What was your first computer?

Sleepy

A Commodore 64 back when they were top of the line in 1984.

Bruthal

44leto wrote: »

That was really cutting edge when it came out, it was a leap from all the other computers on the market at that time. I wonder what happened to that company.

I would say your machine is probably worth a bit now.

I had one myself. Great alright. It had a windows type operating system and all.

Freddie59

A Sharp MZ-700 - bought in 1984. Cost IR£400.

I found a quote for my first PC in 1997 today. I'll scan it tomorrow and post it. Very funny to read when comparing the specs.:) I also have very fond memories of the Commodore Amiga 500 & 600, which outstripped the PCs of the day in every way.

Specs for the MZ-700:

NAME MZ 700
MANUFACTURER Sharp
TYPE Home Computer
ORIGIN Japan
YEAR 1983
BUILT IN LANGUAGE None - Monitor in ROM
KEYBOARD Full stroke 69 key with 5 function keys and 4 cursor keys
CPU Sharp LH-0080 (Zilog Z80 A compatible)
SPEED 4 MHz
RAM 64 KB
VRAM 2 KB
ROM 2 KB
TEXT MODES 40 x 25
GRAPHIC MODES 50 x 80
COLOrsc 8
SOUND one channel, 3 octaves
SIZE / WEIGHT 44 (W) x 30.5 (D) x 8.5 (H)
I/O PORTS Parallel, Joystick (2), Z80 Bus, Tape, RGB
BUILT IN MEDIA Tape recorder
OS optional CP/M with FDD
POWER SUPPLY Built-in power supply unit (5V)

Benny_Cake

44leto wrote: »

2 stroke wrote: »

Amiga 500+. Still working when I packed it away in original box 15 years ago.

That was really cutting edge when it came out, it was a leap from all the other computers on the market at that time. I wonder what happened to that company.

I would say your machine is probably worth a bit now.

Commodore went bust in 1994,the name has been sold around ever since and believe it or not the operating system is still being developed - they're up to Amiga OS 4.1.

The first computer I used was an Acorn A3010 running RISC OS, this would have been in school in 1992/93. The first I had at home was an Amstrad PC3286 with 1MB of RAM running MS-DOS 5.00 and Windows 3.0a. Took 5¼" floppy disks.

Freddie59

Benny_Cake wrote: »

Commodore went bust in 1994,the name has been sold around ever since and believe it or not the operating system is still being developed - they're up to Amiga OS 4.1.

Wow! I didn't realise that. I remember getting a video out box for the Amiga. It was IR£30. Perfect quality. The PC boards which did the same were IR£1000!:eek::)

44leto

Benny_Cake wrote: »

Commodore went bust in 1994,the name has been sold around ever since and believe it or not the operating system is still being developed - they're up to Amiga OS 4.1.

I would like to have a look at it for old time sakes, I remember thinking in comparison it was so easy to operate.

That company must have had very bad management, everyone of my generation would have known and liked that brand. They should have been a Dell.

Benny_Cake

Freddie59 wrote: »

Wow! I didn't realise that. I remember getting a video out box for the Amiga. It was IR£30. Perfect quality. The PC boards which did the same were IR£1000!:eek::)

They dominated the video editing market alright, nothing could come close in terms of value for money. It's a shame that it was seen as purely a games machine, as well as poor management by Commodore.

Freddie59

44leto wrote: »

I would like to have a look at it for old time sakes, I remember thinking in comparison it was so easy to operate.

That company must have had very bad management, everyone of my generation would have known and liked that brand. They should have been a Dell.

I think it was a toss-up whether the Commodore or the PC would be the industry standard. Saw a programme about it on Discovery once. Pity the Amiga didn't win.:(

Freddie59

Benny_Cake wrote: »

They dominated the video editing market alright, nothing could come close in terms of value for money. It's a shame that it was seen as purely a games machine, as well as poor management by Commodore.

Sure was. I remember seeing the first one in 1985. It had this 3D demo of a bouncing coloured ball. It was light years ahead of the technology of the day. Many American TV stations used them for titling, etc. I think Toast was the software.

Dudess

Sinclair Spectrum - connected to the TV and a tape player. The games were cassettes. Ear-splitting noise when they were loading. The little stick tennis game and Pacman. :pac: (obligatory)
Those tiny hand-held games too. And a Space Invaders yoke.

Tonto86

Someones gonna say their first pc was vista... and make us all feel old

Freddie59

I also had one of THESE in 1978!:o:D

af_thefragile

It was some Acer thing.
Pentium 4 2.4Ghz i think.
Don't remember how much ram, I think it was 64MB. It had a 20GB HDD iirc.
It had a DVD read/write and a CD read/write drive.
Had 2.1 channel speakers. 17" CRT monitor.
Later upgraded it by adding a Nvidia 4000 series GPU.

Was all very latest when I first got it.

Before that I had a SEGA megadrive II if it counts. Had many many hours on fun on that little 16bit console!

Comparing now I have an i7 2600k, 500GB + 1TB HDD, 8GB ram, gtx570 gpu. Woah technology has come about a long way in the past 10 years!!

44leto

Freddie59 wrote: »

I also had one of THESE in 1978!:o:D

LOL
I got something like that for xmas once and it left a marks on the tele where the white pads use to move. Me Da cracked up.

Freddie59

44leto wrote: »

LOL
I got something like that for xmas once and it left a marks on the tele where the white pads use to move. Me Da cracked up.

CamperMan

my first computer was in the late 1980's and it was an old Apple Macintosh like this one

http://oldcomputers.net/pics/macintosh.jpg

Red Alert

Macintosh Plus with an external 20MB SCSI HDD, still works!

Chuck Stone

Dudess wrote: »

Sinclair Spectrum - connected to the TV and a tape player. The games were cassettes. Ear-splitting noise when they were loading.

Exact same. Tape deck to computer and don't turn anything on or off in the whole house for fear of interrupting the current and walk softly because they took about 20 mins to load.

bnt

I replied earlier, but got the CPU wrong: it was an Intel 8088, not an 8086. (PC-XT clone, 1MB RAM, 20MB HDD). The graphics card could not only emulate CGA (320x240, 16 colours!), it was compatible with Hercules Graphics modes, such as glorious 720x348 mono, Which suited me, since I had one of those amber CRTs. Colour was too expensive for me back then.

I remember having fun with video games like Tetris and Leisure Suit Larry: nice pixels, babe!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqXpWJhsuaI

CamperMan

CamperMan wrote: »

my first computer was in the late 1980's and it was an old Apple Macintosh like this one

http://oldcomputers.net/pics/macintosh.jpg

I was offered one of these instead of the 286, didn't take it though.

Jordan 199

Karsini wrote: »

Took 5¼" floppy disks.

I remember those disks. Big hole in the centre and were floppier than the 3.5" floppy disks

af_thefragile wrote: »

gpu. Woah technology has come about a long way in the past 10 years!!

It sure has.

af_thefragile

Jordan 191 wrote: »

I remember those disks. Big hole in the centre and were floppier than the 3.5" floppy disks

If I remember the 3.5" floppy disks were not "floppy" at all!
I remember those 5 inch floppies with the big hole in the middle from my primary school's computer room... They were quite enchanting...

Jordan 191

Jordan 191 wrote: »

I remember those disks. Big hole in the centre and were floppier than the 3.5" floppy disks

Aye. Think I still have one or two knocking about. I should also still have a 5¼" floppy drive somewhere too.

Jordan 199

af_thefragile wrote: »

If I remember the 3.5" floppy disks were not "floppy" at all!

I remember those 5 inch floppies with the big hole in the middle from my primary school's computer room... They were quite enchanting...

Indeed, there was no floppyness with the 3.5" disks at all so I don't know why they were called "floppy" discs. It's a mystery...

The hole in the middle of the 5.25" disk, you could look through it

44leto

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wj5iBx2FjY

Boulderdash I remember playing this on the Omega, hours of fun for all the family, nah not really,

But for anyone with the skills to make an app, it would make an excellent phone game, IMO much better then angry birds.

bnt

44leto wrote: »

Boulderdash I remember playing this on the Omega, hours of fun for all the family, nah not really,

But for anyone with the skills to make an app, it would make an excellent phone game, IMO much better then angry birds.

Like this, you mean? Lots of folks remember this game well. :P

Jordan 191

Jordan 191 wrote: »

Indeed, there was no floppyness with the 3.5" disks at all so I don't know why they were called "floppy" discs. It's a mystery...

The hole in the middle of the 5.25" disk, you could look through it

The disk inside the plastic shell is still floppy and is similar to that used on the 5.25" disks, just smaller.

I know I've also got a 720Kb 3.5" disk lying about too, it's a BIOS setup disk for a Compaq SLT/286 "laptop"

bnt

Karsini wrote: »

The disk inside the plastic shell is still floppy and is similar to that used on the 5.25" disks, just smaller.

I was living in South Africa when the 3.5" discs hit the market, and soon the locals were going in to the computer shops asking for "stiffy drives"!

Before the 5.25" disc, believe it or not, there was the 8" floppy disc:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri8mZZI6SsQ

44leto

bnt wrote: »

Like this, you mean? Lots of folks remember this game well. :P

Looking for the app as I type

Thanx

tigger123

A games console, the Atari 2600, such fond fond memories...

opinion guy

Karsini wrote: »

The disk inside the plastic shell is still floppy and is similar to that used on the 5.25" disks, just smaller.

I know I've also got a 720Kb 3.5" disk lying about too, it's a BIOS setup disk for a Compaq SLT/286 "laptop"

You know with those 720kd disk - not all of them but alot of them - you could simply cut a small rectangular hole in the corner and turn them into 1440k disks ?

What was the computer game store in Dublin that used to great for buying cheap disks etc - you konw off O'Connell street opposite Fiber Magees. Used ta love that place

44leto wrote: »

I had a Babbage difference engine, the porno was OK but very Victorian.

Lol....lots of ankles on display ? Naughty!

bodhrandude

An old Apple PC from the mid 1980s, didnt really use it much, I only turned it on if my light bulb in the room went and it was too late to go to the shop to buy another bulb.

Jordan 199

Karsini wrote: »

The disk inside the plastic shell is still floppy and is similar to that used on the 5.25" disks, just smaller.

I know I've also got a 720Kb 3.5" disk lying about too, it's a BIOS setup disk for a Compaq SLT/286 "laptop"

That's right. I split the plastic case of a 3.5" disk open once to see a brown coloured disk inside with a round metal piece in the centre of the disk.

286 Compaq laptop, sweet.

Capt'n Midnight

the_syco wrote: »

386 with either 640KB or 1MB of RAM

The amount of ways to make the DOS think it had more RAM than it actually had was... weird.

Do you blame Intel for trying to save 240 bytes per program or IBM for picking a chip that had fewer pins ?

If IBM hadn't been forced by anti-competition rules / if they had chosen a different CPU then we'd have been stuck with the 16MB barrier



But I digress

Oric
BBC B
Zenith Laptop with popup FDD
Zenith 286 20MB HDD
bare bones 386 , cobbled together from parts, never put it in a case
Dell 486 - 16MB RAM , 1GB SCSI drive
K6 350

sheesh

a thing called an m5 12 kb of ram no disc

Jordan 191

Jordan 191 wrote: »

That's right. I split the plastic case of a 3.5" disk open once to see a brown coloured disk inside with a round metal piece in the centre of the disk.

286 Compaq laptop, sweet.

Indeed it is, still have that too. Posted about it on here many moons ago. Changed the RTC chip about 8 years ago on it, will probably need to do it again in a few years.

Capt'n Midnight

Jordan 191 wrote: »

The hole in the middle of the 5.25" disk, you could look through it

The 1.44MB ones had a reinforcing ring but the 360KB ones didn't

If you used them in a BBC floppy drive then you could only use one side and it could take 160KB. Unless you cut a notch in the other side and then you could manually flip it over to get another 160KB on the back.

Of course the BBC didn't do defragmentation so you couldn't save a file unless there was a big enough gap for it.

Jordan 199

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

The 1.44MB ones had a reinforcing ring but the 360KB ones didn't

If you used them in a BBC floppy drive then you could only use one side and it could take 160KB. Unless you cut a notch in the other side and then you could manually flip it over to get another 160KB on the back.

Of course the BBC didn't do defragmentation so you couldn't save a file unless there was a big enough gap for it.

Never knew that until now. Wow, just wow!

ShaunC

Had a commodore 64 back in the day. My first real computer was a Gateway2000. It had a huge hard drive, 7.5 gig. and 64mb memory. I remember thinking "I'll never use all that space":D

Capt'n Midnight

Freddie59 wrote: »

Specs for the MZ-700:

NAME MZ 700
BUILT IN LANGUAGE None - Monitor in ROM

Wasn't that the one that you had to load BASIC from a cassette ?

planetX

ah, I couldn't go through all the posts to see if anyone else had a Dragon 32. We used to type in the games and they never worked first time - had to go back through pages of code to find the typo:)

Capt'n Midnight

44leto wrote: »

I had a Babbage difference engine, the porno was OK but very Victorian.

The Enchantress of Numbers staring Augusta Lovelace.

By all accounts she spent a full year in bed ...



http://www.geekosystem.com/zooey-deschanel-not-ada-lovelace/

Kojak

Commodore 64 was my first computer

44leto

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

The Enchantress of Numbers staring Augusta Lovelace.

By all accounts she spent a full year in bed ...

LOL:D:D

Brilliant.

Cantona's Collars

Amstrad CPC 464.I still have it in a box in my attic and it still works.

I remember buying the magazines for it every month and spending ages typing in lines of code to make basic games then hours scanning through them trying to fix mistakes to get the damn things to work.

Found out pretty quickly that a double tape deck some sellotape and blank cassettes turned me into a junior pirate:cool:

Nothingbetter2d

my first computer was my brain.... it was slow at first but over time my parents installed alot of operating system software updates which gradually allowed me to do new things such as talk, walk, read/write, etc. they even installed mmr antivirus software. when my image recognition software was corrupt they took me to a specialist to have it repaired.

when my first computer was about 12 years old my registry was corrupted......... this took about 6/7 years to debug but perseverence on behalf of my parents resulted in getting my first computer functioning normally again.

now the computer is almost 34 years old but still running reasonably well, im hoping the hard drive will hold out for another 60 years at least.

giles lynchwood

A white one

44leto

Nothingbetter2d wrote: »

my first computer was my brain.... it was slow at first but over time my parents installed alot of operating system software updates which gradually allowed me to do new things such as talk, walk, read/write, etc. they even installed mmr antivirus software. when my image recognition software was corrupt they took me to a specialist to have it repaired.

when my first computer was about 12 years old my registry was corrupted......... this took about 6/7 years to debug but perseverence on behalf of my parents resulted in getting my first computer functioning normally again.

now the computer is almost 34 years old but still running reasonably well, im hoping the hard drive will hold out for another 60 years at least.

My hard drive is starting to degrade:( it needs some defragmentation.

Plowman

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