an Amiga 1200 then to my first modern PC: Cyrix DX2 66.

I've still got all of them come to think of it, I only ever got rid of the cases and power supplies.

DEC LSI-11 CPU, 16KB RAM, 5.25 in. floppy disks

[brec]

Manufactured by an OEM. Basically a rack for Q-bus cards, including the CPU and RAM cards. Ran the RT-11 OS, UCSD Pascal. Brought it home in 1977. It was a chore to get the box into the car and then into my apartment.

OSI (Ohio Scientific) Challenger IIp

[marktoml]

and I still have it ... My second was the TRS-80 Model 3

IMSAI 8080

[Virtucon]

And I still have it in a box.

Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer

[kriston]

Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer.

Followed by the Color Computer II and III.

Then, Amiga 2500.

Sinclair ZX81

[tech10171968]

I started off with the Sinclair ZX81. I still remember magazine articles outlining how to build an EEPROM blower for this machine. I later "graduated" to the TRS-80 color computer after driving my dad crazy begging for one. Found a machine language cartridge for cheap (the seller had NO IDEA what he'd gotten himself into and just wanted to get rid of it).

I'm actually quite happy to have come into that generation of computing: there was almost no ready-made software to buy for these things. If you wanted to

mine

[fluffernutter]

Sinclair ZX81 followed by an Apple ][+

TRS-80

[CaptainDork]

I bought a TRS-80 from Radio Shack in Feb 1978. Cost me $630.

I programmed it for Kepler's equations using the onboard BASIC-A. When I chopped the power, all was lost. I documented my code and retyped it when I powered it back up. Then, they came out with an interface to a tape recorder using the Kansas City method of modulation/demodulation. I had to get the volume just right and still it was flakey.

I dove into the Z-80 microprocessor using machine language and, while it was much faster, it hurt my brain sh

I didn't buy one for a lot of years

[93 Escort Wagon]

I ran (and programmed) a TRS-80 for the music store I worked for in high school; plus I was in an advanced placement program where we had access to a PDP 11/70. Then I went to work in a research lab, where an HP 1000 was the workhorse. The lab paid something like $600+ per month for maintenance on that thing; so when PCs came out I talked the boss into replacing it with something that had an 8086/8088 in it (I forget what brand) - I rewrote all the software and had to do some significant modifications to th

C=64

[chill]

Commodore 64, while a Navy brat overseas. Made a small fortune repairing them for $20 guaranteed or you don't pay. The other option was mailing them somewhere for $99 and praying.

Then Commodore moved that $0.15 fuse tied to the ungrounded serial port from inside the computer to the power supply and ruined my fun...

My first computer...

[joshuark]

My first computer was the ZX81 made by Timex-Sinclair. So had the monochromatic screen on the Sears television, with the 16K memory pack. Programs were stored on audio cassette, and if anything jostled the computer you can bet it was foobar'd. The small computer with the plastic McDonald's chiclet keyboard would overheat yet usually the cat would knock the power cord out and that program you spent 3-hours typing in, *poof* without a cloud of pink smoke.

I started entering the programs in BASIC from David Ahl's BASIC Computer Games my favorite was "Wumpus" and "Sea Battle." The only real frustration was that Sinclair BASIC like most BASIC implementation was not 100% the same. Learned how to debug the language double-quick to get the programs to work.

After that the classic Vic-20, C-64, Atari 800XL, eventually a PC-compatible.

JoshK.

Apple //e

[srwood]

Expensive as hell at the time. Was able to save and buy an additional 5 1/2 drive for $300 to allow database sorting. Loved that thing.

NEC PC-8201Aâ¦

[jpellino]

Had a book contract, with a dated bonus of $1,000. This thing would cost me that much, but would guarantee I met the bonus deadline. Net zero cash, but I had my first personal computer after it all. Still runs for weeks on 4 AA batteries.

First computer I actually owned

[jonwil]

I used lots of computers but the first computer I can remember that was 100% mine had a 486 SLC/33 CPU. With the exception of a HyperRace 586 upgrade chip (only AMD CPU I have ever owned) and a 300Mhz Cyrix part (which was a mistake) every CPU I have owned after the SLC was an Intel CPU through to today where I have a Core i5-9400F.

UNIVAC 1108

[lfp98]

I'll exclude the Wang desktop electronic calculator with Nixie tubes which competed with Marchant mechanical calculators at the summer job I had with an engineering firm just out of high school in 1968. The first real computer was the UNIVAC 1108 I used in the introductory computer course at Carnegie-Mellon University the following Fall. You would type the FORTRAN programming instructions on punch cards, one instruction per card, plus cards with any input data, at any of dozens of consoles scattered about

TRS-80 Model II

[jhuebel]

First computer was a TRS-80 Model II, followed shortly thereafter by a Commodore 64.

Memories

[Mostly a lurker]

The first computer(s) I actually owned were not particularly interesting. The first was no more really than a toy, given to me as a Christmas present. I cannot remember its name, but it had no capability for storing programs or data. You had to enter everything manually, and everything was lost when you turned the "computer" off. I did not own another until the early PC days when I had a Compaq running MS DOS4.0

More interesting was the first computer I was able to use personally hands-on. This was in 1968 a

8008 Hand wire wrapped

[mspohr]

I'm older than most here.
My first personal computer was an Intel 8008 (precursor to the 8080) which I hand wire-rapped. 256 bytes of memory. Built an octal display and keyboard. Eventually a cassette tape interface.

Re:

[dogsbreath]

Wire wrap. Nice.

Still have my Slit-n-Wrap tool and the 30 gauge self stripping wire.

Tandy PC/1000

[Vrallis]

My first computer, a gift for my 13th birthday from McDuff's clearance table. It was seriously outdated even at that time, but worth it.

Intel (AMD-manufactured) 8086-2 / 8Mhz, 512k RAM, 5.25" 360k and 3.5" 720k floppy drives. DOS 3.3 on ROM.

Eventually I had various upgrades gifted by friends and family. Updated the CPU to an NEC V30 / 12Mhz CPU (capable of most of the 286 instruction set) and 640k RAM. It was able to play Wolf3D at that point. Eventually a 5.25" full height 40MB MFM Seagate hard d

IBM, baby!

[spaceyhackerlady]

First used: IBM 370/168 as a CS undergrad.

First owned: IBM PS/2 Model 25. I kept it for years as a host for PIC and Basic Stamp programming tools.

...laura

Zenith Z89

[Nofsck Ingcloo]

About 1970. CP/M. This one had add-on 8" floppies (almost wrote "flippies", and I did do some of that) and an add-on hard drive. That drive weighed a ton! I used it heavily until I got a 286 about 1982.

Dual CDC 6400

[oddaddresstrap]

... but I had to share it with other people.

First computer I owned personally was a Zenith Z-100 which was an IBM PC "work-alike". Not a clone as it had its own version of MS-DOS.
Upgrades included bumping the RAM from 256Kb to 1Mb ($1,000) and adding a 10Mb hard drive ($1,000).

My parents had a TI /94 and a Macintosh, version 1.

bad old times

[roman_mir]

my first computer was a paper notebook where I wrote my programs hoping to type them into an actual computer one day. My first electronic computer was a soviet ZX Spectrum clone Electronica https://tinyurl.com/3ehw57mv [tinyurl.com] my real useful first comp was a 386 though.

Apple //e

[way2trivial]

When the logo had many colors, and the screen only one.

TRS-80 MC-10

[Balthisar]

Not just a TRS-80, but the TRS-80 MC-10. It was a Christmas gift, and I loved it until I quickly outgrew it.

Orange POLY-88

[jasnw]

POLY-88 (Polymorphic Systems) 8088 CPU with 16 kB memory card, serial connection to a cassette tape recorder for storage, Pickles&Trout connector to an old B/W TV. The computer was in a rectangular orange metal case. Loved that computer, but lost it during one of my many moves. First for-work PC was a Zenith Z-80 system with two floppy drives and 64 kB memory and a Toshiba dot-matrix printer. Another great computer that spent it's retirement days as a replacement "typerwriter" for my mother.

You guys are making me feel old

[AlanObject]

First computer I used: IBM 1620. First binary computer was a Wang 3300, and also a PDP-8 at about the same time.

The first one I actually owned was a PDP-11.

About the Wang 3300. Most people would never have heard of it but it was the progenitor for Wang's series of dedicate word processors. Also, my friends got acquainted with Adam Osborne who before founding Osborne computers made money be writing and running programs on his own Wang 3300 for customers. His system had 4K (not 4G, not 4M, but 4K) of core RAM.

Eagle Spirit

[cuda13579]

It was "portable"! Played lots of Castle Wolfenstein and the original MS Flight Simulator....

Sphere 1

[kpoole55]

Look in Byte Magazine Issue 1 and you'll find an ad for the Sphere 1. 6800 based with 4K dynamic RAM and a monochrome 32x16 video interface that came as a kit. Almost worked after one replaced the memory chip that was pretty much guaranteed to fail in the first few hours. Monitor was a black and white TV that you injected the video signal into just past the video signal rectifier.

Second computer, that worked better and lasted longer, was the IMSAI 8080 S-100 computer. Pushed that to 16K static memory, 2

Atari 400

[Tempest_2084]

My first computer was an Atari 400 that my parents got for my older brother to help with his school work. He wasn't interested in it but I was hooked. Eventually we got an Apple IIe but it was the Atari 400 that got me started in my career in Computer Science.

ZX 81

[rsilvergun]

A relative ran of all things an Astrology business and we got their ZX 81 used to run Astrology software. Apparently there was also a C64 involved but sadly I never got my hands on it.

my first desktop PC was:

[FudRucker]

a Gateway with a 800mhz celeron 32 meg ram 6 gig drive with windows 98, in less than a year i was running Slackware-8.0 on it with gnome-1.4

i would dual boot using windows only when necessary until XP was released then i abandoned windows completely because product activation made windows unnecessary, been a linux user ever since

Digi Comp I

[PPH]

Digi Comp I [typepad.com]. Pretty cool toy to get 8 year olds interested in logic, gates and stuff.

Home build MC6802 system in 1978

[ukoda]

I build a stripped down copy of the Motorola MEK6800-D2 system back in 1978. I changed it to use the new MC6802. It has 128 bytes of RAM and 1024 bytes of UVEPROM. With a hex keypad and 6 digit 7 segment LCD it was pretty basic, being programmed in machine code, not those fancy assemblers the rich people used. In 1979 I added a fancy new MC6809 processor in parallel with a MC6800 running out of phase to make it a mutiprocessor system. Ah simple pleasures, back when you knew what every cycle of your pro

SYM-1

[betsuin]

My mate & I both got SYM-1 single board computers when we were about 15.
We bounce off of each other learning how to use and program them - 6502 byte code straight in to the RAM!
We met a guy who wanted to get video of Halley's Comet (which he did) and my friend designed a stepper motor set up to drive the camera & I did the timing software.
We had a lot of fun!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

First kit or ready built?

[xxdelxx]

First kit was a Nascom 1 in 1977. Was way too much of a pain - although it did work.
Replaced by the first 'pre-built' machine in 1984 - Memotech MTX 512. With a separate large box that housed a pair of 5.25" floppy disks. I had an 'interesting' time justifying that purchase, after the fact, to my dear wife who was less than impressed.

LSI-11/73

[Old-Claimjumper]

The first computer I purchased for myself was one of the first LSI-11/73s. I added Emulex controllers and a Fuji winchester drive. Had an 11/23 for work. Did my own port of the 22-bit Q-Bus stuff and gave it to the 2.9 BSD folks. Used it to finish classwork for my MS. The school had a student VAX-750 with 4.2 BSD. My 11/73 was just about the same speed as the VAX and I didn't have 20 students competing for my CPU. The software was mostly compatible and UUCP over a 2400 Baud modem gave me connectivity. Still

My gosh ...

[dogsbreath]

Built my first computer from scratch in 1972/73. All it did was run an 8x8 LED matrix of Conway's game of life. I modeled it after the PDP11 with internal microcode to control the gates and registers. MuCode was burnt into fused proms. Life code was coded into an EPROM. The very little bit of ram was sequential using register chips. Nothing off the shelf. Had to build the prom and EPROM burners. Sigh. The chips were very cheap except for the EPROM. Went to run it after a few years in stora

Bell & Howell

[rjh]

Way back when, Apple hadn't yet established relationships with public schools. School administrators didn't know how to classify computer equipment, anyway. The Bell & Howell company came to the rescue: they were vendors of audiovisual equipment like film projectors. Bell & Howell agreed to let Apple use their connections with school districts in exchange for the computers being rebranded as Bell & Howell equipment, in Bell & Howell livery.

This is why the first computer I ever got time on

First was

[drfreak]

a VIC-20

P U N C H C A R D S !!

[redelm]

My very first computer was an IBM 780 downtown (I never saw). The next year we got an IBM 1130 which I could see through the glass window. Both were programming by punchcards mostly in FORTRAN II. Later I used IBM 370 in FORTRAN IV and WATFOR. Most interesting was an interactive (!) IBM 360 running APL through paper TTYs (selectric IBM 2278). After 1980 we started using glass teletypes like Hazeltines for TSO, often with acoustic couplers.

My first owned machine was a Philips PC with an 8088 to which I

Laser 128

[Smidge204]

First computer in the household was a Laser 128, an Apple II compatible machine from VTech. My dad bought it at Sears along with a 10" monochrome (green) CRT, extra floppy drive, tractor-feed dot matrix printer, and a copy of GEoS. I learned BASIC and LOGO on it and used AppleWorks for homework. Pirated games from school (yeah I copied that floppy whatcha gonna do about it?)

Still have it, too; Hooked up and ready to go, though it's not been powered on in over a decade but AFAIK it's still usable... well the printer probably needs a new ribbon I suppose :)
=Smidge=

Ohio Scientific

[k6mfw]

and it had TWO 5.25 floppy drives! one for program and the other for data. WOW

Homebrew MEK6800D1 based computer

[NixieBunny]

My dad brought home a Motorola MEK6800D1 development kit in 1976. My older brother absorbed it thoroughly and we got it running the next year. We added a homebrew 16x32 text display, a homebrew keyboard, a cassette tape interface, a 4K memory card from Chrislin, a Flexowriter, a 256x256 pixel oscilloscope graphics display, modem to do dialup DECsystem-10 access,etc. He wrote a 2K BASIC interpreter, an assembly language chess game, a text editor, and any other programs. I did most of the Flexowriter interface.

Commodore 64 gave me my computer career

[C0L0PH0N]

Got a Commodore 64, discovered pirating, and had dozens of games on disk. One of them was a drawing utility named "Logo". You used commands like "Turtle Up" and "Down 4" and "Turtle Down" and "Right 7". Turtle up was "Pen Up", etc. Then at my work, I had a chance to write a program using HP Graphics Language. Guess what? Same syntax as Logo, but with Pen UP and Pen Down instead of Turtle Up and Turtle Down. So I was right at home. The main office secretaries spent 3 hours a week preparing a weekly organization chart for the 150 people in our organization in the in plant print shop at Boeing, back in the 1980's. So on my own time, I wrote an HP Graphics Language program that would create an organization chart in 15 minutes, from the start of information input, to the output of the finished chart, on the HP plotter. It worked so well that management promoted me into the office and put me in charge of the new IBM PC's that were starting to come in. Within a year, I was in charge of a mini computer with 80 terminals. And that was the beginning of a long computer professional career. All thanks to a year cutting my teeth on the Commodore 64. I loved that computer :):).

Altair, Polymorphic

[dsgrntlxmply]

My first owned were kit built Altair and later a Polymorphic Poly-88. I still have both, and an unused B-stage Altair power supply upgrade. I was at First World Altair Computer Convention in Albuquerque. I had Microsoft Basic on paper tape, but had to drive my machine to a site with a 35 Teletype, because the 33 tape reader could not competently read the tape. Don Tarbell's cassette interface was a godsend. Cromemco came out with a primitive A/D and D/A board. I wrote assembly code to process audio realtime and add disorienting echo effects.

First used: Wang programmable calculator with "hanging chad" program store. Then IBM 1620, 1401, and 370.

IBM

[Orgasmatron]

Mom worked at IBM. The first computer I used was a PC, which was a loaner.

The first one my family owned was a PC jr. There was, apparently, a hacking culture among IBM employees at the time. Mom's work friends made sure that our jr was fully decked out, complete with hacked memory expansion.

Then we had a PS/2. I think model 55 SX.

The first computer that was fully mine was a 486, built from parts by some local builder advertising in the IBM Credit Union Swap & Shop.

"Late" bloomer

[spywhere]

I bought my first PC in the fall of '93 at a computer show, knowing very little, guided by my roommate. It had a Cyrix Cx486DX2-66 processor, 8 MB of RAM, and Windows 3.11 on a 250 MB hard drive. No sound card or CD-ROM. Connectivity: a 96/24 modem (9600 baud for faxing, 2400 for everything else).
Most desktops at the show came with 2-4 MB of RAM; my roommate had pushed me to get more.
His first evaluation: "Gawd, this thing's fast."

Kaypro II

[tadas]

I had a Kaypro II. I did the Micro Cornucopia magazine II to IV upgrade and ended up with two 2/3 height DSQD floppies.

The Kaypro company was owned by the Kay family. I heard a description of Kaypro's demise as being caused by "Too many Kays, not enough pros".

TRS-80 CoCo Model 1

[dskoll]

When I was 15, my sister bought me an Extended Basic TRS-80 Color Computer model 1, with 16K of RAM. It got me started in computing. I eventually upgraded it to a whopping 64K of RAM (!!) and a floppy drive.

I learned 6809 assembly language on that machine and loved it. I was appalled by x86 assembler when I first learned it; the 6809 was a much nicer chip.

I ended up buying three books that listed and explained the disassembly of the CoCo ROMs and also bought the hardware manual. That set me on the road to a degree in Electrical Engineering and a long and profitable career in the tech industry.

Today, near the end of my career, my excitement has been reignited by the cool SBCs like Raspberry Pis that bring again the feeling of limitless possibilities that I first felt with the CoCo.

Mattel Aquarius!

[e432776]

It was not a great computer, but it did have BASIC and I remember typing in some programs. I had the full kit with expansion for cartridges and the "game" controllers. Turns out it was only on the market for a few months. [wikipedia.org]. The main thing I recall is that the keyboard was absolutely horrific. But even at my single-digit age I thought it was pretty dang exciting.

C64, then C128

[The_Revelation]

First computer I had was the C64, shortly followed by the C128. I still have them. I regard the C128 as one of the most successful failures in computing. It could effectively natively run multiple computers (6502, 8502 and Z80 instructions). As far as I'm aware, near to nobody wrote any software of considerable merit (except maybe C128 GEOS) for C128 mode, and because the C64 disk drives used a variable track length, you couldn't use any native CP/M software without managing to transfer the software from fixed track disks used by nearly everyone else.

Oh, and Commodore made the disk access on the C128 vastly faster than the C64, but it could only be used in C128 mode which had no software with which to load faster.

Oh, and the speed improvement to 2MHz in C128 mode was rarely fully utilised because the video chip couldn't draw anything when running faster than 1MHz using the VIC chip. The C128 also had a hi-res video chip in it that had no sprite support, so was useless in anything but text mode (although it could run at the native 2MHz)

So you were effectively paying for a vastly more complex computer that was only good at running C64 software, but because the C64 was so incredibly popular, the C128 was still more or less successful even though it never really punched above half capacity.

Re:

[Anonymouse Cowtard]

I was 12 (so that would make it 1984) and asked for a guitar. Got told, "You'll only make noise", and they got me a C64 with Datasette, a pile of books on BASIC and International Soccer (IIRC?) on a cartridge. Later we got the floppy drive (1581?).

For a few months around 84/85 the computer magazines at the library sometimes carried C64 BASIC programs that you had to key in.

I got loads of cracked games from the kids at school. I loved the (16 colour, 320x200 lol) crack screens made to create respect/infamy

ZX80 Kit, from a UK electronics magazine

[hAckz0r]

I was in college and needed a prerequisite course in order to get into another mandatory course for graduation, and had tried for five semesters to get into that perquisite class. I was not going to graduate because the university placed math and engineering majors in front of the line and the closest I ever got was 73 in line, meaning that if 73 people dropped out of that class in the first two week of class then I could get in, but would have to make up for two weeks of lost time in that class. I can tell you that any class where 73 people drop out in a two week period doesn't even sound like a class I want to be in.

So I forced the university to allow me to take some alternate classes and still be able to graduate, because it was their policy keeping me from graduating. That class? It was "Introduction to Computers". I didn't even know what a computer was and I had already been screwed by one, so I figured that regardless of my open path to graduation I really needed to figure out what a computer was and how to use one. Luckily I had been bored out of my mind with the classes I was taking so I had started teaching myself electronics in my doom room. I had a number of magazines on do-it-yourself electronic projects and wouldn't you know it but one had an UK advertisement for a Sinclair ZX80 build it yourself computer, and if I didn't eat lunch for a month then I could afford to buy the kit and have it shipped to me in the US. My money was in the mail the next day.

So I receive this kit and opened the box and started soldering things together, plugged it in, figured out the video RF transformer for the TV display needed to be reversed, and bingo I had a cursor flashing on the screen. Great! But what the hell does it do? I had no Idea, so I went down the hall in my dorm banging on doors until I found someone that actually got into that class, took him hostage, and dragged him down to my room and said "show me what it does". He played with it for a minute or two to figure out the keyboard (he used punch cards in class) and then he showed me how to type in a four line program in BASIC that printed out my name three times. I then freed my hostage. I then reverse engineered the keyboard and rewired one from a surplus electronic store, added a 48K memory module, and added an IO interface board for controlling things with the computer.

After my graduation I went into electronic manufacturing and found that computers were really good for solving production problems. I built a rudimentary CAD system that stored production PC board layouts and punch press data on the mainframe. I then wrote drivers for the mainframe interface board in my PC which then allowed me to pull data off the mainframe and solve problems that the data processing department was saying was impossible for more than 5 years. After writing a Turbo Pascal library for controlling all the mainframe applications, via emulated keystrokes and scraping the video buffer memory, I wrote a long needed report program for the managers in half an afternoon, and the DP department when forced to do the same took 6 man-months to write the exact same program on the mainframe in COBOL. I then realized solving problems with computers was much too much fun to not be doing it for a living, and I never looked back.

I worked for DoD, NASA, and JHU Applied Physics Laboratory to name a few. That all started with a UK version of the ZX80 kit in my dorm room and the drive and determination to understand something that I was denied the possibility of doing in my coursework in college. Don't tell me what I can't do.

Acer Aspire Multimedia PC

[codebase7]

Bought it in 1997. Forget the model number.

Had a AT standing tower case design dark green, with an old 486. (I think?) Expansion slots were on a riser card. Came standard with an ISA MWave sound card. (Which I still have.) IDE CD ROM, and Windows 95. The included Acer monitor had speakers and died quickly. So we got an NEC CRT to replace it.

Also came with a bunch of extras. Like an Acer branded (and colored) hand telephone, keyboard, mouse, and mouse pad.

The Bundled software included:
The Acer Software Librarian (Which doubled as both a shell replacement -ACE Desktop- and Recovery CD)
The Magic School Bus Explores the Solar System (This SKU was meant as family PC offering.)
The Family Doctor
Tyrian 2000
Jazz Jackrabbit Demo
Microsoft Fury3 Demo
Microsoft Works
Quicken

I remember spending a lot of time taking that thing apart and rebuilding it over the years. At one point it had a PCI Analog TV card, 1GB HDD, the maximum RAM it could possibly have, 56k US Robotics PCI modem (MSN account ready!), and DVD ROM / CD burner installed in it. The CRT was upgraded to a Kogi L7EH-TA LCD. It's OS wound up upgrading to Windows XP Home (after Win98SE) before downgrading back to Windows 2000 Workstation. What ultimately got it retired was being too old to run The Sims, (requires a Pentium), and the inability to plugin a replacement GPU card. (Had some ATI chip in it for basic VGA.) Although it did avoid going into storage for awhile due to some networking experiments and use by other family members.

Sadly that machine died a rusty death after being in storage for so long. Really didn't like having to give it up. I did find it's (well used) recovery CD recently. Unfortunately the CD label is degraded and peeling off, although I was able to get some of the data off of it. Mostly the important unique bits. (The recovery's boot image, desktop background, ACE Desktop and Acer Software Librarian apps.) I've been looking into rebuilding the disk image using a stock installation of Win95. As I've yet to find a replacement disc that includes everything. (It's not on Acer's website, and I'm not even sure they have the correct model / SKU info for it anymore...)

As for the first error I had with that machine? Turns out the Magic School Bus Explores the Solar System doesn't like the clock being set to the year 2058. It throws the dreaded "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down" error in that case. Heh. I might just see that error occur legitimately soon....

Sinclair ZX80

[bb_matt]

When the ZX80 was finally delivered in 1981, despite being ordered in 1980, I had just turned 13.
Sinclair clearly underestimated demand, so there were very lengthy delays for many.

Before that, the idea of having your own computer at home was a dream.
I was living in the UK at the time. We had a Tandy store in town - the US company had spread across the atlantic.
We weren't even allowed to touch the computers in that store, we could only look at them. The cost was so far out of my parents reach, it was crazy.

My interest in computers was entirely sparked by arcade gaming.
At my school, someone from the computer club had an enterprising idea of charging 10 pence (I guess, a Dime in US money) for a game of Space Invaders - the same price as the Arcade.
I wasn't allowed to join the Computer club, because it was only for those whose Math ability was exemplary - anything below an 80% exam score = no entry.

So, pretty much, access was so ridiculously limited to the masses, something had to give - and it did, Sinclair came to the rescue!

The first thing I did, on powering up the ZX80, sitting cross legged on the carpet, in front of the telly, hunched over the keyboard, staring at a white screen with a blinking cursor, was to type "Play Space Invaders" - knowing full well it wouldn't work, but I was just dreaming away.
The next thing I did was to program a loop that displayed a rude word.
I was still a kid - and found it funny - even funnier at a computer store - I had some power! - I could write a little program that said "fuck you" infinitely and leave it running in the store.

So, I hit the ZX80 manual and learned Sinclair Basic.
My first goal, to re-create space invaders.
I got as far as moving a letter 'A' backward and forward and a bunch of letter O's slowly descending down the screen.
Sadly, the cassette tape I'd saved to, got tangled up in the tape deck. No amount of sticky tape would fix the break.

I continued to learn, went to a ZX81 and then to a Spectrum.
By this point, age 15, I was messing about with assembly language and had managed to create a simple rendition of PacMan, which almost worked, plus I coded the game "Mastermind", quite successfully.
I'd also create multimedia presentations for my brothers art college projects - he'd direct what he wanted, I'd code it.

I was totally on my way to becoming a proficient computer programmer.

Then my parents got a divorce and I discovered that guitars, girls, pot and booze was more fun than coding.

I'm now a software engineer - but I had a pause of about 10 years, from 1985 to 1995, where I barely touched a computer.

Philips Videopac

[carnivore302]

For me it was a philips videopac. It was meant as console for gaming, but there was a cartridge that let you program in machine language. You had a whopping 256 bytes of ram at your disposal. I was 11 at that time and couldn't understand the manual because there was this weird symbol O with a line striked through it. For the life of me, I couldn't find that symbol on the keyboard! About a year later I ran into somebody who explained it was the number zero. From that moment on a world opened up to me. Although the videopac was my first, the commodore 64 is the one I have the fondest memories of.

I miss the 6502

[ScooterBill]

Late 1970s. Bought an Ohio Scientific C1P. A kit that was similar to an Apple II with a cassette interface. I copied the Apple II ROM which had a great monitor and I got it to work on my kit computer. Took forever but I was a teenager and time wasn't important. The real difference from now is troubleshooting was totally on you, not the internet.

I think this counts

[kackle]

My introduction was Magnavox Odyssey 2's (a 1970s gaming console) "Computer Intro!" cartridge*. [fandom.com] 'A computer on my television?!' It allowed 99 lines of code in either assembly or machine language. So, my first language was machine language(!), but I loved it. I still have some of the programs that I scribbled on paper before entering them into the "game cartridge" with the keyboard, including a very crude slot machine that used all 99 lines. (I think I was a better programmer back then!)

I was so young and information so scarce, that when I got my Commodore 64 several years later, I didn't even realize that I could write machine/assembly language on it, learning it's BASIC instead.

*If you go to YouTube to see it, just know that the videos there were made by people who have no idea how to use the cartridge/put it in programming mode.

COSMAC ELF built on perfboard

[Rick Schumann]

At the time couldn't afford the expensive HP hexadecimal displays (they were about $50 each in 1980) so I used LEDs instead and learned to translate binary to hexadecimal in my head.
Later I designed and built an 8KB RAM expansion for it using 2114 SRAM, a serial interface using an AY-5-1013 UART and an RS232 interface, then a 20mA to RS232 interface for the old Teletyple 33ASR I'd obtained from the other highschool in my district (needed repair, a pawl in the keyboard was broken), and saved up to get a 2KB integer BASIC interpreter which came in two 2708 EEPROMs. The BASIC interpreter had no I/O of it's own since they had no idea what hardware you had, so you had to write your own. In the end I wrote the serial I/O for what I had out to the paper tape punch on the Teletype, and wrote a bootloader that I had to enter manually on the 'front panel' switches on the base ELF board, which would read the paper tape back in and jump to the BASIC interpreter EPROMs. Any BASIC programs I wrote on that setup had to be listed out with the paper tape punch running so I could read them back in later, which wasn't always succesful because as I recall there was a slight pause after entering each line due to the low clock speed of the CDP1802.

RCA CDP1802

[Gim Tom]

My first real computer was an RCA CDP 1802 with a hex key pad and 256 Bytes of memory. However, it had video that mapped part of that memory to a black and white monitor.

I think it was called a COSMIC ELF and was made by RCA I think. You had to write down the opcodes for the program you wanted to run then hand assemble them into the HEX bytes to key in on the key pad. I am 75 now and don' t remember a lot of the details since that was something over 40 years ago and maybe a bit more.

Both the processor and memory were CMOS so it would run right down to DC which made single stepping the go to diagnostic tool. Can't remember the clock speed when running but it was pretty low.

Re:

[rahmrh]

Last I checked I still have 2 working ti-99/4a (when last tested 10 years age).

I wrote a lot of basic and assembler , I learned to hate one of the function key combinations that was close to an often used key and caused an immediate reboot.

Re: I'm Blind in Texas

[kenh]

OMG, so you okayed so many video games you ruined your eyes?!?

My mom always said that would happen, but I never believed her...

Re: I'm Blind in Texas

[kenh]

Played, not "Okayed"

Re:

[Joce640k]

Yep. Sir Clive really kickstarted home computing in the UK.