What was the first computer you owned?

[Hawkeye-X]

Mine was a Commodore 64.

Second was an IBM XT

Hawkeye-X

[GOPisEvil]

1. Apple IIe

About 1984 or 85, I think.

[appal_jack]

9. word...

I saved and saved until I could afford the 128k IIe with dual floppy drives...

But I couldn't afford color back then, so it was a green screen for me. Oh well, Appleworks still made writing middle-school term papers a lot easier, and Moon Patrol and Defender looked OK in green. Frogger (curiously) not so much.

GOPisEvil, did you participate in the great Apple OS vs. MS DOS debates of the mid-80's? We 8th grade geeks took the matter very seriously.

-app

[GOPisEvil]

10. I have to admit I wasn't that much of a geek.

Well, I WAS, just a different kind of geek. My parents bought me that computer because it is what the school had. Until the next year, when we went to IBM clones. Oops. :D

[appal_jack]

13. my school went IBM too...

...in '86 or so. I think they spent a Brazillion dollars for a room full of XT's that year. Before that, they had Commodore Pets. Didn't matter to me. I kept the IIe until I graduated in '89, sold it to someone not too concerned about obsolescence at the time, and bought a Mac Plus for college. That little toaster-Mac lasted me through the end of grad school in '97, when it (literally) burned atop my desk. At least I had the thesis backed up...

-app

[Rising Phoenix]

2. apple 2c

and my friends older brother called me a spoiled rich girl for having it

[Generic Brad]

32. That was mine as well

My wife was so mad at me for buying it. Every time I upgrade what we own I have to hear about my wastefulness all over again. I hung onto that Apple 2c for fourteen years before I replaced it.

[Omphaloskepsis]

3. My parents bought me a 128k Macintosh.

I was seven at the time.

[ClassWarfare2008]

40. Everytime I see one of those first generation Macs it reminds me of

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. A Commodore 64.

I'm old.

Eventually, in about 1987, I got a Mac Plus. Macs ever since!

[EstimatedProphet]

5. Timex Sinclair 1000 - if you can call it a computer!

It was so badly made I actually pitied it!

[femmocrat]

16. We had one of those, too!

But we were so excited that we had a computer, that we didn't care! LOL

[EstimatedProphet]

17. We could never make it work, AT ALL

Once we managed to get a picture up on the screen. That was all we could manage.

[qnr]

6. Atari 400, 1979 - actually, I bought an Apple, hated it, and bought a real computer after 2 weeks -

I liked it so much, I bought an 800 a couple of months later.

[LeftyMom]

7. C64 with two optional floppy drives and a dot matrix printer

I still have it. :D

[gollygee]

8. The first I personally owned was a Macintosh Performa

but my brother had some old little thing that hooked up to the tv and played really stupid games off cassette tapes once upon a time. I have no idea what it was.

[seemunkee]

11. Sinclair ZX81

I spent hours typing programs from computer magazines into that damn thing.

[muriel_volestrangler]

45. Yay for the ZX81!

Well, OK, not really yay, but getting anything to run in 1K of RAM is a major achievement (there was a "Life" implementation - that's pretty cool in 1K). Eh, when I were a lad, we had to make do. We lived in shoebox in t'middle of t'road ...

[mitchum]

12. Self-delete (posting on Ambien)

[mitchum]

14. Etch-A-Sketch...damn it was slow!

[texanwitch]

15. I was Tandy IBM 386.

It didn't even have a hard drive.

I still have it.

[noshenanigans]

26. me too

I was 8.. I remember, I was obsessed with JFK at the time and I mistook the "library" prompts as an actual library and thought I could somehow hack into the Warren Commission report. Keep in mind this was before the internet. Ah, good times.

[texanwitch]

31. I was a little older then you and I had to learn to use a computer for work.

I took some night classes and got the job I wanted.

Hard now to think about using a computer without the internet.

The computer used a system disk to get the computer going.

I did have a color monitor.


I can't believe the power of my laptop compared that old table top.

[noshenanigans]

33. isn't that insane?

I mean, right now I'm sitting near 3 devices I can count that can hold more info than that Tandy (an iPod, a cell phone, and a 2 gig jump drive.) I'm so grateful I was on the precipice of the great splooge of information that happened.

[texanwitch]

34. I remember when computers started to come into the place where I worked.

I really liked them from the beginning.

I had this computer game I liked, played it all time.

Never could get past the highest level, but had fun trying.

I didn't have the internet at home until a few years ago, waited until I had the time to play.

[Reciprocity]

18. Laser 128K Apple II Clone. We also had a the Commodore 64.

I can't remember which came first. We played Pool of Radiance (on the Laser) for hours on end.

[mainegreen]

19. Tandy 1000, TGA graphics, tandy 3-note sound and no hard drive!

I loved that thing.

[Zoigal]

20. Commodore 64.

Then an Apple 2E...been Macs of one kind or the other ever
since. Now, we have a couple I Macs.

[noshenanigans]

28. there was a game Im still trying to find

My best friends had a Commodore 64 and we would play this text game called, I think, "Mystery!". You would wander around a house collecting keys and clues. IIRC there was an issue of Computer Games or some such magazine that doesn't exist anymore that had the code for that game in BASIC. God, that was a great game. If anyone has any idea where to find it, please let me know.

[ForrestGump]

21. First I owned was an Apple Powerbook 190cs

Then I got a Power Computing Powerbase 180 (Apple clone) desktop, back in the heady days when a rudderless and badly ailing Apple allowed clones that pushed the envelope in processor speed and power, finally prompting Apple to kill the idea of clones that made them look like the slackers that they were at that pre-iMac, pre-Jobs-returns time.

[DainBramaged]

22. TRS 80, 4 MB ram, cost $1500 at Radio Shack

I did not have a clue what to do with it at the time, but when friends came into my home they thought I was smart. I was going to get the printer because it made neat noises, but the store went under (franchise store).

What a fucking waste of money.

[Hawkeye-X]

25. Heh. They called it "Trash 80"

Heh.

*snicker*

*snort*

[DainBramaged]

30. "Programs" on cassettes

Snicker

Snort

Laugh real hard

[Aristus]

23. Hewlett-Packard Pavilion.

Kind of a piece of junk. Just didn't know my computers back then. Without an expensive package of Norton anti-bullshit software, the thing would have just fallen apart. I had to de-fragment the hard drive at least once a week, and before I installed the Norton stuff, the computer would take sometimes half an hour to boot up. It was craptastic.

[TOhioLiberal]

24. TRS-80 Model 1

It looked like this:


16k of memory, 5 1/4 floppy disks. Early 80's.

I have a cute memory:
On this Model 1 my husband had a voice synthesizer. He wrote a program that said each letter as you typed it. My oldest son was around a year old. He would sit on my lap or my husband's lap and bang on that keyboard. Eventually he could spell simple words and his name. When he went to school, he knew his alphabet and numbers. He spelled his name for the teacher and said 'space' between his first and last name. :)

[The Straight Story]

38. I only had the casette drive and no expansion pack either

You can still find em on e-bay, and all the old trs-80 magazines and books are online as well.

[DeposeTheBoyKing]

27. IBM something-or-other with 286 processor

WOW, you say!

[WCGreen]

29. A leading Edge 64k dual floppy....

[Homer Wells]

35. The "original" Commodore VIC 20.

Graduated to a Commodore 64 and then the 128.

Enjoyed the hell out of them, too.

:-)

[ChoralScholar]

36. Tandy CoCo3

[The Straight Story]

37. Here's a trip down memory lane for you (and mine was a trs80 model 1)

http://www.atariarchives.org/bcc1/showpage.php?page=247

and creative magazine (read the old articles online)
http://www.atarimagazines.com/creative/index/

[ClassWarfare2008]

39. Commodore Vic 20

I think I put up with that about three months and then bought a C-64.

[TrogL]

41. Define "computer"

I built a computer circuit out of mails, razor blades and a hellish amount of telephone wire (too cheap to buy relays).

I had a TI-89A programmable calculator.

Then a VIC-20.

Then a another Z-80 based homebrew.

Then a 1984 Macintosh.

[Capn Sunshine]

42. Voltron Zambago11-x

It was a Heathkit.

[begin_within]

49. I love the steering wheel... is that how they kept it from crashing?

[pinniped]

43. Our first puter was also a Commodore 64. We amassed a couple shoe boxes....

full of games. Of course, we did use it to type our school reports and other papers.

Our second puter was another iteration of the Commodore 64. It was the flatter, more streamlined, white colored one.

We were supposed to get an IBM PC Jr. or the ADAM, but I think they were in short supply or something.

The first puters I used in skool was the Commodore PET and Apple II something.

[TreasonousBastard]

44. Atari 600XL and an...

HP 41C calculator.

I kinda wish I still had the calculator-- Reverse Polish Notation and a programming language similar to FORTH made it incredibly useful, if a bit slow.

[KeepItReal]

46. C=64 !!!

Thanks, KeepItReal, Sr.!!

(I actually wanted an Atari 2600. Dad knew better.)

[Fox Mulder]

47. A Toshiba Satellite laptop in 2000.

[begin_within]

48. A computer made entirely of paper, called the CARDIAC....

I learned a lot about how computers work from it.

More info:
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/10/20/cardiac_bell_labss_o.html
http://www.larkfarm.com/cardiac_answers.htm

[zanne]

50. My family got tired of me being computer illiterate.

In the winter of 2001, I found myself at home caregiving for my mother and getting more isolated by the day. One weekend that winter, my two sisters and one of my brothers arrived with parts of their old systems and put together a computer for me. The rest of the day was spent teaching me how to use it. (I still need help). The computer (I have no idea what kind the parts were) didn't last a year, but I have fond memories of it.

[Rob H.]

51. First one I bought for myself

was a Macintosh Color Classic. The first computer my family owned was a Timex-Sinclair ZX-81. We moved up to a Commodore 64 shortly thereafter--my parents still have it, and it still works!

[Call Me Wesley]

52. First was a Toshiba laptop:

Followed by an IBM XT.

[MilesColtrane]

53. My first computer...

was made out of shoe boxes and Lite-Brite pegs.
It even had a "viewer" made out of a plastic watch case. (kind of like the thing Spock looked into on the Enterprise)

The first one that actually worked was a Mac Classic II.

...40 meg hard drive and a blistering 16Mhz processor.