your first computer?

[Popinski]

This is to branch off of the "10 worst PCs of all time".

What was your first computer?
What was the purpose of using it?
How much did it cost and what year?

1. Tandy 8086 (9 Ghz?) with 512K of ram.. CGA monitor, no hard drive.

2. We played educational games on it like Carmen Sandiego. It actually scared me as a child because the music was very bland and the artwork of humans were so bad that I had nightmares at night. Dad did word processing on a program called "Word Perfect". Absolutely horrible.

3. According to my dad, if I can remember, cost around 2,000-3,000 dollars. back in around 1988?

I remember being jealous because my friend had a 286 version and 640k of ram and I used to come over to his house to play Wolfenstein.

 

[PT1]

Good old Wolfenstein.....LOL

 

[440Magnum]

My first computer was an Osborne 1. I used it in college for writing papers (WordStar word processing software- makes WordPerfect look like the best thing since sliced bread). Remember this was all command-line stuff- no windows, no mouse. no hard drive, just two 5.25" floppy drives. I mainly used it for learning a few programming languages (Basic, FORTRAN, and some assembly). Got a TRS-80 Color Computer a couple of years later for my assembly programming class, since the 6809 processor was a better environment for that than the Z80 in the Osborne. At our university there was a revolving door for TRS-80 CoCos. You'd buy one (preferably used), take the assembly class, and then sell it to another student about to take the assembly class- so I owed it maybe a total of 4 months. The Osborne was circa 1981 or 1982, don't remember how much it cost but it was pricey. More than I really could afford, but I figured it was worth it since I was studying engineering. The Osborne was outdated within 6 months of buying it, but then EVERY computer was back then. By '86 I was employed and my employer supplied computers and I didn't really WANT to use one at home. I never actually owned another computer of my own until the late 90s when I bought a Mac Powerbook, and by then home computers were (finally) truly useful.

 

[addyguy]

Family had a Radio Shack 'TSR 80' computer in the 1980's. My sister and I used to spend hours playing the game 'Peanut Butter Panic' on it....LOL!

 

[Moose016]

It was a compaq in around 1984 or 5 that we kept way to long. It was a large metal rectangle that weighed about 50lbs, but yet was considered the first portable computer. The keyboard bolted to the front and there was a big leather handle on the back. The screen was a green cube built into the box but and there were two 5.25 drives one to put in the disk for dos and one for the program you want to run, you would have to switch the disks real fast to change over.

After that a 50mhz Gateway 2000 with a 200mb HD and 4 mb ram and windows 3.1, later upgraded to 95 with a ram upgrade.

 

[440Magnum]

Originally Posted By: Moose016
It was a compaq in around 1984 or 5 that we kept way to long. It was a large metal rectangle that weighed about 50lbs, but yet was considered the first portable computer. .


Adam Osborne would argue with you- the Osborne 1 was actually the first "luggable" computer. But the Compaq was the first PC-compatible portable. The 01 ran the CP/M operating system.

 

[Quattro Pete]

1. Atari 800XL, 6502 CPU (1.8 MHz), 64KB RAM, 2 joysticks, no monitor (hook it up to a TV), no HDD. Cassette tape recorder was used as mass storage. Later on we purchased a 5.25" floppy drive for it.

2. Playing games and learning programming in BASIC.

3. It was around $130 in 1985-86, plus another $50 for the tape recorder, and another $200 or so for a floppy drive a few years later.

 

[XS650]

What was your first computer?
What was the purpose of using it?
How much did it cost and what year?

1. Commodore 64 in 1982, I got mine the first week they were available. Serial number was just over 2000. About 1.6Mhz IIRC, 64k RAM and 32k was used for the built in OS so there was 32 left to work in.

2. Some BASIC programming, an early spreadsheet program that was like Lotus 123. Used it online with early pre-WWW ISPs, BBSes and some access to my employers VAX system through an ultra slow modem, also some games

3. Cost $595 for the computer, used a TV monitor limited to 40 characters wide on the screen and had a tape deck instead of floppy for the first year or so.

 

[RWEST]

A TRS 8086, the one with a 5.25" floppy in the side of the keyboard/CPU, sometime back in the 80's.
Used that one for quite a while, then we got a TRS 80286 with TWO 3.5" floppies. THEN we installed a 40 MB hard drive card in it, and we were off/running.
Did a lot of DOS stuff, obviously - mainly Professional Write and Professional File. The programs worked pretty well - very stable, no blue death screens..

 

[OVERKILL]

Commodore 128 that my mom brought home from school was the first computer we had in the house. Prior to that, it was Mac IIe's at school.

First computer we purchased was a Hewitt Rand 8088. Switchable between CGA/Hercules monochrome. It had a 5.25" bay, and a 30MB hard drive. 640KB of RAM and 8Mhz of processing power. Dad ran Wordperfect, I ran EVERYTHING I could find. It was my BBS surfing machine, and was fitted with a 2400baud modem.

I used Procomm Plus, and I a host of other programs I can't remember the name of, including one I liked better than Procomm.

I would dial into the local University's VAX system and get on the "Internet". Nothing like surfing in text.

 

[Quest]

Apple II with 48K RAM, circa 1982~3.

With a green 10" monitor.

 

[Michael_P]

TRS 80 upgraded to 16K of ram with big floppies, monochrome screen and all. It was the family computer. The TI-99-4A was our upgrade. I could even play games with that one.

 

[Colt45ws]

AMD 486 clone with a 500MB HD, 16MB of ram, CDROM, and Win 95. Upgrade was a Compaq with a K6-200, 32MB ram, 2GB HD, and Win 95.

 

[GMFan]

Gateway 2000
Pentium 100MHz
8mb of RAM (eventually added 64b for a total of 72mb)
1.2GB 5400RPM Hard Drive
8MB Video
36.6k Modem
15" Gateway Monitor (made by Sony Trinitron)
Windows 95

 

[eljefino]

Apple ][ PLUS, circa 1982.

My Mom subscribed to "Nibble" magazine and they literally had code in the back that you could type in yourself and wind up with a running program! We had this horrible word processor called "Apple writer". The 40 character, all caps, green screen was absolutely not WYSIWYG. A capital letter was inversed in a bright little cube. You had to hit "ESC" (not shift) before each cap. Then, to save your work and print, you had to hit ESC ESC CTRL Q. Every time.

The floppy drives were terrible, my parents' solution was to blow a hair dryer in the slot. ???

The joystick attached with this ribbon cable and looked like something assembled by an MIT student, it was this odd cube thing.

A few years passed and my Dad declared we were going to Lechemere in New Hampshire to buy a color monitor and save the sales tax. We paid a toll on I-93 driving up from Mass though.

He lectured us kids to NEVER NEVER bring magnets even into the computer room (lest we accidentally wipe his diskettes). He bought mostly "Verbatim" brand. We were like

. He joined Compuserve in like 1989 and was so pleased to get weather reports for elsewhere in the country! And he lectured us to not dare pick up the phone cause he'd be online in the den. What a jerk.

It finally got replaced a decade later with a Digital Equipment 386/20 Mhz PC. Then a Celeron 300

which lasted another decade. I took the hard drive out and moved the data to a several GHZ AMD whitebox system I made him for Xmas.

 

[greenaccord02]

IBM-PCjr I loved that machine and it had a cordless keyboard. You read that right.

 

[NJC]

I'm on PC #10 now, and being a bonafide anal-retentive chowder head (stolen line from a sitcom), I've detailed all 10. It all started in 1991:

PC#1 (1991)
286 with 10 Mhz cpu
2 5 1/4" floppy drives,
37 meg hard drive and a math co-processor.
Dot matrix printer
~$700

~~~~~~~~

The math co-processor is what gave it the sooper-speed.

 

[ddrumman2004]

My first was a Commodore Vic 20. Still have it and all the added cartridges and books. It's all packed away in the original box.

I also own an Apple IIE with dual floppy drives and an 80 column display adapter along with a ton of floppy discs and books for it.

I still also have my first Windows machine.....90 MHZ processor with Windows 3.1. Great OS!

 

[Virtuoso]

1. Epson Equity I+ An 8088, 10MHz beast. Originally came with a 5.25" 360k floppy, 20MB HD, CGA graphics and not much else! Parents bought this one for me (well, the whole family, but I'm the one who really used it) back in 1989. Eventually was upgraded to EGA, and a 3.5" 720k.

It did come with Print Shop, John Madden Football (before they put years with the titles), Oregon Trail plus a few others I can't remember off hand.

I remember how jipped I felt when I figured out the menu it booted up to was simply just an AUTOEXEC.BAT file with a bunch of TYPE commands in it..


2. Didn't matter. I think my mom finally got sick of me asking for a computer.

3. A lot. It was a christmas gift, and I was pretty young, but I can imagine they paid a lot for it given where they bought it from (who didn't pay a lot back in 1989?)

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

Originally Posted By: greenaccord02
IBM-PCjr I loved that machine and it had a cordless keyboard. You read that right.


Same here! I was amazed when we got our second machine how it HAD to plug the keyboard in. What a drag!

My sister flew a real time flight from Chicago to Boston on MS Flight Sim 1.0 on that computer. The graphics were as good as a 4 year old drawing with markers. LOL She was so proud of herself, she was only 9!