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Your FIRST computer(s)


Murph

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Mine was an IBM PCjr with chicklet keyboard.

 

 

Which was upgraded to a Zenith Z-150 with TWO 5 1/4" floppy drives and 640K of RAM

 

 

Thence to a Packard Bell 386SX-25

 

 

After that the next eight computers were all custom built.

 

Check out this for a blast from the past on old processors: Red Hill guide

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This one.

 

 

Which led on to this one.

 

 

The CPU of which is the grandfather of what may be the most successful family of CPUs on the planet - the ARM.

 

After that, a bunch of PC clones and a Wii console.

 

The first work computer I used was an Apple Mac SE30, which was sweet once I got a 19" Radius TPD.

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Macintosh 512E in 1986. 512x384 b&w 9 in monitor, 8 mHz MC68000 processor, 512k RAM and a 800 kb superfloppy drive. Wish I still had it.

 

Greg Shaw

Edited by GregShaw
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Turbo XT clone (IIRC, 4.77 MHz regular mode, 9 Mhz turbo mode), 640K, one 1.2MB 5.25" floppy, one 360K floppy. Eventually added a 10 MB hard drive.

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Those IBM keyboards were wonderful keyboards.

I still have my Apple ADB extended keyboard II that I got with my Mac IIci in 1989. I've never found another as good, unfortunately a ADB to USB adaptor is over $100 f you can find one.

 

Greg Shaw

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Tandy 1000 EX.

 

 

Forgot when exactly. Sometime in the '80s. From relatives in the USA.

 

This was our computer for a looooooooooooong time. Lots of fun games played with it. Dad was pissed.

 

Eventually we had a 386SX and then that died after a year I think. Followed by a 286, an AMD which got stolen when it was repaired at a computer shop (shop was broken into), a 486 (shop replacement) which had issues, then an AMD K5, Celeron, then the current laptop which has been going for more than five years I think....

Edited by TomasCTT
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Commodore VIC

Commodore 64

Commodore PET (school machine, learned Pascal, Fortran and Basic on it)

IBM 286 (first job out of college)

 

After 2 years business consulting, I massively exaggerated my technical knowhow and landed a job operating a massively parallel computing solution <BG> which involved (5) Everex 486/33 computers connected with a 10 Mb local Ethernet (Aug 1991). I had never even seen a 486 computer when I got the job... week one was VERY interesting...as I spent darn near 24 x 7 trying to learn what I had claimed to be a master of :lol:

Edited by medicjim86
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Those IBM keyboards were wonderful keyboards.

 

Some German company makes clones, as good as original. Pricy (180euro IIRC) but a friend who has one (works as quite busy translator) swears by it - she noted it was way better for a lot of typing then any of "ergonomic" keyboards.

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First one I ever used, since it was my pop's. Bro and I would play A.C.E., an arcadish flight sim. He'd pilot, and I'd be gunner, launching of the missiles and such.

 

First I ever owned was some type of pentium back in 1994-1995, and used it forever. Got my first intro of Steel Panthers II via a demo, bought the game, and am still playing it. Also got a lot of hours in Jane's ATF, Interstate 76, Fade to Black (Flashback sequel), a demo of Heroes of Might and Magic, Close Combat: ABTF, Star Wars: Rebellion, Tie Fighter, and X-Wing vs Tie Fighter. On that one, bro and I reprised our roles, but essentially he had the joystick and I had the keyboard. It was quite effective, I'd handle targeting, shields, and throttle. Last one wasn't too critical for him to control directly, since it was space combat.

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Proc:K6-2 266mhz given to me used from a friend

MOBO:FIC PA-2013 1meg cacheversion bought used from a friend

Memory: 64mb pc100 generic bought from a store

Video: ATI Expert98 AGP given to me used from a friend(?)

Sound: new Soundblaster AWE64 ISA bought new

CD: 24x used from a friend(?)

HD: new WD 10gig IDE new from a store for $200

Floppy: 1.44 not sure what brand bought I believe

Case: new biege monstrosity bought at a computer show

 

Started later then most of you alls I guess. At least owning one. Still have a Apple IIe like they used to have in school around the shop as a conversation piece. After mulling over splurging on one of those fancy expensive Nintendo\Typewriter computer things and doing ALLOT of research, decided to make one with a friends help FEB1999. Year later I had a collection of old computers bought from garage sales, dumpster diving, recycling center, etc that I would take apart and put back together.

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What a thread!

 

Not my computer, but my uncle got a Tandy TRS80 when I was about 11. When my parents told me about it, I had visions of a giant wall-sized machine with lots of flashing lights. That's what watching too much Star Trek does to you! To be frank, I was a little let down when I saw a desktop machine with black & white monitor.

 

My own first computer was a Commodore Vic 20. It was a bar mitzvah gift from family friends. I remember how excited I was, and how I saved up $40 from doing chores to buy my first video game cartridge, GORF.

 

And GORF

 

A year later my parents bought an Epson QX-10, a CP/M machine with 640X400 resolution. It was probably over $3000.

 

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My first one was a soviet Elektronika BK-0010.01 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elektronika_BK#Elektronika_BK-0010), got it for my 6th birthday from my dad. By the age of 7 I already wrote my first BASIC programs.

After we moved to Israel we got a 286, which was my first true PC.

Chain further included a 486dx4, K6-2 266mhz, 1 Ghz P3, Athlon XP, Core2Duo (first the R6600, then 8400) and my current core i7 760.

 

Current set includes the i760 (main PC), the old C2D E8400 running XenServer (home lab), a Core2Duo laptop (on loan to dad) and a core i5 laptop (from work). Oh, and an iPad2, which has more computing powered than my 3 first computers (at least) combined.

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In 1978 my dad was working for National Semiconductor, and he brought home an old PACE computer, hooked it up to a Hazeltine 1600 terminal, and let his seven-year-old son bang BASIC on it.

 

We also had an adm3a terminal, which talked to a Hayes modem. It wasn't a computer by itself, but it could dial into National Semi's VAX11/780 "voder" system, which ran AT&T SysV UNIX and gave me access to Usenet.

 

(On a related note, a few years ago when my father asked me to teach him how to use Linux, I told him "It's just like UNIX -- weren't you the one who taught me UNIX on voder?" He insists that he didn't know UNIX back then, either. So who taught me UNIX? It remains a mystery.)

 

A few years later we upgraded to a Ferguson BigBoard sporting a 1MHz Z80 processor and a full 64KB of RAM, which spurred me to learn assembly language, Pascal, and Modula-2. A couple of years later we upgraded it with something called a "hard disk", which stored an unbelievable four megabytes of file data. I didn't think we could ever fill it up.

 

When I was halfway through highschool we got an IBM PC-AT, with a 12MHz 80286, 512KB of memory, and a *massive* 20MB hard drive. Turbo Pascal combined the best features of Pascal and Modula-2, and that saw me through highschool and two years of junior college.

 

Just before I left home to study computer science at UCSC, my parents surprised me with a 50MHz 80486. It turned out to be a lifesaver -- UCSC was faculty-rich but resources-poor, and the ability to run Linux (v0.99pl14) and compile/debug/run my own C programs meant not having to vie for quota on the college's Sun servers. I also learned x86 assembly language on that thing, which was one of the least useful skills ever, except that it eventually helped me land my first "real" engineering job at Cygnus Solutions, developing the GNU toolchain.

 

After college I was working in Silicon Valley, which meant not only having disposable income (and working my way through college meant having no debt), but also access to a huge market for used computer equipment. For a while my apartment resembled a ghetto-datacenter more than an abode. Moving in with my girlfriend forced me to pare it down, though -- not everyone can sleep to the gentle music of whirring fans and clucking disks. :D

 

To this day I don't think I've ever purchased a new desktop PC. They've all been a homebrew of old parts mixed with new, often in server chassis (which are not only more solidly constructed than tower cases, but also give me plenty of room to maneuver my ogre-sized hands). It's cheaper that way, not to mention more robust, and buying individual components makes it easier to be sure all of the parts are well-supported by Linux.

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Dad had an ABC-800 at home for some reason, which I never understood the meaning of since I was five-ish. Two years later or so he brought home an early PC laptop from Ericsson, for which he had a simple submarine game called GATO. I was hooked. :)

 

/R

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