Topic: What was your first computer?

[Cutty Sark Sailor]

Besides toes'n'fingers...

[galfert]

Apple IIe enhanced (Ran BBS - GBBS and AE Line)
Apple Color monitor
128K 80 column card
6 Disk Drives (1 Duo Disk + 4 Disk II drives)
10 MB Bernoulli HD with 2 removable 5 MB Disks
1200 Baud Prometheus 1200G Pro Modem
Apple Color ImageWriter II printer

[PaulMy]

Besides toes'n'fingers...

And the memory was mobile!

[alanb]

First computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000. It had 2K of RAM, used a cassette tape recorder for program storage and used a TV for the display. It had a built in BASIC interpreter for programming, although you couldn't get a very big program in 2K! It was more or less just a "toy". I followed this up with a Commodore 64 which was used mostly by my kids for gaming. That computer was a remarkable piece of engineering in its day.

My first "real" computer was an IBM PC/XT with 640K RAM, an Amdek amber monochrome monitor and monochrome graphics adapter, 30 MB hard drive, 5 1/4" floppy drive, an AST Six Pack Plus multi-function add-on board and an 80 column IBM dot matrix ProPrinter. As I recall, it cost me about $3800 in mid 1980's money and was considered to be a high-end system in its day. Ran PC DOS 3.0, Word Perfect and Lotus 123.

[gwwilk]

My first computer was an S100 Bus-based iron box with 64K of ram and 2 5-1/4" floppy drives from which CP/M booted.  I later added an external housing with 2 10" floppy drives for additional storage.  It used a black and white character-based serial monitor!  I don't recall the processor.  My printer was a huge, heavy NEC SpinWriter.

It's painful to think about the overpriced and vastly under-powered equipment that initiated the PC era!

[Jasiu]

First computer I ever programmed was a Control Data Corp Cyber model - with punch cards!

First I ever OWNED was a Mac IIsi.

[PaulMy]

My first was a Commodore PET 2001 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_PET which I bought used in 1981 (I still have it).  https://www.commodore.ca/commodore-products/commodore-pet-the-worlds-first-personal-computer/


It got hit from a nearby lightning strike about 1984 so the insurance paid for a Commodore 64 replacement.
However i was able to get a replacement chip so the PET was then also back to life and it may still run - I haven't tried it for probably 30 years.  I had a few games to play with the built-in tape cassette and save some simple programs in BASIC.


With the Commodore 64 I used Paperclip, Oracle, and MS Multi Plan when the kids were not playing the dozens of games that everyone shared.




Paul

[Old Tele man]

My first computer:

K&E Slide rulers

My subsequent computers:

TRS-80 Microcomputer, Model I
TRS-80 Model III
TRS-80 Model IV
PC's ever since...

Computers I've worked on/with:

Heathkit H8 (8080A)...assembled & programmed
Heathkit H11 (PDP11)...built 3, then programmed them
MOS KIM-1 (6502) development
DEC-PDP11-35/45 (octal coding)
HP-85 BASIC...translated FORTRAN into HPBasic
S100 chassis...assembled & repaired
TI-99/4 home computer...I/O development
TI-TMS9989...military systems
TRS-80 Model 100...system development
SB180...single board computer development

[WeatherHost]

And the memory was mobile!

And WOM.

[Aardvark]

Decwriter.   Then I moved to a TRS80 with a stringy floppy.    However I did have this calculator with a thermal printer from Texas Instruments.  I could program these magnetic cards, insert them back into the calculator and print out whatever I figured.  I was doing grades back then , teaching and wrote a routine to do just that.   From the TRS80 I moved to a PC, modem of 33.6K

[Old Tele man]

Decwriter.   Then I moved to a TRS80 with a stringy floppy.    However I did have this calculator with a thermal printer from Texas Instruments.  I could program these magnetic cards, insert them back into the calculator and print out whatever I figured.  I was doing grades back then , teaching and wrote a routine to do just that.   From the TRS80 I moved to a PC, modem of 33.6K

Ah, yes, the Exatron Stringy Floppy, I wrote a book using one!

"This book was written with the aid of a TRS-80 Model I computer equipped with Level II BASIC and I6K RAM, a Centronics 730 printer with Radio Shack Printer Interface Cable (26-1411), an Exatron Stringy Floppy and Duncan Pittman's Type Right Secretary word-processing program."

[alanb]

Decwriter.   Then I moved to a TRS80 with a stringy floppy.    However I did have this calculator with a thermal printer from Texas Instruments.  I could program these magnetic cards, insert them back into the calculator and print out whatever I figured.  I was doing grades back then , teaching and wrote a routine to do just that.   From the TRS80 I moved to a PC, modem of 33.6K

Ha Ha! I didn't mention the Olivetti Programma 101. It was the first "desktop" computer I used with teaching programming to HS kids in Marion, IA back in the early 70's. It used a magnetic strip for program storage. It wasn't mine ... belonged to the school of course, but one of my students later published a book on it, titled something like "Inside the Olivetti Programma 101".

[Mattk]

Was called a Curta, complete with cranking handle and then replaced with the marvellous HP67/97 with magnetic card strips, then HP41 followed by stuff like the HP9815's/9830's and 9845's

[92merc]

Commodore VIC20 with cassette drive.

[SLOweather]

Cutty,

Like most computers, yours is useless without a display...

Besides toes'n'fingers...

[Cutty Sark Sailor]

Cutty,

Like most computers, yours is useless without a display...

Besides toes'n'fingers...

Heh.... good call..
...but then, again, that's just a 'peripheral' ...  like a desk, chair... eyeglasses in my case... 

[stevebrtx]

Wow, digging way back, it was a "luggable" Actix (I think?). It was a small PC with dual floppies, maybe 64K RAM with amber monitor, a fold down keyboard, on top was a printer and a modem with suction cup receptacles to jam a phone into? I think the OS was CPM. Next was a MAC then 2-3 more MACs and then the change for business reasons to MS and I learned to cuss B Gates!

[dupreezd]

Wow, digging way back, it was a "luggable" Actix (I think?).

I remember the Osborne luggable.

In high school we used the log - antilog books in math class for "complex" multiplication and Trig.
College we used a slide rule. Anyone remember the Facit calculator?

[Bushman]

[SLOweather]

Yeah, but you also get a "printer" and memory...

[vreihen]

My first computer was "bionic" and worked in the base 5 number system:



My second computer was a 1970's vintage Heapkit ET-3400, with a 6800 CPU and a whopping 256 *bytes* of RAM:



From there, I moved up to a home made S-100 bus system, with 8080, 8085, and later Z80 processors, two 8-inch floppies, and a 64x16 character video display.  I actually wrote a part of the boot ROM, as well as the CP/M-80 BIOS for much of the hardware including the disk controller.

Funny story - I was touring a college in 1982, and they had just un-boxed their first IBM PC and set it up on a table in the library for everyone to gawk at.  I sat down at the thing, and was flying through the operating system so fast that everyone was amazed.  Little did I know at the time that I was using Bill Gates' clone of CP/M (PC-DOS), and not the real deal from Digital Research.

When I was cleaning out a closet at work a few months ago, I found an ancient Intel SDK-86 developer's kit that I assembled over 35 years ago (not actual picture):



For everyone who remembers building their first IBM PC/XT clone, the above picture is what IBM Boca Raton probably used to design the original PC back in 1981.....

[chrisgrainger]

TRS80 for me.  Used it to learn BASIC.  Had it for a few years and then bought a Tandy1000 in the early 80's.   I splurged with 2 (count em, 2) 360K floppy drives and a whole lot of memory ..... 256K!  I ran a BBS on that for a few years after buying a horrendously expensive 300 baud modem (with acoustic couplers).  Upgraded it with a 10meg HardCard.... then I had room to bump the BBS and link into FidoNet (anybody remember FidoNet?)



Chris

[PaulMy]

I ran a BBS on that for a few years after buying a horrendously expensive 300 baud modem

Those BBS were very neat at the time!!
Paul

[chrisgrainger]

Those BBS were very neat at the time!!

They were.  When we moved out of Labrador to Ontario, I upgraded the modem to 2400 baud and then to 9600 and then to a USRHST....  Wow, when I think of the money spent. [shudder]


When I finally got an in with an internet connection through a university, I gave up the BBS.  I still have a copy of the entire thing zipped up and stored in the cloud.  The batch file that ran Binkleyterm and Maximus was a thing of beauty.  I even wrote some little utilities that processed echoes and netmail.


Chris

[stevebrtx]

Money? - ha, yes, none of us want to remember. I spent around $2K on the Actrix and was fortunate to sell it for $50. 3 years ago when I cleared out my storage area I hauled all my Mac equip, laser printer etc to Goodwill for recycling, about $5K I'd estimate. And, that's just part of it. When I lived in MX for 7 years the electricity there was vicious, I lost 7 routers, 2 big UPS regulators, telephone equip etc. Buying anything like these items in MX is full list plus 16% tax plus import, so a simple wireless router I could buy up here from Amazon for say $35 down there was more like $75-$80. But, it was a great adventure living there and now I'm safe back across the border in Texas.