Re: what was your first computer and do you still have it?
If I still had my first computer I could live in it! I call it my computer, but actually it belonged to my employer (Elliott Automation). The Elliott 803 had 8K of 39 bit core memory, and an add time of 576 microseconds! Divides could take milliseconds!
It was a bit serial machine having only a single bit aritmetic unit. A magneto-striction delay line was used to pump bits around a nickel wire spiral. The bits were shifted out of a register and as they came out the end they were processed bit by bit with the other operand to produce the result back in the register.
Programming was in machine code using relative addressing and the coded paper tapes were fed into a programme with the imaginitive name of T2. We also used Autocode which was the nearest thing to a high level language. I still have the manuals and some other documents.
It also kept you warm!
John
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