Your First Development Machine?

[Ravi Bhavnani]

:thumbsup: /ravi

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[edmurphy99]

PDP-8 in 1981

[jfwfmt]

I taught myself Assembly Language on an IBM 7040 in 1968 or 1969 by reading the code output of the FORTRAN compiler.

[DaveP62]

Wow, this brings back fond memories. My first development machine was a Commodore Vic 20. I wrote a product pricing program on it for the first company I worked for back in the early 1980's. The proof of concept was well received. The company purchased an IBM PC with PFS File and word processing and my IT career was launched. :) And yes, the Vic 20 was hooked up to a black and white TV and had a tape recorder for a storage device. Man those were the days!

[tom1443]

+1 for me on the Commodore 64. Soon after I bought myself a Trash-80 and I thought I was really living large until I built myself an Apple II clone. It was so much fun back then.

[gggustafson]

AutoCoder and RPG no less!

Gus Gustafson

[dpminusa]

The very first, circa 1964 - 1970, was an IBM 360 with Assembler and Fortran IV. In the PC world, circa 1980 - 1982, it was an IBM PC with dual floppies and 64K RAM using GW-BASIC. Soon after I switched to Borland Turbo Pascal. Those systems were so limited even when compared to an Android Tablet today.

"Courtesy is the product of a mature, disciplined mind ... ridicule is lack of the same - DPM"

[jnlt]

assembler on a z80.

[RafagaX]

Wow! All the responses makes me feel really young, my first development computer (the one ever I did something that could be considered development) was a 386 computer owned by my school (don't rememeber brand) that ran the glorious MS-DOS (unknown version), on it I developed some programs on Logo and stored them on these big 5 1/2 floppy disks. Making the turtle move and draw was amazing back then.

CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...

[Mike Ellison]

My initial development experiences were with BASIC first,then assembly on a TRS-80 Model 1, complete with 4K of RAM and tape cassette storage. It was a great day when my dad finally buckled under pressure and sprung for the 48K expansion interface.

www.MishaInTheCloud.com

[Cliff Cooley]

ICL 1901 in 1970, getting ready for decimalisation

[bwallan]

I started in 1969 on a PDP 6 with a huge 6K of drum storage (a 3 ft diameter drum with magnetic material on the outside and (about) a 3" read head). Our group was developing analog to digital converters at the time. During the development we upgraded to a PDP 8 with almost twice the processing power and 8K of memory. Fun times!

[MTWill]

I fondly remember many long afternoons in junior high school (late 1970's) on the single Radio Shack TRS-80 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80[^]. Hey, it was either that or churn through roll after roll of printer paper playing Star Trek on the teletype terminal. Fortuantely for me, not many kids wanted to spend their free time in the computer lab in those days. We saved our spaghetti code to an audio tape cassette drive! Ah, the good old days.

-- Mountain Will

[fglenn]

My first programming was done for school on an IBM 360 in 1966. However, my first development was done on an Intel Intellec 8. This was run by an Intel 8008 (not a typo for 8080) chip back in 1973.

Fletcher Glenn

[Mike Riley QUSA]

An HP-2000C via modem using an ASR-33 teletype @ 110 baud in high school. It was available to some schools in the Los Angeles School District if there was an instructor to teach Basic programming (all we had). Programs were created offline on another ASR-33 using paper tape. We couldn't store files, so when done you had to output your program onto paper tape again after making changes or lose them. My first personal computer was a Commodore Kim-1 (6502) with an S-100 expansion board to add 8K bytes of static RAM. The terminal was a Compucolor 8001 19" color graphics terminal, which was an 8080 computer in its own right. This was in 1974 I believe. Mike

[kmoorevs]

Same here on the TI-994a. I still have it, though I haven't started it in over 20 years. When I was in high school, I used to write little programs to do all my math homework. I also spent many hours playing the Scott Adams Adventure games. :laugh:

"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse

[Lost User]

A Commodore VIC-20 in 1982 with 4k memory (the other 16k came as expansion and at a price).

[DonFranks]

How about a KIM-1. A Single Board computer with a 6502 processor, 2K ROM, 1K Ram (expandable to all of 4K), a 24 key keypad, and a 2 character single line display. This was in 1978 or so. All assembly language, It could be connected to an ASR-33/KSR-38 Teletype (anyone remember those?). Still have the KIM-1 somewhere.

[BrainiacV]

PDP-8/I running TSS-8/I in high school. Used FOCAL-8, BASIC-8, and PALD-8 (Assembler), also IBM S/360 FORTRAN and COBOL when the school finally added a programming class (we spent most of the time teaching the teachers). Univac 418 Model II for first paid job ($5) FORTRAN and ART418 Assembler IBM S/370 first salaried programming in Assembler.

Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.

[patbob]

A PDP-8e with real ferrite core memory. Taught myself Dartmouth Basic from a book my dad had, I wrote the program on paper, he typed it in for me. He had to fix a few typos. It was really stupid.. it printed a picture of an airplane. Later, I'd go into work with him on Saturdays and write Basic on their "mainframe" (an 11/70, I think.. never saw it in person).

We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.