What was your first computer and do you still have it?

[HamishBoxer]

Mine was a Amstrad NC100 which i still have and wonder does it have value?

David

[paul.brett]

Originally Posted by HamishBoxer

Mine was a Amstrad NC100 which i still have and wonder does it have value?

David

About £5 on Ebay if you're lucky, and have some of the accessories.

Paul.

[fidobsa]

Mine was a Vic20 with staggering 4k of usable memory. The earliest computers I've used were the Commodore Pet machines they had in the labs at college. I started college in 1982 but I think the Pets dated from late '70s. After the Vic I got a monochrome DOS 286 PC and I've had 3 windows PCs since then.

[david656]

Mine was a windows 95B of my grandad ! WOW Tiny Computers ! (was actually a beast) 48mb of RAM, 100mhz processor WITH MMX Technology ! AND a 12x CD drive that always sounded like it was going to the moon with a disc in it. Still have it ! and interestingly a exactly the same one but with a amd processor in it.

Now have some piece of junk AMD x2 64 6000+ 4gb ram 256mb graphics...vista! and to be honest ! I hate it ! every computer i've ever had was intel and then someone got me into this AMD ! well... it doesn't stop crashing and needing a re-install every single month! guess what's on the Christmas list ! *cough* intel !

[Andyt31]

Hi all,

Mine was a VIC-20, which I still have and it fully works. I then had a Amstrad CPC6128 (Which I also still own, and fully works) and a variety of PCs from 286 based machines upwards.

I now have quite a few machines in my collection. You can take a look at my website for more information. http://retrocomputers.wordpress.com

For me, the CPC6128 is my favorite machine. Closely followed by the C64, VIC-20 and the BBC Model B.

[stubbyeddy]

Hi

My first computer was an Acorn 3010 bought from the littlewoods catalog in October 1993 by my mother on HP, i think the price was something like £499, it had an RF out so you didnt need a monitor, just plug it into your TV and your away! however it was terrible for word processing on a 14" portable as you can imagine. We didnt get a "proper" windows machine until 1999. The only problems with it were you couldn't find anywhere that sold the software in store only via mail order, also finding a cheap printer for it was a nightmare! We upgraded the memory to 2MB but never got a hard drive so there was a lot of disk shuffling! still it served us well, we had many games and learning programs for it and i did lots of homework on it.

[electronicskip]

What was your first computer you bought or were given?

My first Computer was this Sinclair ZX81 bought from WHSmiths along with a game called Orbit.
It took me a long time to save up for it doing car washing jobs at home etc , its still in good working order and i fire it up every now and then .

My next computer was this Sinclair Spectrum bought from Rumbelows when i worked for them back in about 1983 although the very first one i had failed to load and programs so i had to exchange it for another one which was quite common at the time ,but again this one is still in good working order.

[TALKINGWITHPYE]

Hello, my first computer was a Dragon 32 on which I developed a program to draw circuit diagrams.

Dave

[Vintage_RC]

My first computer was a Compukit UK101 6502 based machine made from a kit. It was a copy of the US Ohio Superboard and there was quite a bit of legal wrangling as a result. I've still got it up in the loft somewhere along with a Sinclair QL.

[TonyDuell]

I am suprised I'd not replied to this thread before, so here goes..

My first computer was a Science of Cambridge MK14. Still have it, albeit some of the ICs have been 'borrowed'. I ought to get it working again, but to be honest that machine doesn't 'excite' me that much.

I think I still have every computer I ever owned.

Other 'my first <foo> computer' :

First BASIC computer : TRS-80 Model 1 (4K, level 1 BASIC). Now a 48K Level II machine with disks and RS232 port

First multitasking/multiuser computer : This will surprise some of you -- it's a TRS80 Colot Computer 2 running Microware OS-9

First laptop : TRS-80 Model 100

First minicomuter : Philips P850

First workstaton : 3 Rivers/ICL PERQ 2T1

First CP/M machine : CASU Super C

First MS-DOS machine : IBM PC/XT (Genuine IBM 5160)

First (and only) analogue computer : EAI1000

First programmable calculator : HP41CV

[electronicskip]

Ive got over 100 computers of various makes shapes and sizes most being pre Windows era types.
Sinclairs ,commodore, Atari , being the main interest but ive collected some of the more obscure stuff like Aquarius , Oric, etc ,
Thanks to the moderators for merging my thread with a much older one dealing with the same subject, its very good reading.

[SiriusHardware]

Had to do a double take as I realised that the first post in this thread dated from 2009 - I assume someone must have started an identical thread which has been merged by the mods with the old one? Edit: I see that's what happened.

Reading through, It's quite depressing to note how many of the original contributors are now 'retired dormant members'. "Time is the fire in which we burn..."

Mine, the MK14 of course, and yes I do.

[DrStrangelove]

Jupiter Ace, bought for £38 from Greens at Debenhams.

I bought a ram extender, the Hobby Electronics version, and an external keyboard interface that never ever worked, the article describing how this external interface bypassed the internal ULA. It hasn't got an internal ULA being ttl.

Followed by a Dragon 32, bought remaindered from the Coop in Swansea for £30. It can't keep up with my typing speed.

IIRC I bought a baudot printer for this one along with a Maplin serial interface and managed to get it to print stuff out via some sort of Dragon Basic program.

Next up was a Tatung Einstein with two disk drives, and a Tatung Einstein with one disk drive.

There was a Royal Adler daisy wheel printer that I used for CVs & such like, but it died, rather inconsiderately, when printing out a CV for some job or other in Swansea. Turned out to be a L702 ic.

Eventually a 286 with a 40Mb Seagate MFM drive, the drive alone cost £155.

Bits of all of the above still exist, though the Seagate died eventually & fails to spin up any more.

Shedloads of other pcs, the only one of note is an IBM 5160 XT which has suffered HD failure though the rest of it works. It's suffering from The Curse of the Brown Tants (c) Les Lawry Johns.

Oh, and there's an MK14 that I found in a box of junk at "work" and a VIC20 that died at some stage or other & lives unregarded down in the shed.

[electronicskip]

I bought my first Atari 2600 VCS at Greens in Debenhams in Oxford in around 1978ish

[G6Tanuki]

My first personal computer was a home built Elektor Junior Computer, back when I was a student. I modified the Elektor monitor program and hand burned it into the 2708 EPROM byte by byte using toggle switches for the address and data.

The Junior spent quite a bit of time converting 5-bit RTTY to 8-bit ASCII....

It was lost some time in the mid 1980s during one of my many house moves.

[SiriusHardware]

My first personal computer was a home built Elektor Junior Computer, back when I was a student.

That was actually the first 'computer' I ever used, as a friend of mine also built one and we were playing with it for several months before the MK14 kit finally arrived (typical of Sinclair). His never got past the initial LEDs and binary switches version, although I gather the 'Junior' did evolve into quite a complete system over time.

[Goldie99]

I think the first pc I ever owned was probably a HP Vectra back in the mid '80's, bought through a company employee purchase scheme... I actually started 'learning' though on an Olivetti P101, almost 20 years before that, but only progressed to buying a pc once I had a decent paying job (and a lot less student overdraft !).

I have no idea what happened to the Vectra, but it was probably scrapped within 5-6 years when I got a company IBM Thinkpad 700, the one with the little red mouse button middle of the keyboard. If you think some of the early mobile phones were 'bricks' to carry around, you should try carrying a Thinkpad 700 all over Europe, with a multitude of different telephone / modem adapters for each country, it must have been 5-6 kg all on it's own !

[Keith956]

First computer I owned was an Exidy Sorcerer, a rather rare beast that I bought while living in the USA around 1979. It was a Z80 based, 32K ram, 8K cartridge BASIC model, extended via the S100 bus expander box with a FDC and twin 8 inch 600K floppies. Ran CP/M and that wonderful early game, 'Original Adventure'.

It was sold a few years later and I bought an Apricot, lovely machine only not quite IBM compatible which I guess was why it never caught on.

[Reelman]

As well as Goldie99 I also had my first computer hands-on experience with an Olivetti Programma 101, supposedly the first desk top computer back in 1968. This was at my school which for the time must have been very progressive, my subsequent schools never mentioned computers let alone owned one, I left in 1974. My dad worked for Olivetti so I was the only one at school who had a manual and magnetic memory card, which I still have somewhere.

My first owned computer was the Spectrum, spending many happy hours on Micronet 800. Starting work in 1987 at a computer centre meant I soon wanted a PC of my own, which was a Tandy 1000 SL. This twin floppy machine was upgraded with a hard drive and EGA card. Soon after this a second hand BBC since we had a club at work for it. After this it was all PCs working my way up from 286 as faster processors became available. All have been home built the only exceptions being a Medion from Toys-are-us and various laptops and iPads.

Actually I did buy a Psion laptop from 1987 cheap at a rally. Not IBM compatible (remember when computers were advertised as that) but years ahead of its time. Passed it on to a fellow member on here for his museum.

I still have my original Spectrum and BBC and have kept an original IBM PC, XT-286, AT and Tandy 1000TL. Always looking for the special XT-IDE interface hard drive for the Tandy such as Seagate ST351A/X and Western Digital 93028X.

I always remember my 2nd IT manager asking me “What do you use a PC for?” I could not think of a serious answer then, thank good the internet came along!

Peter

[duncanlowe]

If you ignore my Coomodore programmable calculator (which I still have) my first computer was a Vic20 bought from Debenhams when they were selling them off cheap. Couldn't afford the tape deck so mackled up something using a standard cassette recorder and some Scmidt triggers. That was replaced with a proper deck when I talked about this in a job interview (where I got the job, too). The Vic is still in it's box in the loft. Haven't a clue if it works as it's been unused for well over 30 years.