Page 1 of 2

What Was Your First Computer?

Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 8:40 pm
by dales
Apple IIe 1991 Used

64Kb RAM
Drive Card
Printer Interface Card
Graphics Card

Twin Floppy Drives

Green Scan Monitor

Dot-Matrix Printer

Assorted S/W

WOW! :mrgreen:


Image

Re: What Was Your First Computer?

Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 8:54 pm
by Scooter
A 286 clone. It had a then (1990) state of the art 1 MB of RAM, and a 40 MB HD, which the DOS of the day could not handle without partitioning it. One 3-1/2 and one 5-1/4 in floppy drives. Cost $2,200.

Re: What Was Your First Computer?

Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 8:57 pm
by Joe Guy
My brother gave me the Macintosh pictured below when he decided he wanted a new computer.

I think it also had 64KB RAM, the picture was black & white and it cost my brother over $2000.00 when he bought it new. He also gave me his dot matrix printer.

Image

Re: What Was Your First Computer?

Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 11:09 pm
by BoSoxGal
My then BF bought me a PowerMac for my college graduation - I was going on to graduate school. Year was 1995; I think it was like a 6200 or something? Can't really recall. I gave it to my mom a few years later. I got through college with a Brother word processor. I'm sure they don't even make those anymore?

Re: What Was Your First Computer?

Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 11:12 pm
by Crackpot
The first one I bought or the first one my family owned?

Re: What Was Your First Computer?

Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 12:05 am
by Joe Guy
The first computer that I bought for myself was the Performa 600.

It had 4MB of RAM and an 80 MB hard drive.

Cost me about $2400.00.

I spent lots of hours using it and that was before I discovered the internet.

In those days I was much more interested in how it worked and the things that I could do with it than I was with spending time on the internet.

Also, it was much more expensive to go on-line than it is now and I had no idea why anyone would want to do that.

Re: What Was Your First Computer?

Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 12:42 am
by loCAtek
my first purchase was in 2002, a no-name, Apple clone that got me online; I didn't care how it worked.

Re: What Was Your First Computer?

Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 10:44 am
by thestoat
Wow - all such powerful computers! I had a ZX81 - it had 1K RAM (yes - 1 kilobyte ... not meg) which I upgraded to 16 K via a RAM pack, which meant I needed to rest the computer on a book since the RAM pack would hang off the back and wobble, crashing the computer. It used a TV screen for a monitor (since it was black and white with a resolution of 64x44, that wasn't a problem) and used a tape recorder (remember those?) as it's hard disk.

Image

I feel old ...

Re: What Was Your First Computer?

Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 11:45 am
by Crackpot
Our family's first computer was a IIe similar to the one dales pictured. I don't believe it had any memory to start. We did have a color monitor tho.

Re: What Was Your First Computer?

Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 11:47 am
by Crackpot
The first computer I bought was a Mac LCII

Re: What Was Your First Computer?

Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 11:43 pm
by Gob
Snap Stoat!! I had one of the hot computing spectrum...

Re: What Was Your First Computer?

Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 7:14 am
by thestoat
I went for the Spectrum as my second computer ... had a massive 48K RAM built in!

Image

Re: What Was Your First Computer?

Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 1:48 pm
by quaddriver
PolyMorphic Systems Poly88

Re: What Was Your First Computer?

Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 3:32 pm
by Liberty1
TI-99/4A in 1982

Then in 1984 I built up a Xerox home computer using CPM as the operating system. It had two, count'em two built in 5.25" floppy drives

Actually in college I was required to have a TI-59 programmable calculator for my engineering classes, high tech stuff for 1978 when my first programming classes used punch cards.

Re: What Was Your First Computer?

Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 3:56 pm
by thestoat
Damn - I always wanted a TI99/4A - but way out of my price range

Re: What Was Your First Computer?

Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 3:57 pm
by Daisy
thestoat wrote:I went for the Spectrum as my second computer ... had a massive 48K RAM built in!

Image
I had one of those too!

Only mine started out with 16K RAM and then my stepdad put in a new RAM chip to take it up to 48K.

I have a Speccy emulator on the iPhone complete with Jet Set Willy :D

Re: What Was Your First Computer?

Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 4:07 pm
by thestoat
I loved Jet Set Willy ... and Manic Miner :D

Re: What Was Your First Computer?

Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2011 4:52 pm
by Guinevere
I had a black and white Apple Mac much like Joe Guy's that I bought through Cornell's discount program. I think the entire package, including a printer, was about 2K in 1987. I used the thing through law school as a word processor, and then bought my first Windows based laptop in 1996 (a Compaq). Since then, I've had 2 Compaqs and a Dell (which I bought 5 years ago and am still using), and I've also got a Dell mini/netbook I used for porting around the house and yard and for travel.

Re: What Was Your First Computer?

Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 12:18 pm
by Sean
Like you Dais I had the 16k Spectrum.

My first proper PC (seperate keybd, mouse, box and monitor) was a 286 with 1mb of RAM and 40mb hard drive. My second was a 486 with 12mb RAM and a whopping 202mb drive. It even had a CD ROM!

Re: What Was Your First Computer?

Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2011 2:27 pm
by Daisy
Hmmm where you living in Manchester back then? Did you get it from a shop on Deansgate?