MJ5150 said:
No, but I did have an Oric and an Amstrad for a while.
+1 on the BBC Micro hitting uk schools in about 1984!
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your old computer story?
- Thread starter Icey101
- Start date
No, but I did have an Oric and an Amstrad for a while.
+1 on the BBC Micro hitting uk schools in about 1984!
My history with computers doesn't go back as far as some of the posters in this thread, but ...
I owned a computer in college, an IBM 8088 clone with 2 floppy drives and no hard drive. The very fact that I owned a computer was considered uber-nerdy. None of my friends, even the engineering majors, had them. People would come over to my place to write their college papers on it instead of using a typewriter.
When I got my first job, a state-of-the-art corporate PC had a 25mhz 386 chip. Intel was getting ready to release the 486 chip, which was widely beleived to be overkill for a desktop computer. Pepople thought it was ridiculous to have that much processing power on an individual's desk, and called it a mini-mainframe.
I owned a computer in college, an IBM 8088 clone with 2 floppy drives and no hard drive. The very fact that I owned a computer was considered uber-nerdy. None of my friends, even the engineering majors, had them. People would come over to my place to write their college papers on it instead of using a typewriter.
When I got my first job, a state-of-the-art corporate PC had a 25mhz 386 chip. Intel was getting ready to release the 486 chip, which was widely beleived to be overkill for a desktop computer. Pepople thought it was ridiculous to have that much processing power on an individual's desk, and called it a mini-mainframe.
The first computer that was brought home as family computer was a pentium II, I'm young. The first ones my dad bought was a Vic-20 and an iapx-286 I think but he worked on a regular basis with some punched cards one coded in FORTRAN before that, I don't remember the model but the brand was IBM I think. Now I don't remember the first computer I used, but I'd guess it was probably the commodore 64 at my grandparent's, that comp was my uncle's when he still lived there, I'm only 19 after all.
An 8088 was a pretty early computer. I bought my company's first computer, an IBM PC XT, which was the 8088. It's predecessor was the IBM PC, the 8086. We got it with the 8087 math co-processor. Shortly thereafter, they came out with the PC AT, which was the 80286. We bought that for the accounting department. It also had the 80287 math co-processor in it. Four of us got Compaq suitcase computers.
Here's one for you. Accounting said they needed more storage. In those days, the standard storage was 5¼-inch floppies with 360 KB of storage. Then they went to double density at 720 KB. This was even before the 1.44 MB 3½-inch floppies. Anyway, we ended up buying a 10 MB (megabyte) hard drive. The price? $4,000. At that price per byte, that $100 1TB (terabyte) drive of today would cost $400 million. We were paying $160 for 1 megabyte SIMMS to upgrade our computer RAM. At that price per byte, the 8GB of RAM in my machine would cost $1,280,000.
Remember Zip Drives (100 MB) and Jaz Drives (2GB)? My band leader is an IT consultant, and the other day he was transferring a client's Quickbooks files off Zip cartridges onto CDs.
My first exposure to computers was in 1966, when we were programming in Fortran II onto punch cards. We'd leave them in the computer center overnight to be processed on an IBM 360. You had to hope there were no do-loops in your program, lest you'd get a very nasty note from the technicians.
Jazz started at 1gb... I was messing with some earlier this year. My wife had me pull out her PowerMac 8600/300 for me to retrieve some graphic files that never got moved to our PCs when we boxed up our last Mac.
I loved Wordperfect, knew most of the keystrokes. They just wouldn't change with the times.
Most big NY lawyers firms still use it. Word isn't exactly a replacement for the power tool Wordperfect was.
In the early 1980's (I was 11 or 12 years old), our first computer at home was a Vic-20, and we upgraded to a Commodore 64C some time later. My dad was an insurance broker, and ordered 'leads' from a company that came on 5 1/4" floppies. Most of us in the family, aside from my dad who was a technophobe, helped organize and print out the names and addresses onto postcards.
I learned BASIC programming around this time, and created simple programs including role playing games and other dorky things. Around this time, I also borrowed my neighbor's Atari 400, 800 and even his Apple ][ for weeks at a time. After I graduated from high school, I moved in with my brother who had just bought an Amiga 500. He upgraded it to have two 3.5" floppy drives and also paid a premium for a WHOLE MEGABYTE of RAM. It must have been $300 or $400 just for the RAM upgrade.
With the Amiga (and a lot of free time on my hands, since I wasn't going to college classes like I should have), I composed some of my first songs using DMCS, Deluxe Music Construction Set. About 15 years ago, I was able to record those songs from the Amiga just before it changed hands and wound up in the possession of a 'collector'.
That was my first introduction to a sort of non-linear editing, and since then have used mainly Macs for my daily computing as well as music production. I turned out to be quite the computer/tech geek too! Glad I had the opportunity to start when I did. My 4 year old and 18 month old kids have an old eMac that's loaded with games and their music. They are quite adept as using it too!
I learned BASIC programming around this time, and created simple programs including role playing games and other dorky things. Around this time, I also borrowed my neighbor's Atari 400, 800 and even his Apple ][ for weeks at a time. After I graduated from high school, I moved in with my brother who had just bought an Amiga 500. He upgraded it to have two 3.5" floppy drives and also paid a premium for a WHOLE MEGABYTE of RAM. It must have been $300 or $400 just for the RAM upgrade.
With the Amiga (and a lot of free time on my hands, since I wasn't going to college classes like I should have), I composed some of my first songs using DMCS, Deluxe Music Construction Set. About 15 years ago, I was able to record those songs from the Amiga just before it changed hands and wound up in the possession of a 'collector'.
That was my first introduction to a sort of non-linear editing, and since then have used mainly Macs for my daily computing as well as music production. I turned out to be quite the computer/tech geek too! Glad I had the opportunity to start when I did. My 4 year old and 18 month old kids have an old eMac that's loaded with games and their music. They are quite adept as using it too!
My first computer was a desktop bought in '91 for law school from Circuit City with an Epson dot matrix printer. It boasted a 40gig hard drive. I think I spent more time on the "Prodigy" online Packer Forum, more than conducting online Westlaw research. I remember one of the Packer forum fellas was a cousin of Ty Detmer and he kept trying to make a case that Ty should be the QB over Brett Favre. Hilarious now that I think back on that!
mmbongo said:
Cool! Did you have the coveted Woz //gs?
I've still got my eye out for some classic Apple hardware. My collection includes various 68k Macs, Newtons and even a QuickTake camera!
My first computing experience was with a TRS80. Dual 5 1/4 drives, built in green screen. A:/ drive for the OS, B:/ for programs. A friend had one first, and we played a star trek game, then we got one at work for inventory control. It was such fun inputting the data from the days sales, and any incoming stock. 
Later, I got a Timex Sinclair with a whole 4k memory, but you could add modules as needed up to 16k. I tried to create a battleship type game, but ran out of memory after the title screen. LOL Also used a tape deck.
Eventually (around 96) I got a 486dx 100 with the mail order programming course I was taking. About a month later, the P1 came out.
Had a Compaq in there for a while, but learned how to build my own, so when I need a new machine, I DIY.
Picked up a Mac Plus with a 20mb external drive that was tossed out. Fixed it up and gave it to someone. Also had a Power PC that was trashed as well. Found it had a bad extension app. Reboot with extensions turned off and away it went. Gave that away as well.
Later, I got a Timex Sinclair with a whole 4k memory, but you could add modules as needed up to 16k. I tried to create a battleship type game, but ran out of memory after the title screen. LOL Also used a tape deck.
Eventually (around 96) I got a 486dx 100 with the mail order programming course I was taking. About a month later, the P1 came out.
Had a Compaq in there for a while, but learned how to build my own, so when I need a new machine, I DIY.
Picked up a Mac Plus with a 20mb external drive that was tossed out. Fixed it up and gave it to someone. Also had a Power PC that was trashed as well. Found it had a bad extension app. Reboot with extensions turned off and away it went. Gave that away as well.
besides my old //c I've got 2 Performa 6200CD, 7100, 7300, 8600... powerbook 165c, Duo 280c, 2 Quicktake cameras and a personal Laserwriter.
First PC was the not-so-legendary 8 bit 8088 generation. Fiendinsh performance: 4,77 mhz processor, no hardrive, 640 kb memory, 4 color display.. Alley cat! Later on upgraded to massive graphics phenomenom of 16 colors. I have a photo of me playing police quest 1 with a dictionary when I was five.
We also had a c64 at some point, but never got into that.
We also had a c64 at some point, but never got into that.
Alkali Ike
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My first microcomputer (they weren't called personal computers yet) was an IMSAI 8080 that I built from a kit. I think it ran at 2 MHz. It had a memory board the size of an iPad with a whopping 8KB or 16KB of RAM (that's KB, not MB or GB).
Next I had a TRS-80. It had a Zilog Z80 CPU running at (I think) something like 1.78 MHz. I was torn between the TRS-80 and an Apple II. It bugged me that the Apple could only display 40 text characters on a line, while the TRS-80 could do 64 characters per line. I took the extra characters over the color capability, partly because I thought color was an unnecessary feature. Facepalm?
Next I had a TRS-80. It had a Zilog Z80 CPU running at (I think) something like 1.78 MHz. I was torn between the TRS-80 and an Apple II. It bugged me that the Apple could only display 40 text characters on a line, while the TRS-80 could do 64 characters per line. I took the extra characters over the color capability, partly because I thought color was an unnecessary feature. Facepalm?
I still have and use my old IBM laptop. 486, 16 mb of ram & a whopping 8 gig hard drive Windows 3.1
Hottest thing on the market at the time.
$1600.00 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have a couple of programs on it that I still use but it would cost to much to update them.
Hottest thing on the market at the time.
$1600.00 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have a couple of programs on it that I still use but it would cost to much to update them.
*looking at work laptop with 8gb ram, solid state hard drive, 2.8ghz quad CPU and 3 monitors attached to it*
I don't miss those old days.
I don't miss those old days.
So up my alley 
Atari 2600 was my entry drug, of course.
Commodore C=64 -- Sword of Fargoal, Mule, Adventure Construction Set, Uridium,Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds ( really every DnD game made at the time ) Dungeon! by FTL was probably my favorite game at the time, Winter and Summer games.
Amiga 500 with the 10meg!!!!! external drive with 1meg!!!!!!!!! memory upgrade. I still own this. Still works like a charm.
My first PC was a 386 dx2/66 I rode that beast for all it was worth until I got my p90. Duke Nukem 3d and Doom ruled my world in those days. Also BBS chat servers. I loved when I got my 14.4 modem as I could finally type and not see the letters scroll on screen I can still remember that sound of it connecting. I was a Zoom fanboi back then. I loved Navigator as a browser.
I still build my own PCs and am a constant upgrade-a-holic.
Atari 2600 was my entry drug, of course.
Commodore C=64 -- Sword of Fargoal, Mule, Adventure Construction Set, Uridium,Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds ( really every DnD game made at the time ) Dungeon! by FTL was probably my favorite game at the time, Winter and Summer games.
Amiga 500 with the 10meg!!!!! external drive with 1meg!!!!!!!!! memory upgrade. I still own this. Still works like a charm.
My first PC was a 386 dx2/66 I rode that beast for all it was worth until I got my p90. Duke Nukem 3d and Doom ruled my world in those days. Also BBS chat servers. I loved when I got my 14.4 modem as I could finally type and not see the letters scroll on screen
I can still remember that sound of it connecting. I was a Zoom fanboi back then. I loved Navigator as a browser. I still build my own PCs and am a constant upgrade-a-holic.
I took a BASIC programming course in high school. Sometime around 1981, I found a book on speaker design at the library. I rode my bike to K-Mart and bought a Timex Sinclair ZX81, into which I programmed the equations from the book and designed my first DIY cab. I couldn't make it save a program to my cassette recorder, so I left the computer plugged in and begged everybody not to touch it.
The cab sucked.
I was in love with computers and electronics. During college I had a summer job at a large service center for school districts in southeast Michigan. They had a room with demo models of several different desktop computers. We even looked inside a number of them. I saved my pennies, compared specs, and bought a Sanyo MBC-550 computer, a Zenith monochrome monitor, and a Juki daisywheel printer. One of the selling points for the Sanyo was a bundle of software, and the whole rig cost under $1k -- my entire savings.
I was the first student at my college to turn in a word processed paper. Some of the profs hadn't used a computer and were fearful that it was doing the writing. After a lengthy meeting, the faculty issued a rule that word processing was OK, but we were on our honor not to use a spell checker! Within less than a year, every prof had a computer.
The cab sucked.
I was in love with computers and electronics. During college I had a summer job at a large service center for school districts in southeast Michigan. They had a room with demo models of several different desktop computers. We even looked inside a number of them. I saved my pennies, compared specs, and bought a Sanyo MBC-550 computer, a Zenith monochrome monitor, and a Juki daisywheel printer. One of the selling points for the Sanyo was a bundle of software, and the whole rig cost under $1k -- my entire savings.
I was the first student at my college to turn in a word processed paper. Some of the profs hadn't used a computer and were fearful that it was doing the writing. After a lengthy meeting, the faculty issued a rule that word processing was OK, but we were on our honor not to use a spell checker! Within less than a year, every prof had a computer.
I had a BBC Electron computer. I would spend hours playing Elite, I thought those wireframe graphics were the coolest! Still think it's one of the best games I've ever played.
