When I was a kid, we had a computer since the mid-90s and my whole family was using it for playing games or later dial into the Internet (when you're at least my age, you know exactly how that sounded 🖀😅).
I got my first own computer later - it was an Acer Travelmate 220 laptop with both floppy and CD drive! It was a great feeling to have an own computer right on my own desk 😲!
Because you paid Internet per minute back then, I downloaded the whole selfhtml website to get a local copy and be able to teach myself HTML. I also took my first steps in Javascript on that machine!
What was your first computer?
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My first computer was an Apple //e, which had just been introduced, in 1983. I'm not counting the Commodore C64 computer I got in 1982, since it was a loaner, and I returned it when I bought the Apple //e.
My parents's first computer was a Commodore CBM 8032 in 1980, where I had learned to program in 6502 assembly.
The first computer I programmed on was a HP 2000 minicomputer, in HP 2000A Time-Shared BASIC, in 1976, over a 110 baud acoustic coupler modem on a Teletype Model 33, used by TIES. My first program I worked on was Oregon Trail on that machine. I didn't create Oregon Trail, it was pre-existing from 1971. I just didn't realize the changes I was making to the program was changing everyone's shared copy.
Fun fact: three of my coworkers had also worked on later incarnations of Oregon Trail at various times, when it was part of MECC.
Sadly I'm too young to know most of the computers you mentioned. What kind of software was Oregon Trail? A game?
Yes, it's a game that has been ported to death to multiple systems:
youtube.com/watch?v=QH2aDpjBSso
If you like old stuff, check that youtuve channel, it's gold!
mine was the Amstrad CPC 464
Image here
Thanks for sharing a photo! I love the keyboard, although the position of the arrow keys is a bit... unusual 😅
It inspired my current custom mechanical keyboard.
Beautiful! 😍
What kind of switches do you use for your keys? Cherry MX?
that's right - went for Cherry MX Brown . Got the keyboard from WASD.
Very nice! I have the brown switches too (best typing feeling so far), but my keyboard is just black without those awesome colors. Thanks again for sharing!
Love the built in tape drive. Didn't know you needed to power it off a microwave though :-)
Mine was a "Schneider CPC 464", i think the same as the "Amstrad". Bought it together with my brother, started to program "basic" ;-)
Yes, it's the same machine :) I loved that computer, I still have one up in the loft (no monitor though). I'm tempted to get it up and running again for the kids :)
One of these bad boys:
A ZX81. Later, with the 16k RAMPack (as shown).
Oh. My. God. This thing was amazing.
Reading and typing in and learning from the magazines, and even the intruction manual which was more amazing left me palpitating for more.
Me too. I loved my ZX81.
Memories of cassette storage and playing Mazogs.
Texas Instruments TI99-4/A, with a cassette drive. Christmas 1981.
I still have it, in the original box.
I am jealous. I lusted after one of those for some years, but they were out of my price range of the time.
Wow, that's awesome! Must be great to have such a worthy reminder of the beginning of the digital age!
A Commodore 64 back in the summer of 1984.
My parents bought a C64 back in 1982. After two weeks of gaming on it my mum insisted we all worked through the manual and its programmes. By the time we finished it, I wanted to be a programmer :)
Your mum is awesome! Kudos to all parents who encourage their children to do more than gaming on their computer!
I built my first PC. It was the first I'd ever built. Bought components, case, put it all together. It had an AMD Athlon X2. Which was one of the earlier dual core and 64 bit CPUs. I built it just run games like Half Life 2, Doom 3, etc.
It's awesome, that your first own computer was built by yourself! Are you still using it?
Oh no. That was almost 15 years ago. I built a few more over the years mostly updating gaming rigs. But it's an expensive hobby so now I just use carefully selected laptops even as my desktop. And consoles for gaming.
My first computer was a really awful dell Inspiron laptop that i got when i was 12. it had a cheap CPU; no GPU and probably just about 2gbs of ram. But at that time i didnt know anything. the only reason i got that laptop is because the screen was 17 inches and i thought bigger screen mean a better laptop. 🤣🤣🤣
Commodore 64 here. I father was a BASIC teacher so we had two Commodores, one color and one B/W. We didn't have floppy drive, only a dataset with and a bunch of cassettes with many programs and games. I only remember playing two games on it: Gianna Sisters (a Mario clone) and Zaxxon. They were pretty cool for little 6 year old me.
A few years later my father bought a XT 256 with a monochrome hercules monitor. It didn't have a hard drive only a floppy disk. You had boot with a MS-DOS disk. That was our first IBM compatible PC.
So cool to have had the privilege to grow up with such amazing machines! Do you still have them?
I don't think so, I'll as my father next time I see him, but I don't think he kept those, it's a shame. I really would like to have one of those now to play with.
I first programmed on a Commodore 64 but the first one I bought (in Nov 1995) was a Commodore Amiga 1200 (later accelerated to a 40MHz 68030EC with an extra 4MB of ram).
Did a lot with CPP, REXX and shell programming including animations and IDE production to help with my coding.
I actually worked out a CPP representation of the FFT on it for my final year project before swapping to Borland to be able to hand it in.
I built a serial modem with a mate one Saturday afternoon in 1993 which didn't work very well but was a big fan of FredFish disks (early open source).
While there had been computers in the house for years prior, my first computer was a PC clone:
Intel 486SX-33, 4 Meg RAM, 240 Meg HD, one each 3.5" and 5.25" floppy, 14.4K US Robotics modem, 1 Meg video card, MSDOS 6.22, and Windows 3.1; all wrapped in a in a classic early-90s beige desktop case, with a chunky 14" CRT monitor.
First upgrade was an Adlib MIDI sound card which was quickly replaced by a Creative Labs SoundBlaster 16 and 4x CD-ROM drive combo.
...Simpler times.