your first computer?

[ToyotaNSaturn]

My 2nd PC was this Compaq 386/25 SX deskpro with a steel case. Bought it used, ran Win 3.1 fine. Ahhh, a spacious 150MB hard drive. LOL

http://www.pcworld.com/article/174794/25_compaq_deskpro_386_1986.html

 

[Popinski]

Originally Posted By: 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.


HAHAHAHAH AWESOME STORY!!!! I remember the America Online, Prodigy and Compuserve days.

 

[JustinH]

We had a bunch of apple IIe's in the classroom. We would get to type out little essays and print on the dot matrix printer.

Then we got some color macintosh computers. The principal signed up for one account of Prodigy internet. The teacher would just demonstrate it to us.

A year later the principal got an America Online account. The teacher would dial in like 10 computers into the same account at once, I have no idea how this worked.

We had just got a computer at home, and my first experience with hacking happened. My parents didn't have money to shell out on internet expenses. I would watch the teacher enter in the password for the america online, then I would go home and sign in to it myself.

The password was the principals last name all in lower cap letters. I would spend hours on that account, and my mother would yell about the phone bill.

 

[Rand]

I had a ibm pcjr in 1990

had an 8088 processor@ 4.77? mhz\

dual floppies and a 10meg hdd.

had a monitor that did orange, green or 3 color and doubled as a channel 2-13 tv.

I remember back then the computer was about 80# and the monitor 10#

then we hit the mid 90's and had the 20# computers and 100# monitors

oh and had dos 2.0 on it. with a big 3ring binder manual.

 

[labman]

Christmas 1982 Santa left a RS Color Computer under our tree. It has a 6809 chip that was a basically an 8 bit chip, but did some operations in 16 bit mode. I likely did some of my best work with it. I eventually added a disk drive using CDOS, a more powerful OS than Radio Shack used. Unfortunately it lost out to the inferior 8806 chip and the Microsoft marketing bulldozer.

 

[greenaccord02]

Originally Posted By: Rand
then we hit the mid 90's and had the 20# computers and 100# monitors


Oh, but that was AWESOME if you were a DooM player. I can still remember my next door neighbor had this great stereo setup on their computer with what must have been a 23" CRT... That was some hardcore gaming!

 

[PandaBear]

A generic 386 sx with 16Mhz, 1MB RAM, 40MB hard drive, and all sorts of pirated software.

cost about $1000US with monitor (14")

purposes? to learn computer and games.

 

[labman]

My father in law had an RS Model I. He did some rather serious work in the field of crystalization with it. His kids wrote some games for it.

 

[TooManyWheels]

1988 or so, 386-16 with the least RAM and smallest HD you could get from the most reputable clone builder in town, which was a factor in buying back then. 14" monitor . $1400.

Ran DOS 2.0, WordPerfect, Lotus, all either "backup copies" from friends, or bought from the second-hand/obsolete version software store. Licensing was in its infancy then, I remember the University I was working at would budget for hardware, but not sofware (you "found" your own).

 

[eljefino]

Originally Posted By: JustinH

We had just got a computer at home, and my first experience with hacking happened. My parents didn't have money to shell out on internet expenses. I would watch the teacher enter in the password for the america online, then I would go home and sign in to it myself.

The password was the principals last name all in lower cap letters. I would spend hours on that account, and my mother would yell about the phone bill.


Awesome! I bet there was an AOL floppy in your mail to make it all happen.

Social engineering is a significant part of hacking too.

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

I wish I could find a copy of Leisure Suit Larry. I had it on 5 1/4" discs. Was fun, at least for its time.

 

[XS650]

Originally Posted By: ToyotaNSaturn
I wish I could find a copy of Leisure Suit Larry. I had it on 5 1/4" discs. Was fun, at least for its time.


Your wish is my command...

Leisure Suit Larry Collection