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

[PhaseLockLoop]

Am I allowed to say BBC Micro B?

[BGmidsUK]

My first was a Vic20, on which I learned the very basics of programming (mind the pun) which was sold in order to buy a secondhand Commodore 64. This served me well up until the mid 1990s and I spent countless hours developing my own programs - including a sort of clone of the graphics interface used by the RM Nimbus machines of the mid to late 1980s which I used at school/college.

I bought a 1541-II disk drive which cost a fortune ... and could then progress to a Windows-style interface which could access software (complete with mouse, icons and a few clever graphics tweaks) without having to manually operate the C2N drive and wait an age for tapes to load - sheer luxury! - have loads of games for it too.

My prize C64 only really fell out of use when I bought a secondhand 486DX2-66 from a secondhand shop in the mid 1990s, which I used as a learning tool on how to build and set up PCs. This was the first time I had access to the internet, with a slow and unreliable dial-up connection! Since then I've built a number of PCs, and later on set up a network which I'd wanted to do since the 1980s, when I saw those Nimbus machines ..

My old Commie is waiting in the cupboard for its revival, once I've cleared out all my old stuff up here and created a proper work/vintage TV and computer space

So, to summarize, unfortunately I no longer have my FIRST computer, but I do have the one I spent most of my formative years with, learning so much and enjoying every minute of it



BG

[davidw]

First was an Acorn Electron (with expansion pack) from currys...I've not moved on far I'm now using an EiSystem laptop !!!!!!!

[radio edgar]

My first was a commodere 16!! WOW
I spent many many hours on it mostly playing adventure games, you know the sort: "ahead of you is a dark house you can go E. S. or W etc.
When it finally stopped working I got a commodore 64 and when money allowed I got an expansion pack which turned it into a 1200, the power!
I have worked my way up through tinys etc and am now running a Dell which is o/k but it can sometimes be a bit on the slow side
No I do not have my 16 but I still have my 64 / 1200.
Not stricly a computer but a games machine I still have my "woody" atari which I still use from time to time mostly to laugh at the graphics.
Up until a few years ago I still had a PONG but I had a clear out and sadly it went by mistake.

Regards

Paul.

[radio edgar]

Whoops I have just realised that it was an amiga 600 that I expanded to a 1200 and I still have that too
Regards
Paul

[eldritch]

first and second computers i had were sinclair zx81s, nether of which could be conned in to working, so i soon lost intrest in them.

then i bought a 'dumb termial' from a car boot sale.

got talking to my old scout master and sold it to him.

another scout master gave me a sinclair zx spectrum, which i could do nothing but play games with.

number five was an amstrad cpc464, on which i couldn't play the games.

at which time my attention shifted to bicycles, cars and girls...

after a break of about 6 or 7 years, i was coaxed into buying an then anicent 486 pc, running windows 3.11 for workgroups.

it wasn't much, but i did what i wanted it to.

a friend sold me his ibm ps/2 (?) running windows 98se, and that old dog refuses to die in the hands of mrs. eldritch's nephew.

went that left us, we bought the present desktop, an emachines jobbie with xp, off mrs. eldritch's brother.

it crashed with all the crud he had put on it, but a clean install of xp cured all that.

this was also the first machine used for the internet, first dial-up, then broadband.

about three years ago i also bought a samsung vm series laptop off my then boss.

this thing runs windows me, and has been useful for several tasks, when the main desktop was in use/crashed/had a virus/was at home while i haven't, even with the battery being scrap, and the cmos battery has given up.

do i still have them?

only the last two.

mrs. eldritch won't let me keep any more.

spoilsport!

[repairman 1234]

Hi All,

My first computer was an Atari 520stfm. I must admit that i never really got to grips with that, or any of the later ones for that matter. I did enjoy a flight simulator game which was i think called bomber something.
I later graduated to a 486 then i think a pentium 166 which lasted very well.
I have since moved on to new machines and now have a laptop running xp and a main system on vista (i struggle with both of them)
As far as video games go, i love and still own a couple of "woody's" and have fond memories of a very early colour cartridge system called a TELENG.
This was a big unit with a big rotary switch in the middle, not unlike a big version of the old Reddifusion channel selectors. Amongst others we had a great little game in which you had a motorcycle and your aim was to jump over buses, one being added each time, you could end up with the whole screen full of buses

All the best,
Chris.

[af024]

Hello,

Mine was an Amstrad PCW8152 - ok, more a wordprocessor (Locoscript), but there was a CPU lurking in there somewhere.

Yes I still have it and it still works. Mind you, I had forgotton how green that monitor was!

Regards,


Andy

[julie_m]

My first was a Sinclair ZX-81. Ended up with memory expansion, "tinfoil" printer, "proper" 42-key keyboard and homebrew joystick socket (simply wired in parallel with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 keys). I no longer have it, as I sold it.

Next was a BBC Model B, eventually upgraded with disc system. Nice machine, beautiful dialect of BASIC and enough I/O ports to have fun with. Probably still in my mum's loft.

Meanwhile, my sister acquired a Spectrum and some games ..... I picked that up when she lost interest. Again, probably still in my mum's loft.

Then an Amiga 500, lost in a burglary; then a 1200, still in my loft. Then a couple of Amstrads acquired within a short while of each other: a 1640 and a "Mega PC" which played Sega MegaDrive games. Both running MS-DOS.

Then a 486 with one of the first IDE CD burners (2x write, no rewrite) and Windows 95. Ran it into the ground.

Then a K6II-450, also with Windows 95.

Then an Athlon XP2000+. Which I was initially intending to dual-boot with Windows 98 and Debian, but ended up single-booting Mandrake. This was just before XP came out, and I've never touched Windows since. Persevered with Mandrake till I grew out of it, then switched to Debian. (This was all before Ubuntu changed all the rules .....)

Latest is yet another AMD, running Debian.

[Steve Smith]

Not mine but when I left school and started work in 1983 we had a machine for writing assembly code for 8085 processors and burning eproms which my boss made himsef. It had a touch sensitive keyboard, an integral CRT screen from a portable TV and was all encased in a beautifully crafted and polished mahogany cabinet.
I hope it still exists somewhere.



Steve.

[hoarenet]

My first computer was a DEC 16/20. Got it free. 16K ferrite core memory. There was still a program sitting in memory when I got it. Teletype console. Disk platter was about 3mm thick with 8 bit heads!!

My second was a Datapoint with eight inch floppies using DataBus language and a very small screen. Databus was a very nice language that was easy to learn.

The third was a VIC20 which had a very nice programmable parallel port which I connected to a Pertec hard disk drive. Unfortunately I could program the VIC (in machine language) to position the Pertec heads but because the VIC20 was so slow, couldn't get any data to be read or written. Also programmed with Commodore Basic. Nice little machine.

Fourth was a Taiwanese IBM clone.
Everything after that was IBM architecture including an Amstrad PPC640. Not because IBM was sophisticated but that there was much more choice of software/hardware available for them.

I still have an Amstrad PPC640 which I purchased recently.

Trevor

[enquirium]

Hi .. First post .. been a member a while but hadn't got around to posting till now ...

First computer was a ZX81 with a 16K Ram pack . Still have that , Then came a SPECTRUM and then a BBC B , I still have both of those . Have had many shapes of computers since then ,only some of which I have retained , mostly the earlier ones ....AMSTRAD PCW ..... 1520 ......1640 . The BBC is the one I plan to resurrect as to me it retains the most posibilities , even now ...

Cheers ....

[RadioEvesham]

I was involved in the sale of early computers when the photographic trade took them in. So I also had to deal with a those faulty returned Sinclairs - which seemed like the entire stock! Then you had Dragon 32's - remember them - Vic 20's it seems another world! Although I used the early one's I never bought one until an Amstrad 1640 double drive - still got it & it still works! Used to run Prestel on it before the Internet. After that I went through several IBM types until now where I have 2 Dells and an Evesham!
It's changed a bit in 30 years!

[andys_81]

First computer was a 'Toshiba MSX HX-10' it has 64K RAM, 16K seperate video memory & 32K ROM, giving 112K total memory, and i still have it.

Then i went to an Acorn A3010 with 2MB, it was the 'Family Solution' pack. I still have that to.

[Gecophone]

my first computer was the good ol vic 20 i loved that thing i can remember trying to to write a program in basic that copied the computer from the film war games i got about 10 lines of code in and gave up and went back to playing games
after that i had the spectrum 128 whick never worked properly
i ended up with my dream computer the good ol faithful commodore 64 which i still have to this day gathering dust in a cupboard upstairs with a bucket load of tapes and joysticks id take it to the charity shop but i think they would laugh me out the door

[Dave Moll]

Originally Posted by Gecophone

the good ol faithful commodore 64 which i still have to this day gathering dust in a cupboard upstairs with a bucket load of tapes and joysticks id take it to the charity shop but i think they would laugh me out the door

If you want to get rid of it, you could always offer it in the appropriate section of the forum. No one here would "laugh you out the door".

[PSValves]

Another TI-994A here, and yes, I wish I still had it. Like a lot of people, it was the machine that I learned to programme on, due to the lack of software on tape and the rather high price of the plug-in cartridges. Unlike most computers today, it was supplied with an excellent manual from which it was possible to learn a lot. Although I could never afford the 8" floppy drive with my pocket money, the TI was a great introduction to computing.

Sadly, my mum gave the computer away to some young cousins when I was away at university. Naturally, they weren't actually interested in it because they couldn't buy the latest games for it. AFAIK, it ended up in the bin shortly afterwards

My next computer was the far more powerful Amstrad CPC6128, which did have a disc drive and a COLOUR monitor, both of which were very exciting peripherals to have in an era which largely revolved around green screens and cassette tapes. Unfortunately, that machine met its maker when I was trying to interface it with a home-made robot and I accidentally fried the mainboard

Great forum, btw. I actually joined up to talk about my Quad II restoration project, but this thread caught my eye. Wasn't sure if I should post a message in the Member Introduction area first, but here I am anyway. Please go easy on the newbie!

[samilong]

My first computer, bought in 1979 (if my failing memory serves) was a Cambridge Mk 14. Looked like an oversized calculator, and cost £99. For that, you got a kit of parts that you had to assemble yourself. The keyboard was awful, and it was programmed in machine code.
Some time later (1982?) I got a Kaypro for my birthday. This was a top of the line machine, cost an absolute fortune, and had a built in monitor. It was as close to a portable as you could get.
I still had both until about four years ago, when both were surrendered to the local tip during a house move.
http://s96.photobucket.com/albums/l1...ent=1c22_1.jpg
http://s96.photobucket.com/albums/l1...rrent=mk14.jpg

[Anthony2505]

Originally Posted by davidw

First was an Acorn Electron (with expansion pack) from currys...I've not moved on far I'm now using an EiSystem laptop !!!!!!!

I thought I was alone until I read your post. Or are we the same person? Acorn Electron, and I bought the expansion pack separately from a local computer shop. It had the tape player to load the games, and I remember how excited I was when the 5" disk came out. And now sadly yes a EIsystems machine.

I was pleased to see someone mention the G700 system by Phillips. I got it for Christmas one year and yes, was golf the greatest game ever. Only time I was allowed to stay up when the who family where playing. I also remember Pick Axe Peat. Original platform game about a coal miner.

I dint have the Acorn anymore but I do have the G7000, and I bought a second one to get the tanks game with it.

[Vicboduk]

I started out with a Sinclair ZX80 in kit form. Spent an evening building it every IC except the regulator was in a socket. On powering it up – nothing! I’d put one of the “keyboard” matrix diodes in the wrong way around. I eventually ended up adding an extra 2k of memory, an I/O port and my version of a real keyboard built from some scavenged key switches. The whole lot was then mounted on a base board and was used to control a Christmas light display in a shop window for the next five years. I then got a ZX Spectrum (48k), ZX printer, Interface 1 and three Microdrives. Not long after I was given two ZX81’s and a Spectrum+ with Interface 1. I was never happy with my MIDI interface I’d built for the Spectrum so I bought a brand new flood damaged Atari 520 STFM for £50, (from DIXONS when they were retailing for about £250) for use with my music set up. Then my work place broke up a network of BBC model B’s, so I had one of them. Finally moving on to PC’s starting with an Olivetti M24, then a 286, 386, 486sx, 486dx, Pentium, PII, PIII and currently a Pentium4. The most important thing being that all of my PC’s have been work cast offs and have not cost me a bean.
The best/worst part – other than the PC’s I’ve still have all of the rest!
I really must get a life….

Vic