What was your first computer?

[scmhogg]

My first was a TRS-80 CoCo. AKA Tandy's Color Computer. It used a color tv as a monitor. It had 16K ram and used cassette tapes as storage media.

We upgraded several models until we were up to 128K. With a bidirectional daisy wheel printer, my wife and I ran our law office for a couple of years.

My youngest was on one of these CoCo's from the time he was three years old. He didn't learn his ABC's, he learned QWERTY. He is now, at 28, a very well paid IT guy.

We, also, upgraded to an Amstrad, Jim. It was the only computer sold at COSTCO.

Steve

[Esteban]

Commodore

My first PC was a Commodore 4016 back in 1980, used to program in Basic
16K Ram with cassette storage.
I wrote a Linear Programing routine that took the machine over 12 hours to spit the first results and a few hours more to finish it. The University's PDP-11 needed like 3 hours (of course doing time sharing) running my Fortran version. About 10 year ago I re-did the program in a 486 MS-Basic and took less than 5 minutes.

[cwsmith]

The first computer that I ever worked with was an IBM 1401 system, in 1965. I had worked in the home office of a fairly large insurance company here in Binghamton were I was a supply clerk; I took a promotion up to the ninth floor where I worked as a data maintenance clerk in the data processing center. It was a card-based system, using 80-col punch cards and a variety of machines to process billings. In my job I got to work with everything from keypunch machines to collators, sorters, and the main frame.

In 1979 we bought our first micro computer from dealer in California, an Atari 800 unit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_8-bit_family). It arrived on July 2nd, and didn't work properly. It took me four months working directly with Atari, to finally get one that wasn't defective. Through that process, (a rather lengthy story) we had several defective exchanges. I finally got a good one in late November. But in January, I received two more, shipped to me from Atari's repair facility... and Atari wouldn't take them back! (I still have two, both working.)

Over the first year, we added the 850 Interface device, a 300 baud accoustic-coupled modem, and their 5-1/4 inch floppy drive (80 K, IIRC). We also bought the Epson MX80 dot-matrix printer.

In 1984, I bought my first IBM-PC compatible (not very), which was the Hyperion Portable. It weighed about 35 lbs, and had two-360K 5-1/4 floppys, no hard drive. But it came with all kinds of software. I was just starting a contract with Corning Glass to write documentation for their optical waveguide manufacturing, and was the only writer to do so on a PC. That led me to wrangle them to buy the Hyperion for me. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_(computer) )

In the late 80's or early 90's I bought one of the very first Gateway desk tops. The company only had about 20 employees at the time and was still working in the old cattle company office on the second floor.

CWS

[TB Roye]

Tandy 1000 with 2, Floppy Drive and 640 of memory, A 12 or 13 inch color monitor or it could have been 10 inches. DOS 2..11 and either a 9 or 12 baud modem which in the first month that I had is programed and running gave me a long distance bill of $300. It also had a nice DOT Matrix printer. I learned BASIC to program the thing and used this until about 1996 when I bought my son's computer with a 10gig hard drive with window 95. Built many after this and now have iMac which I love. I can't believe how far things have come since the mid 80's when I got my Tandy which cost me almost $2800 with a Desk, extra Floppies, and some manuals.

Tom

[Stytooner]

In 79, I had a Texas Instrument LCD wrist watch. Does that count?

In the 80's, I played Dr. Halo on one of my Stepfathers computers. It was his old one by then. The software was on a Big Floppy.
My first actual home PC was in the 90's.

[TB Roye]

Actually my first computer was an IBM 360, was the Graveyard Computer Operator at work. Main job was to run reports on Stolen Vehicle and Motorcycles. Fed it with IBM cards the onto Tape and Big Disks

[MBG]

Atari 400.

[rfisher7381]

Atari 400 with membrane keyboard and tape drive. I thought I was on top of the world Amazing how far we have come and how far we will go in the future.

[Mildoc]

Anyone remember the MITS Altair 8800 "kit" computer first seen in Popular Electronics? WOW! 8k memory, "programmed" from front panel switches in binary with the result in binary too of course. No way to save a program but it sure taught me a lot about computing!

Then came a Radio Shack TRS-80. Many called it a Trash80, but it was fun when i added 4 floppy drives.

Next an Osbourne "portable" computer. Weighed a ton!

Then finally one of the first IBMs. Followed by home built from parts several times, fun picking the mother board, processor, etc. Always upgraded to the latest and greatest video cards, etc.

Several laptops, then a Dell, and finally an Apple iMac that was stolen.

Now a Toshiba Satellite laptop. Does what I eed in retirement so i think i will keep it for a while!

[LCHIEN]

I think 1976
1. I repaired a gifted broken Teletype 33ASR with 10 byte per second paper tape punch and reader
2. Built my own 22-slot S-100 bus from a bare board and bought all the parts
3. A used Hydrogen SUlfide detector case with a 30-AMp transformer and large beer can caps and bridge rectifier to mount the cards
4. A TDL Z80 2 MHz CPU card, one of the first improved 8080 compatible chips
5. A TDL I/O card with ROM, monitor 2 or 3 serial ports and cassette tape interface.
6. An 8 KByte blank card from Ithaca Microsystems I bought the 64 1K memory chips parts and soldered the whole thing.
7. Upgraded to 24K total with two more 8K boards.
8. TDL Basic and assembler.
9. I then designed using the then new 16 of the 16-k-bit DRAMS another 32K of RAM. It was a wire wrap board.
10 In about another year I got a Video terminal kit, interfaced a surplus keyboard and a composite B&W CRT monitor. to have a 25 x 80 display.
11 Another year I got a North Star Floppy disk controller and two 5-inch DS/DD drives, and a Hardware floating point board to do math 10-20 times faster than software.
Between the mother board and the RAM cards, I estimate I soldered 6 or seven thousand solder joints for that computer. I could boot either CPM or North Star DOS.

Another year or two I got a
S-100 chassis IMSAI with switches and lights for stepping thru and examining memory
California Computer Systems S100 4MHz CPU and CCS 64K memory card and CCS 8" floppys controller, two 8" DSDD thin line Toshiba drives that held a Megabyte a piece.
A Lear Siegler ADM-5 terminal and CPM Okidata uLine-84 printer. I finally topped that system off with two 256-K solid-state drives "LS-100" for loading software very fast.

I ran a dial up BBS for the local club, Pheonix RCPM in Houston on a third CPM machine I had at the house.

I think that carried me up to about 1984 when I got a Compaq Deskpro 8086 PC with the full 64K RAM memory, the first computer I didn't build myself. I added a 20MB HDD. I still have it, maybe I should boot it up! It was pretty high end then, most people had XTs with 8088s. I also had a coprocessor chip which ran the filter design programs about 100X faster than without. That was the second to last computer I bought complete... all the rest since then have been PCs frrom components.

Oh, the old days...

[JR]

The first one I bought for me was a Macintosh 512K-E. The E was for the second 3.5" floppy which was attached externally through a SCSI connector.

I had been working with computers for number of years prior to that. TRS-80s at work which we used as test stations for the communications equipment we manufactured. I worked at a company called MICOM, which sort of apocryphally, was an acronym for Microcomputers for Communications. Our multiplexers and data PBXs were 8080 and later Z80 based.

After I got out of the army in the late 70s I was an tech for distributor of .CADO Computers. This was a small system that included a desk with the CPM computer in a microwave-sized box hanging underneath. It had 8" floppies, plus an option for a 20MB hard drive with removable platter about the size of a pizza box. I had to periodically align the heads using the old eye pattern. For the life of me I can't remember the uprocessor that system used.

At the local JC we had Commodore Pets with the cassette drive. Also an IBM minicomputer - Maybe a 4101? The were both POSs, but I learned the rudiments of BASIC.

[RAFlorida]

C= for Christmas of '85.

That one was the famous C64. Then out came the C128D, which had the keyboard separate from the CPU box. Started looking like a PC! Bought one of those. In total, I owned about 6 of those Commodore computers, of which I have the very first C128D I bought, sitting here on this disk! The C= was what got me into programming in Basic. In '86, I joined the QuantumLink group, where I uploaded and downloaded tons of programs.
The C= company made it cheaper to own a computer and in some respects and areas, was ahead of IBM, Apple and the likes. I still do stuff on the 128D, word processor, or play the PACMAN, Hunter Patrol, etc.
The world changed when the computers came onboard!
edit: forgot that I bought the 1571 disk drives. That saved the day when it came time to turn the unit off. I have NO idea how many floppies there are in our home!!!

[BadeMillsap]

1969 --- WANG 300 series ...

I was a Sr in High School ... the math department had two WANG series 300 programmable calculators... the read out was 10 digit "Nixi tube" numerals ... it allowed punched card programs to be read by an attached static card reader (1 card ... actually you could do 2 cards by stopping mid program and loading another) ... on these I programmed a blackjack game and a dice game. That was my entry into computer programming that evolved into a degree in computer science and 36 years with Big Blue....

The Wang? --- http://archive.computerhistory.org/r...6.05.01.sm.pdf ... that's a PDF with pictures

[durango dude]

At home - I had a Commodore Vic 20 ---- followed by a Franklin Ace (Mac clone). Later in life, upgraded to an Epson QX-10 (CP/M machine).

Meanwhile - my high school taught us computers on TRS-80 Model IIIs.

When I was in college, I also landed a job programming a Zenith Z-100.

I remember being really excited --- it was the first computer I'd seen that had a hard drive on it.

[gerti]

First computer I worked on:

Wang 2200, sometime mid 70's.

First computer-like gizmo I owned was a TI49A. Then:

- Sinclair ZX81 (lots of self-designed hardware added)
- Eaca Video Genie II (TRS80 clone, added a ECB bus and lot's of hardware)
- Speedmaster (modular German TRS80 clone with HiRes graphics)
- Atari ST
- Atari TT (Atari was huge in Europe until they self-destructed)
- NeXT Cube
- Custom-built PCs to run NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP
- HP Gecko running OPENSTEP
- Mac Pro running OS X
- Various iMacs

Not counting a whole slew of uC systems, custom-built Z80 systems etc.