What was your first computer?
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I mean the first one of your own. Not the first one you used in college or school or work. Mine was a 80286/2MB Ram/40 MB HD :-) 1.44 MB FD and 1.2 MB FD DOS 5.0 Nish
Check out last week's Code Project posting stats presentation from :- http://www.busterboy.org/codeproject/ Feel free to make your comments.
Ah those were the days. I bought a Commodore Vic-20 when I was 13. An amazing 5k of ram came standard. Also had the 24k ram upgrade cartridge! Data storage was handled with a cassette recorder and a little interface box, horribly unreliable. The thing plugged into a TV for the monitor so I used a little 13" portable. Spent lot's of hours typing basic code into that thing. Eventually moved up to the Commodore 64 with a big clunky external 5 1/4" external floppy drive. Programmed alot on the Apple II's at school as well. Used my first PC in 1985 while in the army, not sure what it was though. I remember it had dual 5 1/4" floppies, no hard drive and a Bausch & Lomb plotter that had a mechanical arm which you inserted a marker into to print charts from Lotus 123. I still have a DOS 2.11 disk laying around somewhere. Memories ... hehe.
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I mean the first one of your own. Not the first one you used in college or school or work. Mine was a 80286/2MB Ram/40 MB HD :-) 1.44 MB FD and 1.2 MB FD DOS 5.0 Nish
Check out last week's Code Project posting stats presentation from :- http://www.busterboy.org/codeproject/ Feel free to make your comments.
Mine was a CP-200. This was a brazilian version of ZX-81, with 16K (KBytes, not Megabytes!) RAM, 8K ROM, a National PV-220 tape recorder. With C-90 tapes, you had an impressive capacity of 64K each side of the tape (wich, obviously, would take 45 minutes to load). And you think your 56K modem is slow... The main proc was an Z-80 8 bits processor @ 3.54 Mhz. It handled the video, too. So, the computer had two modes of operation: FAST and SLOW (it's true, it was these names!). In SLOW mode, you had video refresh. In FAST mode, the screen went blank and the computer was 8 times faster. Some games flashed the screen a lot, because they drawed the screen in FAST mode, then showed the screen for a few moments in SLOW. Some moments playing those games makes you want to puke! :) There are still some emulators of ZX-81 on the web, very good emulators, only a bit faster :) Crivo Automated Credit Assessment
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I mean the first one of your own. Not the first one you used in college or school or work. Mine was a 80286/2MB Ram/40 MB HD :-) 1.44 MB FD and 1.2 MB FD DOS 5.0 Nish
Check out last week's Code Project posting stats presentation from :- http://www.busterboy.org/codeproject/ Feel free to make your comments.
Mine was an Adam what used audio-like casettes. I worked on that thing night and day realizing that after 18 years I had finally discovered the one thing I enjoyed and do very well. I completely taught myself to program (casette Basic) and wrote, as my first application, a football game. Man, what I wouldn't give to be able to go back and see that code now :) Cheers, Tom Archer Author, Inside C# Author, Visual C++.NET Bible A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the af
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I mean the first one of your own. Not the first one you used in college or school or work. Mine was a 80286/2MB Ram/40 MB HD :-) 1.44 MB FD and 1.2 MB FD DOS 5.0 Nish
Check out last week's Code Project posting stats presentation from :- http://www.busterboy.org/codeproject/ Feel free to make your comments.
IBM 8088. No harddrive. Single floppy. I started typing in BASIC programs from magazines at the tender age of 8. w00t! Todd Smith
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I mean the first one of your own. Not the first one you used in college or school or work. Mine was a 80286/2MB Ram/40 MB HD :-) 1.44 MB FD and 1.2 MB FD DOS 5.0 Nish
Check out last week's Code Project posting stats presentation from :- http://www.busterboy.org/codeproject/ Feel free to make your comments.
C64. but i first used a Commodore PET. -c
I don't care, and you can't make me.
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I mean the first one of your own. Not the first one you used in college or school or work. Mine was a 80286/2MB Ram/40 MB HD :-) 1.44 MB FD and 1.2 MB FD DOS 5.0 Nish
Check out last week's Code Project posting stats presentation from :- http://www.busterboy.org/codeproject/ Feel free to make your comments.
Got a TI99/4A when I was 11, back in 1986. Taught myself BASIC on it so I could make Space Invaders aliens dance around the screen. It had no permanent backup so I had to reenter the program each time. The got an Apple IIE. Then a 486 which I started using Borland Turbo C++. Good ole days. Josh Knox that-guy.net
"UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity." Dennis Ritchie.
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I mean the first one of your own. Not the first one you used in college or school or work. Mine was a 80286/2MB Ram/40 MB HD :-) 1.44 MB FD and 1.2 MB FD DOS 5.0 Nish
Check out last week's Code Project posting stats presentation from :- http://www.busterboy.org/codeproject/ Feel free to make your comments.
:-D No one has the same first computer as me! Acorn Electron, 6502 processor, output on tv! Wrote my college project in assembler on it. Cost me a £10! First PC - Amstrad 1640, 40Mb Hard disk and I was really proud because it had a CGA display, cool.... :cool: ali p
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Hey Nish, That was my first computer too (the first one I owned anyway) and I'm 35. David http://www.dundas.com
David Cunningham wrote: That was my first computer too (the first one I owned anyway) and I'm 35. Oh, I see :-) If you hadn't mentioned the 35, I'd have put you in the 45+ group that I put Norm into :-) Nish
The posting stats are now in PDF:- http://www.busterboy.org/codeproject/ Feel free to make your comments. Updated - May 04th, Saturday
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I mean the first one of your own. Not the first one you used in college or school or work. Mine was a 80286/2MB Ram/40 MB HD :-) 1.44 MB FD and 1.2 MB FD DOS 5.0 Nish
Check out last week's Code Project posting stats presentation from :- http://www.busterboy.org/codeproject/ Feel free to make your comments.
I had an Atari 800 -Jack To an optimist the glass is half full. To a pessimist the glass is half empty. To a programmer the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
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Mine was an Adam what used audio-like casettes. I worked on that thing night and day realizing that after 18 years I had finally discovered the one thing I enjoyed and do very well. I completely taught myself to program (casette Basic) and wrote, as my first application, a football game. Man, what I wouldn't give to be able to go back and see that code now :) Cheers, Tom Archer Author, Inside C# Author, Visual C++.NET Bible A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the af
Tom Archer wrote: Man, what I wouldn't give to be able to go back and see that code now I understand. I still wish I could have saved my floppies from 12 years back :-( which contained my first programs some of them in GWBASIC :-) Nish
The posting stats are now in PDF:- http://www.busterboy.org/codeproject/ Feel free to make your comments. Updated - May 04th, Saturday
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IBM 8088. No harddrive. Single floppy. I started typing in BASIC programs from magazines at the tender age of 8. w00t! Todd Smith
Todd Smith wrote: IBM 8088. No harddrive. Single floppy. Thats the same one we had in school. With green monochrome monitors :-) I still remember booting up from the floppy and it used to take so long then ;-) we thought. Now it takes 10 ten times that much time to logon to XP :-) Nish
The posting stats are now in PDF:- http://www.busterboy.org/codeproject/ Feel free to make your comments. Updated - May 04th, Saturday
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Got a TI99/4A when I was 11, back in 1986. Taught myself BASIC on it so I could make Space Invaders aliens dance around the screen. It had no permanent backup so I had to reenter the program each time. The got an Apple IIE. Then a 486 which I started using Borland Turbo C++. Good ole days. Josh Knox that-guy.net
"UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity." Dennis Ritchie.
Josh Knox wrote: It had no permanent backup so I had to reenter the program each time :omg: :omg: :omg:
The posting stats are now in PDF:- http://www.busterboy.org/codeproject/ Feel free to make your comments. Updated - May 04th, Saturday
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I mean the first one of your own. Not the first one you used in college or school or work. Mine was a 80286/2MB Ram/40 MB HD :-) 1.44 MB FD and 1.2 MB FD DOS 5.0 Nish
Check out last week's Code Project posting stats presentation from :- http://www.busterboy.org/codeproject/ Feel free to make your comments.
One of my uncles was really into computers, so back in the early 80s I'd get hardware from him as he upgraded. I started with some TI model (don't think it was the famous 99/4A, some earlier model) and the included BASIC manual, but I couldn't really make sense of BASIC back then (hey, I was only like 10 years old!). It wasn't until an after-school class on BASIC using Apple //e's that I actually started doing programming. --Mike-- Buy me stuff! (Link fixed now) Like the Google toolbar? Then check out UltraBar, with more features & customizable search engines! My really out-of-date homepage Big fan of Alyson Hannigan and Jamie Salé.
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zx81 with a wobbly 16k ram pack :)
situations to avoid #37:
"good morning ... how many sugars do you take in your coffee ... and what was your name again?"coming soon: situations to avoid #38: "...and the dog was there too?"
Thank you Laureen. With my 29 I feel old among these youngsters. I started with ZX81 with 1k, :-) followed by ZX Spectrum 48K, Amstrad CPC 464, Atari 520 ST, IBM PC XT 640Kb RAM/4Mhz/10MB HDD/Hercules...Oh, well. Regards, Tomaz
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Atari 520 ST. They were the days.:(( :(( I've still got it, and get it out everynow and again. Still works. :)
Those were the days. Campus word processor, Lattice C and GEM... Regards, Tomaz
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Two answers depending on what you call a computer and how far own goes. First one in my family that I used was a Wang 720 (they are in musuems) First one I actually purchased was a vic 20. You can do things with 4k of memory and none of those fancy hard drives. To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step towards Knowledge. Benjamin Disraeli
Michael A. Barnhart wrote: You can do things with 4k of memory 3583 bytes, actually. ;) --Mike-- Buy me stuff! (Link fixed now) Like the Google toolbar? Then check out UltraBar, with more features & customizable search engines! My really out-of-date homepage Big fan of Alyson Hannigan and Jamie Salé.
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Original ZX Spectrum - with 48K RAM and dead-flesh feel keyboard. I orginally wanted a ZX81 but couldn't afford the £99 to buy one (being 12 and getting only £1/week pocket money). Free
I worked as a delivery boy at age 13 to upgrade from ZX Spectrum to Amstrad (Schneider) CPC 464. It was a luxury computer, with beautiful monitor, 640 x 200 resolution, 80 chars screen width and built in tape. >:-) Plus, it talked Z80, which I learned on Spectrum. Tomaz
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Thank you Laureen. With my 29 I feel old among these youngsters. I started with ZX81 with 1k, :-) followed by ZX Spectrum 48K, Amstrad CPC 464, Atari 520 ST, IBM PC XT 640Kb RAM/4Mhz/10MB HDD/Hercules...Oh, well. Regards, Tomaz
> IBM PC XT 640Kb RAM/4Mhz/10MB HDD/Hercules Or was it 8Mhz? Can't remember anymore. :-) I just know it had absolutely charming orange screen, which was different from them green screens of neighbourhood peasants. :cool: Tomaz
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Thank you Laureen. With my 29 I feel old among these youngsters. I started with ZX81 with 1k, :-) followed by ZX Spectrum 48K, Amstrad CPC 464, Atari 520 ST, IBM PC XT 640Kb RAM/4Mhz/10MB HDD/Hercules...Oh, well. Regards, Tomaz
i am rather gob-smacked tomasz the list of computers you have exactly matches the list i would make wierd but cool :)
situations to avoid #37:
"good morning ... how many sugars do you take in your coffee ... and what was your name again?"coming soon: situations to avoid #38: "...and the dog was there too?"
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Michael A. Barnhart wrote: You can do things with 4k of memory 3583 bytes, actually. ;) --Mike-- Buy me stuff! (Link fixed now) Like the Google toolbar? Then check out UltraBar, with more features & customizable search engines! My really out-of-date homepage Big fan of Alyson Hannigan and Jamie Salé.
I actually had a VT100 terminal emulation program going. Although trying to keep up with the 300 baud modem was a little tricky :) To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step towards Knowledge. Benjamin Disraeli