Your First COMPUTER!

Apple Macintosh Plus, external floppy drive and 60 MB hard drive.

I completed a detailed study of Sierra Nevada climatic water budget analysis for 33 sites. MacDraw helped me produce "heads up" graphs, Excel helped me crunch numbers and Word 1.0 was used for word processing. I had to educate myself and my editor about the rules of typography.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Proco @ Apr 25 2007, 01:02 PM) [snapback]429884[/snapback]</div>

Just about. The first ones I worked on had core memory, a paper tape reader, and binary front panel switches for keying-in instructions. You started out by hand keying the absolute loader, then read in the relocating loader in absolute format, and then whatever program you had punched out on the teletype. Since it was core, you only had to repeat this nonsense if you screwed up and over-wrote the core. Our first disk drive was an RK07, which had a platter about the size of a large pizza and held a whopping 256KB. Having a disk drive was really living high off the hog!

Tom


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(airportkid @ Apr 25 2007, 01:15 PM) [snapback]429900[/snapback]</div>

Hey, I have one of those too! I should have listed that. Come to think of it, my Picket Power Trig slide rule is even older. I bought an HP45 in the early seventies too.

Tom

 

Commodore Vic 20, seems to be the first one in this thread?

 

Our first computer was also an IBM PCjr.
Fondest memories - spending too many late night hours sending enemy shipping to the bottom playing "Silent Service." Worst memory - my wife's 3:00 am anguished scream as her 80 plus page master's thesis disappeared into the electronic netherworld. I still hear it twenty years later!

 

My history (from memory, didn't verify exact dates) goes something like this:

1978: My dad and I joined a computer club (evening meetings, 25km away), no ownership.
1979: My dad bought Trs-80 Model I, I mostly played games and charged kids for 'biorythms' at school.

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1982: My dad bought Trs-80 Model III, I wrote my school papers and wrote some small basic software.
1984: Exchange student, convinced the family to buy Apple IIc (hesitated, almost got IBM 'PC Junior')
1986: Atari ST520, with fantastic paper white 640*480 monitor (better than Mac monitor, best ever)
1988: Atari ST1040 with Spectre GCR Mac Emulator (used Excel to do university Lotus1-2-3 assignments)
1989: Extra Atari ST1040, because I went off to a far away university and needed a computer.
1991: Atari TT, with 19'' paper white monitor and Spectre GCR Mac Emulator, 40 Mb harddisk.
(this computer is actually gathering dust on the side of my desk, TODAY, I'll switch it on this weekend)
1991-2: Office PC with Windows 3.0 and a Mac Quadra, both crashed a lot more than the Atari!
1993: PCs started to become usable, I have had a few, running various OS.

Solar Hydro

 

Strange but true. This was pretty much the only PC thread I read yesterday. Last night, I had dreams about the TRS-80 III and wrote a stupid little program for it during the dream. Wanted to do some graphics programming, tried to use Poke(x,y) in the program but during the dream I couldn't get it right.

You guys *do* have an effect on my subconscience. I guess I'll be voting for Obama next year.

 

128k Mac with a 9 pin dot matrix printer, both used for $1,350. in '87. On that on 400k 3.5" floppy I had the system software, MacWrite, MacPaint, and quite a number of documents. My how the times have changed.

PA P

 

Tandy 1000 EX. I had 768K of ram, dual floppy drives, and a third party 700MB monster external MFM hard drive.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(airportkid @ Apr 25 2007, 12:15 PM) [snapback]429900[/snapback]</div>

I had forgotten about the E-6B flight computer. Yup I still use one of those too. I was an undergrad chemistry major in the '60s and my Post bamboo slide rule in the fine leather case was a constant companion. Later in grad school in the '70s I built a Martin Industries Z80 micro system as part of a course on microprogramming. I still use that system to show my students what you can do with a breadboard system. Just a geek at heart.
-Rich Helmke
Concordia University

 

Hi all,

My first 'computer' was a TI-59 programmable calculator (1978 ?). No picture unfortunately. I wrote a small program to compute timber and plasterboard required given the dimensions of a room. It also catered for doors and windows.

I then moved up to a Dick Smith System-80 also known as a Video Genie (a Tandy Model i clone). Don't have pictures but here is a link: http://www.webweavers.co.nz/system-80. This was followed by Tandy Model III and IV.

I actually wrote some commercial software for these machines back in the '80s.

I still remember coming home from work after fighting with Oracle databases all day and rejoicing in being able to work in an environment where when you issued a command such as
RET Z
the computer actually did it rather than returning an error message that in effect said "Don't feel like it right now"

A walk down memory lane.

 

Not having been required to use a computer in my career field (municipal recreation, probably one of the last departments in most cities and counties to be required to use them) until the early 90's, I successfully avoided them until my kids dragged me down in '95. Got a Packard Bell with an "upgraded" 15" monitor ON SALE (Circuit City) for $2200!

I envy all of you who, for one reason or another, fooled around with the early pre-PC and pre-Mac machines, whether for data or games. I wish I had. How much more of an appreciation of how far we've come you must have than relative newbies like me.

Allow me arbitrarily to consider this year as sort of a 25th anniversary (1982) of a time when some of you were first getting turned on. The next 25-year interval will end in 2032. Anyone have a vision of what sort of system(s) we'll be using then?

 

c64--- still operational
Type Home computer
Released August 1982
Discontinued April 1994
Processor MOS Technology 6510 @ 1.02 MHz (NTSC version) / 0.99MHz (PAL version)
Memory 64 KB
OS Commodore BASIC 2.0


I also had a vic 10 (or 20) atari, and a bunch of c128's and 256 (I have one 128 still in the box, brand new) And a bunch of pizza box macs...

 

Although not "in the spirit" intended, this was what everyone in my school knew to be a computer as it computed figures. :lol:


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Ok wow can’t imagine using those things.
My first computer was a Packard bell 75mgz Pentium 1 running windows 95 with 8 megs of ram and a 1 gig hard drive. I think it had 1 or 2 megs of video memory. I was jealous because my friend got a 100mgz. To me its funny to think that the computer I am now using could fit that computers entire hard drive into ram and still have plenty left over to run the computer and some of the stuff you guys are posting about would have fit the same into my first computer.

 

Kind of hard to remember, it was back in those days you know.
Slide rule yes, various Ti-calculators, a Trash-80 for creating EDLs, a very expensive Bosch paintbox, then a Apple classic. but really those were just assistants. The first real computer I could do real work on was an Amiga 2 that was used for lightwave. Then came the beginnings of my extensive computer museum comprised of various apple-macs and aged PCs

 

I assume you mean the first one I owned, not worked on

That would be a Soutwest Technical 6800 Kit

Yes, it was a true kit. Circuit Boards, a couple of the more esoteric parts, and a parts list.

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I splurged and got the version with 4K of memory instead of the base 2K. It was $80 for the extra memory, which was quite a bit back then. I couldn't afford too many peripherals so I hacked an old paper tape reader into it to load programs.

In case anyone was wondering it did support the un-documented HCF (Halt and Catch Fire) Command.

I still have it too.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Tempus @ Apr 29 2007, 03:21 AM) [snapback]431747[/snapback]</div>

When(what year) was it?

Ken@Japan

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Tempus @ Apr 28 2007, 02:21 PM) [snapback]431747[/snapback]</div>

I remember those from BYTE magazine adverts!

That big blue capacitor looks like a smokey fleshy smell waiting to happen!

 

Some kinda TI computer that had cartridges and a tape drive.

 

Compaq Portable II. Blazing fast 8MHz 286, 640K, with a lovely (haha) green CGA built-in mini CRT. Still have it, and it works flawlessly. A real high quality piece of equipment... Back when they made them to last, and didn't manufacture all the components in China.