Right everyone... What was your first ever computer??

Now that's what I call classic computer porn! Now my turn.

My first "games machine" was one of those Binatone Pong machine (only black and white image onscreen) back in the tail end of the '70s. I was just entering my teens then.
I was given a Sinclair Spectrum 48K as a Christmas pressie in 1984. It was the one with the rubberoid keyboard where I needed to be a double jointed octopus to be able to type anything with it.
In 1994, I purchased a Commodore Amiga A1200. Now that was a machine that was ahead of the times in terms of it's "Workbench" OS, along with the AGA graphics chips. (Although I did find myself wishing I owned an Amiga A4000 with it's 40 mhz processor, that was one very powerful machine at the time).
In 1996, I became a Playstation fanboy as I bought the original Playstation a week after it's release. Had to sell the A1200 to fund it.
My first PC was a Tiny 450 mhz Pentium 3 purchased in 1999. I'm not ashamed to admit that the machine was a pile of poo and was the worse £1095 I've spent. The fact it came with a Barney The Dinosaur CD rom really didn't help it's cause not one bit! The PC's probably now back to mother Earth from whence it came from but I've still got the 17 ins CRT monitor.
 
My brain, this was a multi cell model and would boot up pretty quick in the mornings but had the tendancy to start lagging around lunchtime at school. Despite its massive storage capabilty it was never used to its full potential, or at least thats what my teachers told me. Over the years it seems that the onboard sound and colour recognition have slightly deteriorated, the memory modules need a tap now and then and the odd re-boot up the arse is needed. other than that it seems to be chugging along fine.
 
My first computer was a ZX Sinclair Spectrum, not the "posh" 48k model, the basic 16k model, that most of the games made for the spectrum wouldn't run on! :bang:
 
Spectrum for me, then a BBC B, then my first work machine was a Apple Macintosh II. Now I've got a 2.3 GHz quad core, with more RAM than we thought was even possible back in the day.
 
The zx81,which eventually overheated!
then
dragon32,(manic minor was fun)
atari520stfm, ithink!
3pcs,homemade,worked ok,upgraded every so often for faster motherboard and cpu,
now got acer as main machine and acer laptop,
i remember spending a lot of time typing in games on the zx81 and the dragon32 (in the days when i had a lot of time to do that sort of thing) not quite sure what happenend!
also played mr dig on the dragon32 til about 2 oclock in the morning!!!
those were the days!!
 
i had a commodore 64. Lines of code for a hot air balloon floating across the screen. I was disappointed to say the least. I was in my parents loft a few months ago and its lying up there with keys missing lol
 
ShawWellPete said:
A 1kb ZX81

upgrade to 16kb with the Ram Pack. Don't mention the wobbles, type out two pages of code from "Sinclair Programs" magazine only for it to crash.

:bang:
Click to expand...

OMFG - there were so many of us. Blu tack cured my problems :D

Anyway - here is the list

ZX81
Acorn Electron
C64
amiga500
Amiga600
amiga1200
PC - 486DX2
PC - Pentium of some nature
PC - Self Built
PC - Self Built
PC - Self Built
Toshiba Laptop
PC - Self Built
PC - Gateway
Mac Mini
Mac book
PC - Gateway AMD 64
Imac 24in
PC - Quad Core


Nearly as many computers as cameras :D:D:D
later
 
My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81 too but the one I remember most "fondly" was from a few years later when I started selling Olivetti M24s (IBM compatibles).... http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=535

I brought one home to play with and it amazed everybody because it had a 10MB hard disk!!! I know we're used to ever increasing storage these days but to think that a machine that could run a word processor, spreadsheet and database couldn't even cope with one RAW file from today's average DSLR.

And back in 1985-ish, we used to sell this PC + word processing software + daisywheel printer and an acoustic hood (to keep the noise down) for £7000!! Don't think I'd get away with it today. :crying:
 
My first proper computer was a spectrum 128k with floppy drive!!!
sinclair_zx_spectrum_plus3.jpg


But well before that I had my Vectrex for gaming:
mb_vectrex_1s.jpg

...more of a console though.

I jumped from the Vextrex to the colecovision:
Colecovision.jpg
 
My first games machine was a Mattel Intellivision.

My first computer was a Spectrum 48k. Good old Jet Set Willy and Jet Pac!
 
I remember getting my dragon 32.

I was like a dog with 2 *****s.

I spent hours loading programs from cassette tape recorder.

eh by eck those were the days.

:)
 
BBC 'B'
I even upgraded it so that it had 64K of RAM
 
My first computer was a Tandy TRS-80, which supported colour graphics. Oh the hours I spent on Cuthbert Goes Walkabout and Cuthbert In The Mines. Just great memories. Went on to Commodore 64, then Amigas and lastly PCs, starting with a Pentium 75MHz, cue a mocking Keanu Reeves style 'wooooooahhh!!'
 
The TI994a was our first home computer and as I did business with Texas Instruments, I was able to build up pretty much a full set of peripherals including the expansion box. I actually used a program I wrote in TI-basic to track customer contacts and maintain follow-up calls. The only difficulty was the program and data was loaded from a portable cassette tape player, so I used to set it running, have dinner, then do the updating during the evening.

ti994-a.jpg


ti-994expbox-top.jpg


My first PC type machine was the Compaq portable (as in big as a Singer sewing machine in it's carrying case). The keyboard clipped onto the bottom. Unclipping this revealed a green monochrome screen and 10Mb hard drive.The picture below shows a dual floppy drive model - too much luxury for my pocket. My model was the cheap c.£4,500.00 one!

678px-Compaq_portable.jpg


Anthony.
 
For me:
1. A Sinclair ZX80 kit, it looked so good in the exchange and mart advert.
2. ZX81
3. Commodore 64, well about 6 to be precise, they were extremely unreliable.
4. Atari ST, one of the originals without a modulator and with an external disk drive.
5. Another ST, an ST2 this time upgraded to 4MB (yes 4 whole MB) or RAM
6. PC
7. Another PC...
8. Another PC...
9. Another PC...
10. etc...
 
flicker said:
But well before that I had my Vectrex for gaming:
<snipped>
...more of a console though.

I jumped from the Vextrex to the colecovision:
<snipped>
Click to expand...

My parents had a shop in the early 80's and the wholesale warehouse (Makro in Washington) they used to frequent had quite a large electrical department complete with a double isle of all the hot consoles and hand-helds all out for demo. It was effectively a creche, everyone dropped their kids off their for a couple of hours while they stocked up, happy days.

I can remember the Vextrex vividly. I was a unique amongst the rest of the pack.
 
blimey - time warp back to the 80's 90's........

First comp I remember using was a spectrum 16K.....

Then at school we had the BBC thingys as mentioned on the first page.........

My first real PC had 330Mb of Hard Drive, 4 Mb of RAM and was a 486 processor, which were all new at the time...... it's clock speed was 20Hz, though did have a "turbo" button to take it up to 50 Hz.........
 
I thought my 200mhz desktop was old, but looking at the pictures here made my pc look like it came from star trek :bonk:
 
LOAD ""

Commodore Vic 20, then on to a Spectrum 128K, Atari 520 STFM (knew I should have got the E with the blittler chip), Amiga 600, then into the world of PCs which is a whole other thread.
 
Amiga 500 was MY first, but the family has a ZX80 - in fact we still own it!
 
Anthony.Ralph said:
I should add that this had a 286 processor and I bought a 287 coprocessor to speed up programs like Lotus 1-2-3 -older patrons will know of which I speak :)

Anthony
Click to expand...

I remember Lotus Symphony :( I think it's time to book the flight to Zurich...
 
Acorn electron here, bought the rom cartridge and 3.5" drive addon together with a thermal printer which was toitally useless and went straight back to the shop
 
mother being a teacher meant the first computer i used a lot was the bbc micro

but i had a couple of spectrums and amigas and then there were the cyrix based ibm compatibles dx75 or something iirc
 
In order:

ZX81 + 16K RAM pack (first computer)
ZX Spectrum (six of them in total over 15 months, all returned under warranty and finally for a refund)
BBC B that never broke down or crashed, other than when I wrote dodgy machine code
Acorn Archimedes. Faster than a very fast thing that was.
PCs (lots)
 
Acorn Electron (and I think we still have it!!)
Amiga 500 (with the extra 512kb memory!)
PC ever since... starting with a 66Mhz dx2 (I think)
Laptop now
MacBook Pro next ;)
 
10 INPUT "What is your name: ", U$
20 PRINT "Hello "; U$
30 INPUT "How many stars do you want: ", N
40 S$ = ""
50 FOR I = 1 TO N
60 S$ = S$ + "*"
70 NEXT I
80 PRINT S$
90 INPUT "Do you want more stars? ", A$
100 IF LEN(A$) = 0 THEN GOTO 90
110 A$ = LEFT$(A$, 1)
120 IF A$ = "Y" OR A$ = "y" THEN GOTO 30
130 PRINT "Goodbye "; U$
140 END
 
Atari 2600 was first computer.

First 'real' computer was a PC. 286/12 with 1mb ram, 16-colour EGA graphics and a 20MB HDD the size of a breezeblock. Best bit was the power switch which felt like you were throwing the switch on a nuclear power station.

I miss them :(
 
Nigey said:
10 INPUT "What is your name: ", U$
20 PRINT "Hello "; U$
30 INPUT "How many stars do you want: ", N
40 S$ = ""
50 FOR I = 1 TO N
60 S$ = S$ + "*"
70 NEXT I
80 PRINT S$
90 INPUT "Do you want more stars? ", A$
100 IF LEN(A$) = 0 THEN GOTO 90
110 A$ = LEFT$(A$, 1)
120 IF A$ = "Y" OR A$ = "y" THEN GOTO 30
130 PRINT "Goodbye "; U$
140 END
Click to expand...

That sure is a blast from the past ... got me staring at that for a good hour just thinking of "the good old days".
 
My first ever computer? A Commodore C64 - I almost bought a Commodore VIC-20 but just as I was about it buy it, Commodore brought out the C64 so I bought that instead :)

After that I bought a Commodore C128 and then a C128-D (C128 with built in disk drive), an Amiga A1000, an Amiga A2000 and then a Pentium PC. After that I went through various PCs until last November when I finally took the plunge and bought a 27" Core i7 iMac :)

Being a bit sad, I still have quite a few old computers lurking in the loft including some extras that I bought from car boot sales a few years back (they're like gold dust these days - you very rarely see old 8-bit computers at car boot sales these days). As well as all of the above, my collection includes BBC Micros, Acorn Electrons, Amstrad CPCs (464, 664 and 6128), Spectrums (48k, Plus etc), Commodore C16, Amiga 600, Amiga 1200, Commodore Plus 4, VIC-20, ZX-81s, Oric-1 and a few others that I've forgotten! One day I hope they'll be collectors items and I'll make a mint but I suspect they'll all end up in a skip instead... lol
 
Vic 20 with the expansion pack! It had a whole 5k, actually about 3½k once it was up and running.
 
blimey...only just found this thread!!
Dragon 32 for me... i remember writing programs and then shouting my mum... 'come and try this out'
it would ask... 'Do you like music?' if she typed 'Y' the tape player would start and play Duran Duran... if she typed 'N' it would say 'You Stink' on the screen!!

I hope you all used to go into Boots on a saturday afternoon and type on every computer...
10 PRINT"LEIGH IS COOL";
20 GOTO 10

am i right that the semi colon made the text fill the page horizontally rather than just scroll vertically?

I also remember buying 'dragon user' magazine and copying out about 10 pages of machine code made up of peeks and pokes... just to be greeted with 'error at line 7260' or on the rare occasion the program did work... it was a cheap rip off of frogger or something!!!
BRILL THREAD!!
 
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