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[dominique355]

My first home computer was a Sirius Victor with 2  5 1/2 inch floppy drives. 32 KB RAM.  It came with 2 OS on floppy, PC DOS and another, I think something like CPM86, not sure, too long ago.

I learned a lot, especially programming in Basic86.

Then I switched to IBM PC, also 5 1/2 inch floppy. Harddisks were too expensive, 1  MB for 1,000 Swiss francs! Imagine!

[USNret]

As google ads on my browser display "Get 1 terabyte of online storage -- free trial".  Back in the day, we were happy with 16K RAM, and a dual-floppy drive (so you didn't have to keep swapping the OS floppy & data floppy in & out.)

I think I had some kinda Zenith; all I remember is that the operating system was CP/M.  I found a very expensive word processing program for it, maybe $200, and used this on the Navy ship in Japan where I was stationed.  As far as I know, I was the only one on the ship with an actual computerized word processor.  The admin staff was lucky to have IBM Selectric typewriters with correction tape.

Some of your recollections brought tears to my eyes of happy memories, and amazement of how far we've come in our lifetime. We truly have a bunch of crusty old bastards on this forum.

[T_Dog]

For me... A Z80 followed by an AIM 65.    Nothing like running that code through the cassette recorder twice to run the assembler.

[Thighlander]

HP Vectra 286  8 mhz.  640 k   40 mb hd

[cdnvic]

Vic 20 at home, Apple II at school.

[dionys]

bino, on 2012-05-26 00:09:49, said:

macintosh.jpg

Ditto for me

[Javabear]

I had an Atari 800.  Played hours of Dig-dug on it.

[luciferbkk]

I know that I had a small home computer ( more like a toy actually) the brand and model I can't remember before I got my first C64.  It must have been in 1979 or so. My C64, never got a C128, used a tape recorder for storing programs and I think it used a 51/4 floppy disk later on. I then upgraded to various Intel processors starting with 8068 ( 4.7 Mhz?), 8088, 80286, 80386. I got my first HDD with 10 MB capacity which was a great improvement. I had green and amber monitors at the time. I also remember using a so-called mainframe in officer's school in 1980?. It was an IBM 360 with a whopping 64 kB Ram and it used punch cards as input. It filled up a whole room and needed air conditioning in the room so it wouldn't overheat. You needed a computer technician to use that thing and give him your punch cards to feed the monster. You got them back with a printout a day later more often than not saying there was a syntax error or other flaws and you had to start all over again.  It was so much fun!

[canuckamuck]

Well I guess it was a TRS-80 model II, because I don't think the Atari setup that played pong counts. My most memorable purchase was picking up a 486 with  60MB hard disk and  4mb ram for $5400.00. (yep it was leading edge and I thought I needed it). It was a doorstop within a year.

[grahamhc]

My first home computer  was a Sanyo with 2 x 5.25' floppies, one for the program and one which stored the data. It ran on CPM I recall. Bought it from Morgan Comuters in London "Reduced from £1,500 to £199" and used it to produce a club newsletter and membership details.

Next was an AST 286 workstation and monitor bought at an auction, not realising it had no hard HDD or OS. Paid £245 for a 40 Mb IDE HDD.

[Phil Conners]

Does this count?



TI59, late seventies.  Programmable in a sort of assembler language.  With the attached printer it was almost like a real computer

Othewise my first was a ZX80 in the early eightees, followed by a Commodore 64, IBM-PC (the original 8088 with a whopping 96KB RAM and two 360K 5.25" floppy drives and monochrome screen).   After a year with that I landed my first computer job as COBOL programmer on ICL 2900 mainframes, initially running DME (think paper card readers for program control) for a large corporation.  Oh yes, those days you could get a job in IT if you could spell I-B-M.



Those "washing machines" held huge 12" disk platters with a capacity of about a hundred MB each.  I think our total online capacity at the time was 900 MB as I recall "almost a gigabyte, wow".  It was so futuristic, like working in Star Trek.  Ah yes, nostalgia

Sorry if that got a little off-topic, obviously this wasn't my home computer

[NomadJoe]

[eeeya]

JSixpack, on 2012-05-25 22:21:49, said:

No time or money for game machines. The Kaypro II could run Wordstar and a Pascal compiler as well. W/ a 300 baud modem to connect to the Uni, got good use out of it. Eat your hearts out, Osborn I owners.

How far we've come.


kayproii.jpg

Kaypro II Released: 1982 Price: US $1595. Weight: 26 lbs CPU: Zilog Z80, 2.5 MHz RAM: 64K Display: 9" green phosphor screen. 24 X 80 text only Ports: Serial port Parallel port Storage: Two internal 5-1/4" SS-DD 195K drives OS: CP/M, SBASIC

We had a Kaypro II as well when i was growing up. My parents bought it to type there PHDs on it for university. Dad become such a good touch typer he used to spend weeks typing computer game programs out of a book he bought into BASIC..that were thousands of lines long

after that we had IBMs starting from an 8088 chipset throuht to 4 colour CGA, EGA, VGA... dot matrix computers, 1200 baud modems which i would connect to bullitin boards advertised in dads computer magazines..

we had so much computer stuff at our house and then dad retired and never touched a computer again...

he doesnt even know what you tube is.. he thinks its got viruses!!!

[Heng]

Texas Instruments TI-99-4a when I was 8 or 9.   Used a state of the art (at that time) tape recorder to load programs.   Average loading time was 10-20 minutes.  

:-)

[bendejo]

Coleco Adam.
I was trying to scrape up money for an electric typewriter and came across one at a garage sale for $50. 1985 I think.  No monitor, used a little b&w tv set.  Had a cassette drive for storage, took forever going backward and forward, just like the mainframe tape drives you saw in the movies.  Taught myself BASIC.

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[eek]

Recall first having some crap plug in Atari..but more of a games console than a computer. But yeh, im a ZX Spectrum first proper computer member also.
Remember Manic Miner too, was addicted to Attic Attack (if anyone remembers that one). ..and of course practically broke the enter key on Daily Thomson's decathlon long jump..
Ended up morphing into a hard core gamer, even being employed as a game master for an online game, then going on to work for a bit in 3d game graphics.
Im still addicted to computers, but gaming isnt something i do much anymore.

[Jdietz]

bobl, on 2012-05-26 08:49:15, said:

Sinclair ZX80 for me, followed by ZX81, ZX Spectrum, VIC20, Amiga, then an original IBM PC-AT

For some reason I'm craving a game of Manic Miner, Jetpac, or Jumpin' Jackson...

There you go:

http://www.zxspectrum.net/

Manic miner is under the '1983' tab.

[Jdietz]

lovetotravel, on 2012-05-26 09:51:38, said:

The first computer I worked on was a PDP 11, programming in RPG, and an IBM System 360 programming in Cobol.

Are you absolutely sure that wasn't the other way around?

[smokie36]

endure, on 2012-05-26 00:41:43, said:

Sinclair ZX81 for me. 1kb of memory. 3.25Mhz Z80. Monochrome upper case only.

Me as well. I was lucky though...my old boy was a programmer right back in the early 70's...he used to sort out games and stuff for us....mind you I was glad to trade up to the Spectrum!

[Khun Jean]

Bought a Commodore VIC20 i think it was in 1980, before that around 1977-1978 i used a TRS-80 from my uncle. Being 13 i was better at programming it then him. Had my first paid software project at that time.
The VIC20 was very limited and the TRS-80 especially the Z80 assembly language was so much easier to use then the 6502 that i wanted my own one. In 1980 i traded the VIC20 after 1 months use for the TRS-80 because the VIC20 could use teletext and the TRS-80 not.
For both it was a good trade.
I knew the TRS-80 inside out, even hardware modifications were done to upgrade memory and screen updates. The expendar was homebuild as the original one was too expensive. Repaired an old 80KB floppy drive someone not used anymore to get trs-dos running.
Had a few more programming jobs until i finally went to evening school to 'officialy' learn how to program.
Cobol was learned but never ever used.
Worked on PC's most of them XT compatibles but never bought one because as a hobby the TRS-80 was more than enough.

The fun was in the TRS-80 because it was one that could be mastered fully, software and hardware. After that the hardware went more 'black box' and less interesting.

Funny thing is that at this moment the microcontrollers are used to recapture that amazing moment children can have using a computer and be able to understand it fully again.
Maximite is a good example. And there are others.

[lovetotravel]

Jdietz, on Yesterday, 22:35 , said:

lovetotravel, on 2012-05-26 09:51:38, said:

The first computer I worked on was a PDP 11, programming in RPG, and an IBM System 360 programming in Cobol.

Are you absolutely sure that wasn't the other way around?

I actually worked on both of them at the same time.  Our computer lab had both.  I did like COBOL much better than RPG!

[Jdietz]

But RPG is so terse and powerful! (and fixed-format heritage of the punch cards, i.e. a C in column 6 means something very different than a C in column 17...)

I did quite a bit of RPGII work on the S/36, a "while" back.

[lovetotravel]

Jdietz, on Today, 02:51 , said:

But RPG is so terse and powerful! (and fixed-format heritage of the punch cards, i.e. a C in column 6 means something very different than a C in column 17...)

I did quite a bit of RPGII work on the S/36, a "while" back.

HA!  I did some work on one of these also.  I use to have the title of CTO (Chief Tape Operator).

[gk10002000]

I also used an Osbourne "portable" PC.  If nothing else I got a lot of weight training carrying the thing back and forth from the car to work and moving it around the office.  Wordperfect for word processing as I recall.

[BB1950]

Computers - the World's Greatest Toy!

That's what was printed on the cover of the very first issue of BYTE magazine which came out in September 1975.

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My very first personal computer was an IMSAI 8080  purchased in September 1975. I started with a whopping 4K of memory!

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Over the years I made many improvements to it, but I kept the original case. I loved the switches and lights! They were very useful for troubleshooting. I finally abandoned it 10 years later, after building an IBM PC clone running IBM PC DOS 3.1. The old S100 bus was not reliable enough for further upgrades.

I have to say, I learned an awful lot from the experience. From only knowing about electronics and mechanical 'analog' computers  to become a senior software engineer for a major company that manufactured hand-held computing and data collection devices for large corporations.

When I retired in 1994, we were developing a concept which is now known to most folks as a tablet PC. I was so tired of the demands, that I didn't touch one for 4 years. But I started to pick up interest when Windows 98 came about. Computing is now my hobby again.

It's one thing for computers to be a hobby, and it's a whole different thing when it becomes an overly demanding career! As Byte magazine proudly stated:

Computers - the World's Greatest Toy!

Every kid/adult should have one to play with.
.