Gawd, they know how to make me feel old...
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My first computer was an AMSTRAD 1512 without HDD with CGA (4 colours) and one 5 1/4 floppy drive and 512 MB of RAM. :cool:
[www.tamautomation.com] | Robots, CNC and PLC machines for grinding and polishing. [YouTube channel]
You lot are mere babes 8( This is the first computer I actually owned (though by no means the first that I used), and I built it myself from a kit... [^]
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You lot are mere babes 8( This is the first computer I actually owned (though by no means the first that I used), and I built it myself from a kit... [^]
I'm sure that if I would press strong enough that $%&#@ NVIDIA card it's giving me problems would work here... :laugh:
[www.tamautomation.com] | Robots, CNC and PLC machines for grinding and polishing. [YouTube channel]
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Comitstrip: First Computer[^] My first was an Amstrad 1640: EGA graphics, 640K RAM, 8MHz processor, no math coprocessor (but a socket so you could add one), no HDD, but twin 5 1/2" floppies (360Kb per disk). And that was second hand... What was your first "real" computer? (I'm not counting Spectrums and their ilk here: if it had a cassette tape it doesn't count :laugh: )
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
C64, at first with NO storage, as I got it from a school buddy at 12..13 years or so, but his FDD was broken. So I learned BASIC from the manual and wrote little programs, each day a new one :D Until I got a floppy drive from someone else weeks later. Interestingly it came with a mouse. So I learned a bit asm and wrote a IRQ based "mouse driver" moving a HW sprite arrow around, something I'd seen on a PC at a buddy's house ^^ As for PCs, it was a Tandon PC XT, 5MHz, 640KB RAM, no hdd, dual 5.25" floppy, monochrome orange monitor, MSDOS 3.2 or so. With GWBASIC, ugh ^^ The school had dumped it, so I thought, let's try a real PC.
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C64, at first with NO storage, as I got it from a school buddy at 12..13 years or so, but his FDD was broken. So I learned BASIC from the manual and wrote little programs, each day a new one :D Until I got a floppy drive from someone else weeks later. Interestingly it came with a mouse. So I learned a bit asm and wrote a IRQ based "mouse driver" moving a HW sprite arrow around, something I'd seen on a PC at a buddy's house ^^ As for PCs, it was a Tandon PC XT, 5MHz, 640KB RAM, no hdd, dual 5.25" floppy, monochrome orange monitor, MSDOS 3.2 or so. With GWBASIC, ugh ^^ The school had dumped it, so I thought, let's try a real PC.
If the Spectrum doesn't count (guess which one from my username) then the Atari STFM - 8Mhz CPU and 512KB of RAM. First PC? 486 with a 25Mhx CPU overclocked to 33Mhz, 4Mb RAM, 170Mb HDD - that thing cost me nearly a grand in 1994. I still have the CPU :-)
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Comitstrip: First Computer[^] My first was an Amstrad 1640: EGA graphics, 640K RAM, 8MHz processor, no math coprocessor (but a socket so you could add one), no HDD, but twin 5 1/2" floppies (360Kb per disk). And that was second hand... What was your first "real" computer? (I'm not counting Spectrums and their ilk here: if it had a cassette tape it doesn't count :laugh: )
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
My first "real" computer? Are we counting only computers we've owned personally, or should we include computers we've used that belonged to others (e.g., employers)? The first computer I ever owned was a laboratory-surplus ADDS MultiVision prototype: an Intel 8085-based machine that ran a CP/M-80-compatible O/S that I designed. It had 64 KiloBytes of RAM, two 5.25-inch floppy disk drives, interfaced to an external RS-232 terminal, and was patched together with clip wires and faith. I managed to snarf a 30 MegaByte Seagate Winchester disk drive prototype for it, but as the thing required more electrical power than my home could supply it -- it weighed 60 pounds and had 14 inch platters -- I never got it to work properly. The first computer I ever worked on was an IBM 1800 "minicomputer" that took up a room the size of a small cafeteria. It had 6.2 KiloWords of 16-bit-wide core memory, 256 KiloBytes of disk storage, and a single 9-track tape drive. It was originally intended for the control of laboratory equipment, but was never used for that purpose...possibly because it would crash at a harsh look and took approximately 20 minutes to bootstrap. Feeling a little younger now?
(This message is programming you in ways you cannot detect. Be afraid.)
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I don't remember it exactly, it was maybe an "IBM PC XT". But I remember very well when I bought an additional 300MB HDD. It felt like I can never fill it up :laugh: And soon I began to hate the 300MB when I had to backup it on 700kB diskettes with FASTBACK or something like this :java: :zzz: Bruno
I wrote FastBack! (really) Yeah... it was a major pain, hdd to floppy! Lloyd
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Comitstrip: First Computer[^] My first was an Amstrad 1640: EGA graphics, 640K RAM, 8MHz processor, no math coprocessor (but a socket so you could add one), no HDD, but twin 5 1/2" floppies (360Kb per disk). And that was second hand... What was your first "real" computer? (I'm not counting Spectrums and their ilk here: if it had a cassette tape it doesn't count :laugh: )
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
Transam Triton. Practical Electronics Magazine project from 1978. Built from components based around an 8080 processor and running Tiny Basic with a character based screen. After building it I was hooked! I re-designed it around an 8085 processor adding a 'fancy' video around a new Texas Instruments chip and writing a load of machine code graphics routines. Eventually went BBC Computer then PC. Great fun!
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I wrote FastBack! (really) Yeah... it was a major pain, hdd to floppy! Lloyd
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Comitstrip: First Computer[^] My first was an Amstrad 1640: EGA graphics, 640K RAM, 8MHz processor, no math coprocessor (but a socket so you could add one), no HDD, but twin 5 1/2" floppies (360Kb per disk). And that was second hand... What was your first "real" computer? (I'm not counting Spectrums and their ilk here: if it had a cassette tape it doesn't count :laugh: )
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
IBM PC Convertable with Intel 8088 processor (4.77 mhz), 512k ram, no HDD, but twin 3.5" DS floppy (not DSDD, mind you), monochrome nonback-lit graphics with a 4 color CGA monitor added on. :-) (16 color EGA blew my mind when I first saw it...) wrote my first Basica programs on this beauty! wish I still had it...
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My first was the IBM System/360-65[^]. I then went to the oldest, which was the IBM 1620 Model I[^]. No cassette tapes on those babies.
I'm retired. There's a nap for that... - Harvey
Yup. IBM 1620 with hydraulic disk drive that always leaked hydraulic oil on the floor! An I think it had 40K of 6-bit Binary Coded Decimal "digits". Pretty quickly learned how to cold-start it by using the bit switches mounted on the front of the selectric typewriter that was the operator's consol. Punch cards and a 60 lines per MINUTE line printer (upper case only). Those were the good old days.
Roy Williams
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Really? Than congratulation! For me it was a really great tool. Especially the possibilities for include/exclude I liked _very very very_ much! :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup: Bruno
I should be clear that FASTBACK was one of those tools MS 'borrowed' from the CP/M arena (without any compensation back then. :laugh: ) In its original incarnation, it was called "FastCOPY", and had most - but not all - of the features that showed in the FASTBACK version. I think I sold all of about 500 copies... :zzz: In all, it was a fairly trivial utility to write, and having it 'promoted' to officialdom was sort of an honor, back then. Lloyd
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Comitstrip: First Computer[^] My first was an Amstrad 1640: EGA graphics, 640K RAM, 8MHz processor, no math coprocessor (but a socket so you could add one), no HDD, but twin 5 1/2" floppies (360Kb per disk). And that was second hand... What was your first "real" computer? (I'm not counting Spectrums and their ilk here: if it had a cassette tape it doesn't count :laugh: )
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
In university, Xerox Sigma 6. My first was an Apple IIe with dual 360k floppies I bought before float in the Marines. You should have seen the admin guys look at me: "Here's that report sorted by serial number, here it is sorted by last name, here it is sorted by rank and date of rank." In the off hours the troops would play NFL football on it.
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IBM AT: EGA "Graphics", 512kB RAM on the MB and a 6MHz processor, but 2 20MB Harddrives (5¼" Double height, could be used as anchors) and one 5¼" floppy (1.2 MB) The 512MB RAM was a very frustrating limitation. So when I upgraded it I had enough money for a DX50 + 16MB RAM or a DX2/66 + 8MB RAM. Being as frustrated as I was with the RAM limits of the old MB I chose more RAM. Just to find out that there were no programs that could use more than 8MB at the time. :sigh: At the same time I also upgraded to an 800MB 3½" HDD supposedly state of the art at the time, just to find out that the old battleships were faster. :wtf: <edit>And the old IBM keyboards were so sturdy you could go to battle with them as a Claymore substitute</edit>
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
My first "real" computer was the True-Blue PC AT 8mhz with 640K and the 384K add-on board for TSR programs, 32 MB HDD and 2 1.2MB HD floppies and EGA video. Second hand at a "must-sell all" sale for only $1,100. Although if moving up from cassette is the only criteria, then it's an Atari 800XL. (Great programming system)
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Comitstrip: First Computer[^] My first was an Amstrad 1640: EGA graphics, 640K RAM, 8MHz processor, no math coprocessor (but a socket so you could add one), no HDD, but twin 5 1/2" floppies (360Kb per disk). And that was second hand... What was your first "real" computer? (I'm not counting Spectrums and their ilk here: if it had a cassette tape it doesn't count :laugh: )
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
1978 - My first true [digital] love. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmed_Data_Processor#mediaviewer/File:PDP-12-Update-Uppsala.jpeg[^] I used it to do my thesis on speech recognition by computer. I actually had a functional zero-crossing detector interface module (c/w directional microphone) and the software written. If I'd only stuck with it after my paper was written.... one of the few regrets of my life. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. :^) (P.S. Ok, I didn't own it. More like it's owned me all these years.)
Cheers, Mike Fidler "I intend to live forever - so far, so good." Steven Wright "I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met." Also Steven Wright
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Comitstrip: First Computer[^] My first was an Amstrad 1640: EGA graphics, 640K RAM, 8MHz processor, no math coprocessor (but a socket so you could add one), no HDD, but twin 5 1/2" floppies (360Kb per disk). And that was second hand... What was your first "real" computer? (I'm not counting Spectrums and their ilk here: if it had a cassette tape it doesn't count :laugh: )
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
Ithaca Intersystems DPS-1, Z80 processor, S100 motherboard, 64K RAM + 64K hard-to-access memory, 2 x 720K 8" disk drives in a separate cabinet. Computer + disks weighed > 80lbs together. Text-only monitor was connected by RS-232. I also had a 512 x 512 graphics monitor and a primitive dot-matrix printer. I programmed in assembler, Pascal, an muLISP.
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Comitstrip: First Computer[^] My first was an Amstrad 1640: EGA graphics, 640K RAM, 8MHz processor, no math coprocessor (but a socket so you could add one), no HDD, but twin 5 1/2" floppies (360Kb per disk). And that was second hand... What was your first "real" computer? (I'm not counting Spectrums and their ilk here: if it had a cassette tape it doesn't count :laugh: )
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Comitstrip: First Computer[^] My first was an Amstrad 1640: EGA graphics, 640K RAM, 8MHz processor, no math coprocessor (but a socket so you could add one), no HDD, but twin 5 1/2" floppies (360Kb per disk). And that was second hand... What was your first "real" computer? (I'm not counting Spectrums and their ilk here: if it had a cassette tape it doesn't count :laugh: )
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
I bought my first PC in 1984 (had been using university and work hardware before that):
- IBM-AT 80286 processor @ 8MHz, 512KB RAM
- Hercules EGA Graphics
- 20 MB Seagate hard disk
- 5¼" 360K floppy drive
- 5¼" 1.2M floppy drive
- Princeton Graphics Color Monitor
- Okidata Microline 192 dot matrix printer
- Hayes 1200 Modem
Software:
- MS-DOS 3.1
- PC Write (editor)
- Lattice C compiler
- Vitamin C GUI SDK for DOS
The hardware set me back $4500. I think the compiler was $300, Vitamin C was $50 and PC Write was $30. The box came with MS-DOS. I misread your question as "What was your first PC?" My first computer was a Honeywell Multics system with the world's most awesome terminals I'd ever seen. Circa 1980. /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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Ithaca Intersystems DPS-1, Z80 processor, S100 motherboard, 64K RAM + 64K hard-to-access memory, 2 x 720K 8" disk drives in a separate cabinet. Computer + disks weighed > 80lbs together. Text-only monitor was connected by RS-232. I also had a 512 x 512 graphics monitor and a primitive dot-matrix printer. I programmed in assembler, Pascal, an muLISP.
Peter, are you THE Peter Grogono who wrote "Programming in Pascal" (circa 1980) - the book that changed my life (for the better) forever? /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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Comitstrip: First Computer[^] My first was an Amstrad 1640: EGA graphics, 640K RAM, 8MHz processor, no math coprocessor (but a socket so you could add one), no HDD, but twin 5 1/2" floppies (360Kb per disk). And that was second hand... What was your first "real" computer? (I'm not counting Spectrums and their ilk here: if it had a cassette tape it doesn't count :laugh: )
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
Mine was a TRS-80 MC-10 (baby CoCo). It had 4k of RAM, jacks for attaching a tape deck to load software that didn't exist, and could display a whole nine colors. Even for the time, it was a PoS, it made the C64 look like a supercomputer. But it was mine, and I learned to write (short) programs on it.
OriginalGriff wrote:
I'm not counting Spectrums and their ilk here: if it had a cassette tape it doesn't count
Ridiculous, you're excluding most 8-bit computers because they used tape instead of (expensive at the time) floppy drives. Back in the day, those were "real" computers. This just seems like an arbitrary way to exclude anyone who got their first computer in the '80s and didn't have a lot of money (those business-class IBMs went for $3k-$5k in '80s dollars).
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A 520 ST, which I still have. But, if you ignore the cassette restriction, a TI 99/4A (Which I probably still have...9or maybe my sister has it.)
We won't sit down. We won't shut up. We won't go quietly away. YouTube and My Mu[sic], Films and Windows Programs, etc.
The TI99 was great! Got a kick out of looking at ones for sale on ebay the other day... we had one in '83 or '84... Wish I still had it. Loved playing Donkey Kong, Hunt the Wompus, TI Invaders, and Centipede on it!
