The first computer I ever played around on was...

Here's a question designed to give everyone flashbacks: What was the first computer you ever played around on?

In my case, I'll give two answers: The absolute first was a DEC 10 terminal connected to who-knows-what around 1975 in my dad's office (for those too young to remember, there was no "monitor" - everything was "displayed" and printed on green bar ledger size paper). This is also where the term "dial up" came from - you literally had to use a rotary dial phone, call a number, wait for the beeping sounds and place the headset in a cradle on the terminal.

The first PC was an IBM 8086 (the original), again in my dad's office in 1981.

Anyone else care to embarrass and date themselves by answering honestly?

 

I honestly have no idea what it was. The mainframe was in a room all to itself, and it used punch cards. That would've been around 1978, when my mom was majoring in "Computer Science" in college. I got in trouble for knocking her final project punch cards off the table and messing up the order (she hadn't had time to number them yet).

The first PC I also am not sure, but it was some kind of Apple. I remember having to write lines of code in order for things to show up in colour as opposed to the standard orange on black. That would've been 1982-ish, taking a graphics class at the local junior college, and I want to say it was an Apple IIe.

 

My first computer if you could call it that was one I built from a kit called a EDUC-8 and it was a microcomputer.
I built it in 1974 and here is an article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDUC-8

My first real computer was an Apple IIe (Europlus) and it only had two floppy drives.

http://www.vectronicsappleworld.com/collection/articlepics/appleiie/snap20.jpg

My first PC that had a whopping 8Mb HDD as well as two floppy drives was an IBM XT transluggable.

http://www.vintage-computer.com/images/ibmpcportable.jpg

I used to setup and program DEC PDP 8 and PDP 10 mainframes but got out of that when I started installing and programming robots in 1980. I used to work on American Unimate robots and also ASEA robots made in Sweden.

Jeez thanks for the memories gman now I feel quite old ..... I better go have a lie down :-D

 

An Apple IIc. I still have it, now that I think of it.

 

My first computer that I used was in the 70s at my university. It was the mainframe in the computer science building where you had to sit at a key punch terminal and print up a stack of cards to run programs. In the 80s I used ancient Apple IIes. After that I used 286s and 386s running DOS 5.0.
These days I run Slackware Linux, OpenBSD 5.5, and Windows 7 on Dell PCs and iOS 7.1.1 on my iPad.

 

http://www.mrmartinweb.com/images/computer/dell386sx.jpg

 

TI 99 4A hooked up to the TV - all those sodding F's

 

I will not call my Altair a computer, I never really got anything done with it.
Nor my Fortran class at Berkeley in 68.
My first real computer was an Apple ][ on which I did everything from letters to games to income taxes. I even wrote a tic-tact-toe game.

Anyone remember Star Trek - the ASCII game?

 

My first computer I played with was a Zenith Z-100

 

Sorry for duplicate post but edit function wont let me delete it

 

I consider this my first real pc.

Although in jr high i was programming games with the Trash 80s.

 

Hmmmm.... that reminds me......... I stored a working TRS 80 in the shed somewhere ........ I wonder if it is still about............ I just found the cassette recorder for loading up the programs but the trash 80 may have found its way from the PC graveyard to the err........ trash rolleyes

 

I was on eBay this morning posting some items for sale. For giggles, I checked out recently sold listings on "Apple IIe" and "TRS-80."

It appears a working model of either is worth between $400-$500 USD. Again, this is what buyers actually paid; not a "wish list" price the seller hopes to get.

Ancient PCs appear to be turning into the geek version of Beanie Babies or Cabbage Patch Kids. :-D

 

My first computer was a Sinclair in 1985. The monitor had green letters and it used little cassettes for storage around 150kbs each I think.

A software I used was Lotus Symphony and was written on 5.25 disks. Can't remember how I got the software on to the computer though.

 

Who woulda thunk :confused
Maybe I should have a much more thorough search for mine and I also have my Apple IIe but one of the two floppy drives failed and was the reason I ditched it
Thanks for the heads up gman I just had a look and found this on ebay and it is the same model as mine and check the crazy price roflmao
Seems hopeful for those $$$ but there are 23 watchers so ppl are interested roflmao

 

I started on a TRS-80, complete with cassette loading programs, etc.

One time I typed in code the entire program for playing StarTrek, only to get down to the last 30 lines or so of basic and a power surge lost me the entire project. What a bummer.

Moved on to an Apple IIe complete with disk drives. What a marked improvement.

At the time, I also had bought an in-house Ms PacMan arcade machine. Really was fun.:-D

 

Comodore 64. We were the first class in our grade school to use computers. None of us knew how to type, so it was a very slow class.

 

I have no idea of the make or model. It had vacuum tubes inside. It also used paper tapes
to drive some very old CNC machines in the first machine shop I worked in.

 

http://i198.photobucket.com/albums/aa131/piano_wizard/all%20computers/PackardBellPack-Mate5996CDT.jpg