What was the first computer you ever used (not owned) ?

[steve2470]

The thread on owning computers got me thinking of this. Mine was probably an IBM mainframe in 1978 that used punch cards. Didn't they all use punch cards back then ? Or did some mainframes just take data by typing it in ?

[Warren Stupidity]

1. Teletype to an IBM system360 circa 1971.

[steve2470]

2. I think you answered my question about data entry nt

[Ms. Toad]

3. Xerox Sigma 9

Punch cards.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. An AT 286, my sis bought it for school

and I was afraid of breaking it.

[newfie11]

5. Dell

[lpbk2713]

6. Stored program telephone systems

Early 1980's, maybe late 70's.

[Galileo126]

7. IBM 360/370

It was the next-gen of the IBM 360...but it still used the punch cards. I think it was 1978, and I was programming in BASIC, COBOL, and Pascal.

(Laugh - he said "COBOL".)

[steve2470]

11. apparently COBOL is still in demand and the people doing it are retiring

2nd career, eh ?

[msu2ba]

8. Control Data 6400

I took a Fortran programming course at Michigan State in 1970. We submitted our programs on punch-cards and received our output once a day. If you made a mistake, you didn't find out till the next day. The closest we got to the computers, which had their own building, was seeing them behind their glass walls in a thick-floored (to hold the wiring), air-conditioned room.

[RKP5637]

20. I remember many a night lying awake at the univ. in my dorm wondering if my program ran OK,

and lab the next day.

[tammywammy]

9. Apple II

When I started elementary school in September 1986 they had fancy IIe in the computer labs.

My dad is a technology early adopter.

[bravenak]

32. Me too.

Oregon trail and number crunchers, my faves. I started school in 86 too. I don't remember punch cards.

[tammywammy]

44. Oregon Trail was the best!

[thelordofhell]

61. Have you tried the Zombie version of Oregon Trail.......Organ Trail

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/32zkif/:XBYwWhMd:HZMMcAu7/www.hatsproductions.com/OrganTrail.swf/#

[tammywammy]

62. I'll check I out later.

I have a feeling I'll regret it (it'll suck up my "planned" studying time).

[TroglodyteScholar]

101. You Have Died of Dysentery

[TlalocW]

63. Apple II as well

Starting in second grade with educational games. Oregon Trail a year later. Some LOGO programming in 4th. Lots of Carmen Sandiego. Appleworks freshman year. Turbo Pascal... On IIGS at that point. Still remember when you wanted to run your code you hit Escape then Q-U-E-R for Quit, Update, compilE (weird), Run.

TlalocW

[tammywammy]

90. LOGO!

I remember summer computer camp doing Lego for Logo stuff. Hooking Legos up to the computer was the best!

[TroglodyteScholar]

102. I didn't think anyone else in the entire worls had encountered LOGO

Wow wow wow

[Bluenorthwest]

10. It was called a Kaypro 2. I was told that if I typed a message, we could send it instantly

to the other side of the world, where it would be read and a response would be sent almost as quickly as the recipient, Arthur C Clarke, could read and type his answer 'They call it electronic mail'. I was fairly certain I was being pranked, but as it turned out there was such a thing as electronic mail, Arthur was not in the next room but in Sri Lanka, and although it was years before I sent another email, I was fairly early to the sport....I'm very proud that Arthur was my first email to and from.

[SharonAnn]

12. In 1966, working for a bank, GE 415 mainframe, 32K, punch cards, 8 tape reels.

Still have the Programmers Card with all the basic language instructions, assembler level programming for the most part.

[reformist2]

13. The Commodore VIC 20, lol!

[steve2470]

14. some of you might like this web site, lots of old computers on there

http://oldcomputers.net/

[Galileo126]

16. Yikes!

I owned a Timex-Sinclair (with the 64K RAM expansion, and the electrostatic printer!) I drove all the way to Nashua, NH (from southern RI) just to buy one in 1981.

Also, I once owned a Trash-80 Model 4P (TRS-80 4P. "P" for portable). It was a 40 lb computer with a handle. Sure, that made it portable. Just add a handle!

Memories.....like the corners of my mind....

[kentauros]

74. Here's a couple more sites for "computer museums"

including a link to a CAD system on which I first learned CADD (in 1987) and it wasn't AutoCAD!

Graphics Computer System by Bausch & Lomb


And I believe we used 8" floppies. About six years earlier, I worked at a newspaper in the graphics department on a phototypesetting machine that used 12" floppies. And in looking at Wikipedia, I have found a pic of one that looked like the pair we used, because I remember that puke-green color:



The image is labeled "Berthold photosetting units tps 6300 and tpu 6308" but I can't remember if that's the same brand or not.


Here are the other museum sites

Computer History Museum

Old-Computers.com - The Museum

[steve2470]

76. thanks for those sites Kentauros ! nt

[kentauros]

77. You're welcome!

I'm afraid if I peruse them any more this evening, I'll get lost

[Timez Squarez]

87. My dad had all of these... in his data processing company..

Tape machines, punch card teletypes, readers, 8" floppies..

I used to love spending time playing with the punch card teletypes...


I still miss my dad... i just wish he didn't die so soon...

[kentauros]

91. I'm sorry to hear that about your dad...

I guess keep reminiscing with the help of those sites

I'm not a computer geek; I've just had to use some of the technology over the years, whether in school (CAD, and computer graphics on another mainframe-type computer) or in work. Yet, it has been fun and exciting at times, getting to play with the equipment like no one else

[hobbit709]

106. TI-960, 980 and 990 series.

I worked as a repair tech at TI.

[RKP5637]

15. Punched diagnostic tapes on a teletype to load into a General Dynamics computer early 70's.

[adirondacker]

17. PET Commodore CBM Model 4016 in HS for Basic programming...I then went back in time over a decade...

and used this setup (switches and probes).



There was a punchcard testing unit as well, but no pics exist. It never worked well and sat in the corner of my shop space collecting dust.

[Xithras]

18. Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer

My first grade teacher bought one the year they came out. He had it connected to a VoxBox and it called out roll every morning. Every day he'd pick a "Star Student" (best behaved, best homework grades, etc), and that kid would get to tap the spacebar the next morning to rotate the program through everyones names. Back in 1980, it was unheard of for a six year old to even touch a computer, so it was a coveted job. EVERYONE wanted to push the button on the shiny new talking machine!

It was only a few years later that I got my own first computer. It was another Tandy TRS-80 that my mom picked up secondhand at an estate sale.

[AgingAmerican]

109. Same here

My boss at the time was a professor at Cal Tech. He was a genius programmer. The TRS 80 came with extended basic. He taught me some very basic programming stuff.

[Hoyt]

19. 1968 - big boxes of punch cards for simple program you dropped off at a desk

Would run overnight on some big assed IBM. If there was one little mistake, you started all over. Couple years later, they went from cards to a teletype that shook like crazy when you got it cooking. Went to work for state government, and it was back to those frigging cards.

[X_Digger]

21. VT to an IBM mainframe.

In 1979, I attended a summer camp at Emory and Henry College. A nice CIS major showed me how to load up a text-based adventure game. (The details escape me now.)

Most of the rest of the week, I spent in the lab.

[friendly_iconoclast]

22. A CDC mainframe via a timeshare terminal

Each student was allowed one hour daily, and since we were connecting
via leased telephone circuit (late 1970s) the connection often failed during
Florida's rainy season.

[DiverDave]

23. 9TH grade 1971

we had boxes of punch cards.

[gulliver]

24. Honeywell 1640 Series Timesharing

http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102704275

Wonderful machine. 101 Basic Computer Games by David Ahl sitting next to the teletype.

[mylye2222]

25. I first used a black and orange screen-computer

when I was 5 years old. It was running under Microsoft Windows but dont remember the exact version, as well as the computer's mark. I also remember a printer who was very large....and sooooo noisy.... LOL!!!!!

[sakabatou]

26. Must've been a Win '95 or '98 desktop

Too young young to remember the rest

[bemildred]

27. IBM/1967

Dunno the designation, but it had a card-reader and line-printer, and we ran Fortran on it.

Owned was a PC/XT/DOS machine around 1986.

[TexasTowelie]

28. Burroughs 77 in 1984.

No punch cards, but we built a word processing program using BASIC and ASCII coding during my first year in college for an intro to computer science class. I also wrote some FORTRAN programs for the descriptive statistics class I was taking in my first year.

[IphengeniaBlumgarten]

29. I used a PDP-1

It used long, accordion-folded strips of punched paper tape as input. Circa 1961, this was.

[PoliticAverse]

30. HP 9830

http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=55

[FarCenter]

31. IBM 1620 in Fortran

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1620

[bemildred]

52. Yeah, that's the one. nt

[catbyte]

33. I don't even remember what it was, but it was a monstrosity with punch cards

It was at a furniture manufacturing place in norhern Michigan the summer of 1973. Wow, how times have changed, lol!

[Trajan]

34. Commodore Pet 4032

Used for calculating geometric data; a collected series of theodolite positions/angles.

We appreciated the Pet for carrying out these long calculations ... They were painful when carried out by hand ...

[The Straight Story]

39. I remember wanting one of those

I saw a demo of a 3d style maze game on one, was much better looking than the one on my trash 80 (deathmaze 5000 I think).

[sammytko]

35. we used punch cards, but they eventually added some terminals

this was 78-82 time frame.

Then I used a Z-100!

[Go Vols]

36. Calculators are computers

So it would be a plain jane Texas Instrument one from the early/mid '70s.

[Mr.Bill]

42. I remember those.

They cost a fortune back then.

[Iggo]

46. Wow! I remember those with their little red numbers!

7734.40

(tee-hee!)

[Go Vols]

49. lol

hadn't thought of that in years.

[Lifelong Protester]

85. I had the same one, and recall it was expensive!

And I was an intern at an air traffic control center, 1973, and learned how to keypunch.

[RKP5637]

89. TI Calculators were great! I had an SR-10 and the exponential feature sure helped in electronic

calculations.

[Iggo]

37. (Oops...used, not owned). Some computer the size of a building at USC back in the early to mid 70s

I don't remember if we used punchcards or if we filled in the bubbles with a pencil.

We'd fill out our cards (in BASIC?) in class and then I think once a week or once a month we'd take them to USC and run them to see if the printouts came out as predicted.

It was way boss.

[The Straight Story]

38. Some sort of teletype system, digital decwriter as interface

Was at my dad's work. It played chess and Adventure (Go North!). Dad was an electronics engineer and was working on a brake testing system for GM (I think it was them, one of the big car companies). Also used and HP punchcard system at school. Was in the physics lab - the teacher was also our chess coach and let us play around with it.

It wasn't long after that we got a trs-80 model 1, 16k ram, cassette drive (z80). I programmed basic and assembly on it.

First game I wrote was a star trek one. Also wrote a chess program (slow as heck on a trash 80).

Funny thing - all my friends used to thing I was weird for playing D&D and having a computer at home. They couldn't see the need for one, etc.

Now they all play graphic based adventure games and have computers.

[Mr.Bill]

40. TRS-80 in 1982.

The hard drive was a cassette tape. Black and white screen. I used it at work to estimate printing jobs. It worked very well for that purpose. Also spent many hours playing backgammon with it.

[Boreal]

41. 1978 here, as well

And it was the Avis Rent a Car "Wizard". We typed in the info and also received it from other locations via print out. Daily business reports and other info was also generated.

[AlinPA]

43. IBM 7094 in 1966. Punched cards, line printers, Fortran and some sort of simulator.

[whistler162]

45. IBM mainframe not a 360

next one was a Prime mainframe then a IBM 360/135 when I started working. Did the conversion from punch card to disk files when moved the JCL over o a disk file..

[Denzil_DC]

47. Some dumb remote terminal at the billing dept of a water board HQ, early 80s.

I was a temp and it was a plumb job we temps vied for - you got to sit in a quiet dimly lit room with a gigantic-for-the-time wall-mounted screen, entering account numbers for a gazillion paid bills on a keyboard (advanced stuff, this) into the database (rather than filling in time destuffing envelopes of checks, deciphering scrawled handwriting, filing, or sitting on the envelope shaker and busting it).

It felt like being a cog at NASA. And if the checksum didn't compute at the end of each run, you got to do it all over again.

[Marshall III]

48. Also IBM Mainframe. Punched lots of cards....

[daleo]

50. Ahmdal mainframe about 1977

We were taught how to run punch cards once, but then went on to AJ510 terminals. It was a university course.

[xfundy]

51. Mergenthaler typesetting machine

Which would qualify as a computer. Next one used was a huge "portable," prior to 286s, black screen, green type.

[JoePhilly]

53. My high school in 79, we had one Apple PC, and a teletype ...

.... connected to a bank. The bank had created a partition on their mainframe for us.

Think a bank would do that today?

[PCIntern]

54. Teletype machine and telephone handset modem with

punched, yellow paper tape, hooked up to God-knows-what and where. About 1969.

[Skink]

55. whatever it was you could play space invaders on it

[steve2470]

56. Hardware

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Invaders#Hardware

Because microcomputers in Japan were not powerful enough at the time to perform the complex tasks involved in designing and programming Space Invaders, Nishikado had to design his own custom hardware and development tools for the game.[5][9] He created the arcade board using new microprocessors from the United States.[7] The game uses an Intel 8080 central processing unit, and features raster graphics on a CRT monitor and monaural sound hosted by a combination of analogue circuitry and a Texas Instruments SN76477 sound chip.[10][11][12]

[LibDemAlways]

57. Airline reservation computers back in the 1980s

when I worked as a travel agent. Primitive by today's standards, but they tapped into an extensive data base and got the job done.

[KittyWampus]

58. In 1970 something, my school had us go to a "math lab" and use a computer. I hated it at the time

because I had such trouble with math. I have no earthly idea what that computer was.

[LadyHawkAZ]

59. TRS-80

The high school had a summer computer course for kids and my dad signed me up. All I really remember about it was playing the Lemonade game.

[onehandle]

60. Mainframe who's maker I do not recall in 1975 in high school.

I only remember playing a Star Trek strategy game that was something like Battleship.

No CRT, the results of your attack was printed out in a grid for each move via dot matrix printer.

[MohRokTah]

64. IBM System/38. eom

[Shankapotomus]

66. IBM

My friend's dad was one of the first to get a personal computer in our subdivision. It was one with floppy disks. In the 80's before most people didn't have or even heard of the internet. We just played air combat games on it.

[IcyPeas]

67. Wang

I worked in an accounting firm back in the late 70s and we started with IBM MagCard's then we got an upgrade to these fantastic WANGs

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

I thought it was the coolest technology!!

[marlakay]

68. 286 .....took computerized accounting class and lotus 123. In 1986

Then got job working with 286 at hotel where I was bookkeeper. They had a special hotel software just for them. Started there in 1988.

Nothing online...all offline software.

I didn't own my own until 95 a pentium 1 compac. Was too broke back then...

[Buns_of_Fire]

69. An NCR Century 50 mainframe with 16k!

And TWO -- count 'em -- TWO removable hard disk drives that held FIVE! MILLION! BYTES! EACH!

One of the night operators once dropped one of the disk assemblies (every client had their own disk -- this was a service bureau) and bent a few of the platters. Bless his heart, he straightened out the bends and then loaded the disk.

I was told that the grinding and growling and pieces of the heads flying all over the place were a wondrous sight to behold.

[MineralMan]

70. IBM 1620 in 1963.

[applegrove]

71. I used a computer in university to do econometrics. The program was called 'Shazam'.

[moondust]

72. Circa 1978

Student job tracking medical records on a big university hospital mainframe information system.

[kentauros]

73. I don't remember for sure, but I think it was a VAX-11/780

And I know I've seen at least one cabinet online where the geek had turned it into a wetbar
It's just the right size for that, too:




So, I think I had a class in Business as an elective and we had to program in COBOL, with punch-cards, circa 1979. We also had to learn how to change the tapes on the drive utilized by the VAX. I did notice that they had a punch-tape machine in their computer room, but it didn't seem to be in use.

[temporary311]

75. Commodore 64 I think.

My grandparents got it when I was a kiddo.

[Skittles]

78. 1969 Honeywell Mainframe

can't remember the specifics

[Adrahil]

79. TRS-80 in the late 70's. NT

[PDJane]

80. Also IBM, punch cards, 1967.

Didn't see the cards; just punched the programme in, let it run through, got the paper day later, and usually had to go back to find the one tiny error that screwed up. For instance, was supposed to put a line of numbers down the centre of the page for some reason. Ended up with 100 pages....with one number perfectly centred in the middle of the page. Was the only one who made that mistake that year, but was told it was made at least once a semester.

[ladyVet]

81. Gosh, this thread is bringing back some memories!

The first computer I ever used was a Univac something-or-other, when I was in the USAF. I did inventory for supplies and equipment that were no longer needed by various units. It was 1978-79. The computer itself was in some building I never saw.

This is where I first heard the term "GIGO", garbage in, garbage out. I thought it was such a neat phrase I wrote it on a little strip of paper and taped it above the keyboard. Then I had to explain it to everyone else, because they had no idea what it meant.

A couple of years later, I was taking computer programming classes at a community college, and had the joyful experience of inputting data on punch cards. Woo! Totally failed Fortran programming, and didn't do much better with Cobol, so I switched to accounting. One class was Microcomputer Accounting, and we used some new-fangled thing called an Apple.

Good times. Good times.

[enigmatic]

82. IBM 5150

A friend's Dad had one.

http://oldcomputers.net/ibm5150.html

[GreenPartyVoter]

83. I think it was an IBM. Must have been....'84? Maybe earlier? I just remember

being really impressed with these things:



There was a bank of them on the wall, sort of like the ones in the back of the pic. They might have been blue?

The only thing I remember about using the computer was the monitor was the green screen type, and I played a zombie game where my O had to run away from the Ys? Man, it must have been even earlier than '84. So hard to remember! LOL

[AverageJoe90]

84. From the Digital Computer Company back in the mid '90s.

It was the family computer, and may have originally run on Windows 3.1.....but all I can remember is Win 95, though.

[Timez Squarez]

86. C64.

My dad brought it home after I got sick with chicken pox when I was 7.

It was a family computer but I used it a lot. My dad owned a data processing company in the early 80s. Tried to sell it to his partner, got ripped off, and just started a variety of business and we have been together for over 12 years as a partners in a computer consulting business until his death last week. I still miss him dearly.

I didn't really want to respond to this thread because it brings so much memories of me and my dad. I'm crying right now.

[steve2470]

88. many hugs for you

I know all DU'ers have empathy for you in your grieving.

[raven mad]

92. IBM with punch cards, USAF, around 1976.

Damn, I'm old!

[2naSalit]

93. TRS-80 Model II

Belonged to a friend and several of us used to play "starlanes" and "pong" on it when we visited... monchrome screen.

But a few years later I went to publishing arts school and used some other desk top thing that used 7" floppy disks, we used it for graphics lessons. I won a few ribbons in a regional technical arts competition with a free hand drawing using "Dr. Halo" program (I think the actual computer was some Compac something or other, can't even recall what it looked like. Simultaneously I was becoming a master on the Compugraphic machine that used 12" font floppies.



(ours was black and a bit newer)

I still remember having to enter half a screen full of code before entering in the text for a business card, but what came out at the end was a nice, clean nearly finished version of what the whole image was that I could trim and paste onto the board to make a negative of so I could burn a plate to put on the press. I really liked doing that, and measuring in points and picas... still have my steel typesetter's gauge.

Man, that was a while back!

[OutNow]

94. IBM 360/65

Got a job in 1970 running "the mainframe" on 3rd shift. Midnight to 8am. They made us wear a tie and no jeans so we'd look professional. Look professional for who? My boss would sneak in early once in a while at 7am to see if he could catch us without our tie on. What a rat bastard he was.

We ran OSMFT/HASP that could run 3 or 4 batch programs at a time and had gigantic 1403N1 printers that would print invoices all night long. I then had to take the boxes of printed invoices down to the basement where they had a decollator to pull the carbon paper out and a burster to separate the invoices from one long continuous form into individual pages.

This was before virtual memory so anything that had to be sorted and manipulated was done via mag tapes. Those sorts would run for hours.

In those days you could get a computer operations job with a high school diploma. The pay wasn't great but it was the proverbial "foot in the door".

[DreamGypsy]

95. A DEC PDP-8, circa 1967 or 68...

...while a sophomore in high school, Idaho Falls, ID. I attended IF High, which had no computer facilities, but the more recently built Skyline High had a PDP-8. I went there with friends a few times to play around with the machine.



As a freshman at the University of Chicago in 1970 we had an assignment to do some simple computerized data analysis as part of the second quarter Physics class. That was probably on some IBM mainframe.

In the summer of 1974, before beginning grad school in mathematics at Stanford, I got a summer job at Ford Aerospace. They needed someone to implement a minimum path routing algorithm for a cable harness in the GOES satellites the company was building. There were five or so staff programmers and they had a book describing the recursive minimum path algorithm that needed to be implemented. None of the programmers understood the algorithm, so couldn't figure out how to implement it. My job interview consisted of explaining recursion to the befuddled programmers. I got the job. My first day at work I entered the code, via teletype, to implement the algorithm and test it on a Honeywell 6000 series machine. Although I am certain someone explained it to me, I didn't remember to SAVE my work, so I did it over again the next day. The rest of that summer I played around with the resulting punched card deck to tune and verify the results. Eventually the satellites were built (and launched) employing HCRAMP (Harness Cable Routing And Mass Properties) software.

Continuing the job the next summer, Atlas Shrugged, and the projects changed to developing applications on Intel 8008 and 8080, and [link: software |Zilog Z-80] microprocessors. Weird.

[ManiacJoe]

96. TRS-80 in '78, junior high and high school.

BASIC for programming, cassette recorder for storage.

In college, 1985-89:
VAX 11/780, multiple languages, 60-100 terminals between the labs and professors' offices.
DEC PDP 11, 10-20 terminals in the lab.
Networked Unix workstations.
PCs and Macs in labs for writing papers.

I have held punch cards in my hands, but never used them. I know folks (my parents' age) who have used them.

[emsimon33]

97. Mainframe

[Heidi]

98. Besides video gaming systems at home,

this, as a newsroom intern, in 1980:

[quaker bill]

99. IBM mainframe by keypunch cards

Don't know the specs, was never in the same room with it. Just put the stack of cards in the reader and hoped for a result....

[Broken_Hero]

100. Commodore 64, nt

[ProfessorGAC]

103. I Think I'm A Touch Younger

Data entry was keystroke on a dumb terminal, but storage medium was papertape. Same concept as the punch cards, but rolls of tape with holes in it instead of boxes of cards.
The computer was the mainframe at a local university when we were the first to have a tie in to them.
Then i went to that same college for undergrad and used it there for a class. (Just computer science 101 or something like that.)

I don't recall what model it was but it was definitely an IBM.

I know you didn't say this, but i did have a Commodore 64 as the first one i actually owned.

[Are_grits_groceries]

104. Gawd only knows.

I was working on a summer project at Fort Belvoir in a bunker redesigned to hold science labs. This was in 1987.

I was looking at data to try to determine if the reflectivity from objects(albedo) could determine what they were. I had the temerity to ask if camouflage might not make this moot. They were not happy with me.

I had a disk of data from an Austrailian scientist. It kept crashing at one point as it was run through a series of equations. I finally reached her on the phone and she said well yes they had had that problem too. We never figured out the problem.

That was when I realized what 'hot mess' and government waste really meant.

[Flying Squirrel]

105. Timex Sinclair 1000

2K RAM with an available 16K RAM pack. Cassette recorder to save programs. And if you bumped it or pressed too hard on the keypad or something it would wipe everything

[CFLDem]

107. Not to make anyone feel old

but I've never known a world without the internet.

[OneBlueDotBama]

108. ..heathkit/zenith

two 5 inch floppies and a slave drive with 2 8 inch floppies