What was your first home computer?

The first computer I used in my home as a kid was an Apple IIc, my parents bought it in 1985.

The TI 99A; it used cassett tapes! It didn't work as well as a typewriter. I think my H purchased it in 1981 or so.

The first computer I ever used was my dad's Commodore 128. Also, there was an Apple at school, but I don't remember which model. The first one I ever "owned" was an IBM clone with Windows 98 that my dad put together with parts from one of his old ones and a used tower.

Apple II, in the mid-80s. Dot-matrix printer and all.

The first useful computer we had was purchased in 1984, a Microsoft XP. It had a very spatious ( at the time) 64 K of RAM, advanced DOS 3 and a dot matrix printer that had colored ink ( a big deal in those days). It lasted about 5 years before a virus killed it (got into the bios chip).

Things sure have changed since then.

I think the first computer I owned was a Sinclair that I built, but maybe not. I also had a single board computer that was set up for prototyping, and I'm not sure which came first. This was way back in the late 70s early 80s, but I've no idea when really. Cassette tape storage, 8KB Ram, green 12" CRT, all that good stuff. I even updated to an ascii keyboard, which was actually "smarter" than the computer. (It's actually a "dumb terminal" thing.)

My first real PC was an IBM clone that came with 3 operating systems - MS-DOS v1, CPM-86, and the so-called P-system. In fact, I've got v1 of Microsoft's flight simulator, which ran under the P-system.

Sadly, I still have all that junk. And a Commodore 64. And an Atari 500. And .....

Old electronic stuff is pretty cool, Justin

nuckinfutz wrote:Old electronic stuff is pretty cool, Justin

Heck Nucky - I've got an attic full of old radio station gear. Mixing boards, reel to reels, turntables, mics, all that stuff. All saved from the dumpster at one time or another. And now I'm faced with figuring out how to recycle it, since no one seems interested in it, and I really doubt I'll ever play with that stuff again. I searched high and low for a place to send the old working "electronics tubes" I have, and couldn't find anything that wasn't "pay, pay, pay". I've got piles of magnetic tape too, and no way to recycle it. Someday I'm simply going to have to give up and send it to the dump. (sigh)

I believe it was a Commodore (sp?) 64-- sounds familiar.
I didn't have an operating system. I had to piece together programs with BASIC. I was ecstatic when DOS came along. I was such a DOS snob. Me= who needs windows? It just "sits" on top of DOS and is such a memory hog.
True, but.... what ever!

Justin, that's cool. I have drawers of stuff I inherited from various places. I have an entire tube of Intel 8086 microprocessor chips.

In the '60s my brother built a DigiComp computer. The first one I purchased was a MacIntosh 128k.

Hehe this is funny, our first computer was probably in 1983 or so and it was called an ADAM - Coleco and it had a lot of Colecovision games like Pacman and Donkey kong and this big a&& joy stick, and get this it actually used cassette tapes!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleco_Adam

I seem to remember the ADAM from about that time.

I had a ColecoVision console. I liked Smurfs, Zaxxon, Donkey Kong, Destructor, Turbo, Pitstop, Pitfalls I and II, and a Cabbage Patch Kids game that was kind of like Pitfall, and had a little girl hopping around obstacles in a park.

Had an old Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80... or "Trash 80," as they were fondly known among their owners. That was about 1981.

My introduction to computers was writing programs that compiled either on punched paper tape, or on IBM cards. Yuck....

~Peter

Denmarkguy wrote:Had an old Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80... or "Trash 80," as they were fondly known among their owners. That was about 1981.

My introduction to computers was writing programs that compiled either on punched paper tape, or on IBM cards. Yuck....

~Peter

Actually, it was mine too. I took a fortran programming course on computer graphics in 1975; long before the days of silicone chips. I loathed those punch cards! Loathed them. It didn't help that I was a poor typists and I had to keep looking for those wayward punches in the d*mn coding. I didn't go near computers again until we got that IBM clone XP.

Oh, I had great fun with punch cards & "interactive terminals" back in the bad old days (1970s) of college mainframes. I'd get myself a beer and hang out in the computer center for hours. Wrote all kinds of useless crap, endlessly dreaming about having my own computer someday.

I also got to play with a PDP8 computer, which you programmed in machine code via 8 switches on the front panel. No cards, no cassette, no keyboard, no nothing. Just switches & lights. That thing was odd, and quite challenging. The electronic music studio had it, and in the end all it did was make strange noises via the synthesizer modules they had. (No keyboards - not piano style or typewriter style. None!)

And I too remember the Trash-80. In fact, I have one in the shed. Miserable beast. The Commodore 64 was WAY better.

Our first computer was a used MikroMikko or 'Mike the Computer', a brand manufactured in Finland from 1981 to 1987 (I just looked that up!!). I don't know if it was the computer itself or the operating system but I still have nightmares about it, it had a temper like no other.

It had a couple of games such as Pacman and one really bad golf game. My friends and I would often congregate around the computer and try and play those games... Luckily, as a savvy businesswoman of 8 years old, I was soon able to negotiate a good deal on a used Nintendo so that we were able to abandon that ol' piece of crappy computer technology for good.

That IIc we had was good for a mere 1MHz, slothfully slow for 1984. The first microprocessor ever made by Intel in 1971 was 0.7 MHz.

A Sinclair ZX81, on which I first learnt to program.

Baldus wrote:A Sinclair ZX81, on which I first learnt to program.

I wrote some programs for a Sinclair too Baldus! Never got them running right, but then the project I was working on was FAR too ambitious for that tiny computer. Far too ambitious for the time I had available too. Still, I had fun.