How Long Have You Been Using Computers

[astral]

A question about fax sw going back to 1996, then another member

saying he had been using computers for 25 years longer, prompts my question.

The first computer I encountered was back in 1965.

It was an Elliot 803, with a whole 8K of memory.

It required a whole room to itself. Programmes were entered

via punched tape.

The next after that was about 5 years later, with a DEC 10 at Hatfield Polytechnic

in the UK. We had a dial-in link and a telex machine as a terminal.

[grtaylor]

BBC Model B Micro - 32Kb of RAM, and a cassette recorder for your programs. This was when the DoE gave a free computer to every school in the UK! It was sometime in the mid-80s, before 1987, but not sure of the exact year.

G

[Guest Reimar]

In 1969 Honeywell sold the first "Kitchen" computer a H316 at a cost of US$ 11.000 ++

In 1971 Intel was starting which it first Microprocessor the 4004 which was "running" on the end of 1971 but with a lot errors and only at 1072 whit minor errors.

End of 1972 Texas Instruments, Gary Boone and Michael Cochran create the TMS1000 one-chip microcomputer. It integrates 1 kB ROM and 32 bytes of RAM with a simple 4-bit processor.

April 1974 Intel releases its 2 MHz 8080 chip, an 8-bit microprocessor. It can directly access 64 kB of memory via 2-byte memory addressing. It incorporates 6000 transistors, based on 6-micron technology. Speed is 0.64 MIPS.

Those are just some of the highlight of the Computer Stoneage!

25 years ago Commodore was just starting to sell the Commodore 64!

Cheers.

EDIT:

In 1969 I was starting to study Computer Science!

Edited October 1, 2008 by Reimar
ad a sentence

[jdinasia]

I used to play zork on a mainframe at the Uni my father taught at.

I remember the punch cards and the magnetic tape around ... I first learned BASIC and then on from there ... (last year of HS I bought a TRaSh 80 and a Commodore64

Edited October 1, 2008 by jdinasia

[Guest Reimar]

And this is how the "newbies" starting:

Cheers.

[LivinLOS]

IIRC 85 ish.. Alan Sugar and the Amstrad PC1512 !! One of the first home 8086's..

Before that had touched BBC micros and the like at schools.. But that was the first one that was mine..

Also speccy 48's, C64's, various kinds of home computers mistkly used for games (chuckie egg, manic miner, etc)..

The 1512 was a 'proper' PC tho.. 2 big 5 1/4 inch drives.. No hard disc.. but did get a modem (that resulted a month later in a huge phone bill that my old man freaked at !! wasnt allowed to hook it onto BBs's after that.)

[Tywais]

For those curious > Every digital computer type ever made

As for myself, started in 1965 (not counting the analog computer I built in high school) with Honeywell, Burrough's and Univac big iron while in the military. Afterwards a z80 computer kit with 8" floppy and tape recorder for programming. Did a lot of assembly language on it modifying the DOS and bios of the system and running CP/M. Then to PDP09 PDP11 PDP15 LSI-11 series DEC computers then DEC VAX minis and probably every generation of PC processor types since. Speaking of the 4004, designed a control/display system with one at the university I worked at.

Also the Plato system at the University of Illinois. Plasma based vectored touch screen terminals that played games pretty well. IBM 360/370's including assembly language programming during my computer science studies.

[coalminer]

I started to use an IBM terminal in 1982 at my workplace.

We had about 50 terminals in the computer room and they were only used to organize the workers.

One year later, I started to build my own microcomputer which was published in a Dutch electronics paper named surprisingly "Elektuur".

Programming was achieved by putting 8 switches in 0 or 1 position and the push another switch to store the byte in the memory which was 265 BYTES of RAM.

In 1986, I finally bought my first real computer, a Commodore CBM64.

One year later I purchased the 5 1/4" floppy drive from Commodore.

On 1987, I bought my first pocket computer with printer and casette interface: The Tandy PC-4.

This pocket computer was upgraded a year later to 8Kb of RAM.

This pocket computer is still in my possession and the computer is still working.

But the casette player has gone to the dogs a few years ago, and Tandy stopped the production of the thermal paper for the printer.

Where are the times that a whole program was fitting in 8KB of memory.

[Buzby]

The Sinclair ZX81 was my first. I remember having to almost punch the keys for it to work. Truly terrible but wonderful to the 10 year old I once was.

[Huey]

1983, my Commador 64 was my best friend at 8yrs old

[zaphodbeeblebrox]

1975: anybody remember those IBM punchcards? The chads made great confetti.

[Jingthing]

My first was a TRASH 80.

[benjamat]

The first true personal computer was the IBM PC and came out in the early eighties, I know because I was building the components for it as a suncontractor.

Of course texas ti, bbc etc were already around but connot be regarded as true PC's

[JetsetBkk]

Stretching the concept of "computer" just a tad, this was my first one (in 1970):

From here:

In the very same year that saw the appearance of the Programma 101, the DEC PDP-8 was launched. The PDP-8 was labeled "mini-computer" to mark the departure from the idea of the large, extremely expensive machine. Olivetti went a step further, and today Ing. Perotto, who headed the development of the Programma 101, describes it as "the first personal computer". This might sound misleading to someone, as in today's mind it's more a programmable calculator than a computer, but technical factors aside the idea was clearly that one.

Quoting from a contemporary Olivetti brochure:

Desk-top computer is the right definition for the Olivetti Programma 101: an electronic calculator to be kept on the desk, at the hand's reach, usable by anyone, anytime.

[GungaDin]

10 years & I know as much now as I did in 1998.

[JimsKnight]

Boy! Some posters are really showing their age on this one!

For me it was in the Early 80s with the Vic-20.

Games were so much simpler then, but no less enjoyable

Edited October 2, 2008 by JimsKnight

[BEENTHEREDONETHAT]

Data General in early 70's. Had to write your own software in FORTRAN.

[monty]

Owned my first computer late '81 (at the age of 12 years!) courtesy of an uncle working in the travel industry being able to buy one in Taiwan at half the European retail price...

Makes it 27 years ago

Texas Instruments TI-99/4a

[Belgarath]

Ugh - memories......

I remember as a kid of 9 or so, when the company where my dad worked as the "punched-card boss", got their first room-filling real computer in 1960, with a full-time engineer attached, who hated me when I played with his oscilloscope...... I think it had 4k of core memory. Started studying computer sci in 1971, built my first - the 8-switches-for-input kind, 1976 I think, still have it........

[angiud]

I don't remember the year, but this was my first computer ( mac 512 k)

I start with this and then a Mac plus to start my publishing business.

After I got a whoopy 20 Mb external hard disk for a little 2.500.000 old lira (about 60.000 baht) and a gorgeous laser printer for 5.000.000 lire.

But my business was on!

Edited October 2, 2008 by angiud

[Cuban]

Had to write your own software in FORTRAN.

Lovely Fortran Things were simpler then.

[PeaceBlondie]

Glad to see I am not the eldest. It is bizarre now to realize that I started in 1967, and am virtually illiterate now. As a young insurance actuary trainee, I was given a very long set of mathematical formulae which I had to translate to FORTRAN and then keypunch the cards to go onto an IBM 1401, which cost a million dollars. Then I earned overtime to stay late, when the company got use of its 12-hour shift with the big room. If there was a programming error, I would try to punch a corrected card there on the spot, for a rerun.

In 1968, the boss quickly bought the first electronic calculator, 4 functions, and it cost $1,400, the equivalent of 5 or 6 months at minimum wage. It was a new Asian brand, Sharp, using Nixie tubes. No memory, and the square root function was an extra $100. It replaced an old electromechanical Friden calculator which was lubricated by sewing machine oil, but you could divide with it. But if you divided a very large number by a very small number, the machine filled the room with the smell of oil and could take 15 minutes.

In many jobs since then, white collar workers had to use computers in one sense or another. I bought my first laptop in 1997, about the time I got my first Yahoo email account, which I still have. It's been all downhill since then.

[coalminer]

Stretching the concept of "computer" just a tad, this was my first one (in 1970):

In the mid 70's and the 80's a lot of products were sold as having a computer built-in to control the machine.

In that time I was working in my spare time as an electronics repair man and I have seen many machines (mostly washing machines) which were described in the User Manual as "computerized" but at the end only had a 555 timer chip in them.

Anything containing a chip was labeled as a computer.

Anything to fool the consumer is good enough as long as it sells.

But the most laughable statement in the computer area was the statement at that time saying that:

"It will never be possible to produce a watch with a built-in calculator as it would be impossible to fit the keyboard in a watch."

Can't find the link to these famous words right now.

[OlRedEyes]

Started working for Burroughs on mainframes in early '70s.

Good times. Them days you were walking on water if you were a computer engineer.

But you really had to know your stuff. No board swap shortcuts available on hardware. No loading progs into mem and let 'em run. Had to swap pieces in and out of mem as needed. Tricky stuff.

[dingdongrb]

1975: anybody remember those IBM punchcards? The chads made great confetti.

Yeah, I remember the punch cards. My mom was a key punch operator in the 60s & early 70s entering data onto those cards. The cards were tossed out when they were read and used into the computers then. My mom and her friends used to bring home the cards at Christmas time, bend them at one end, staple that end, and then staple the cards in a circle where the bent and stapled ends were at the outer edge of the circle. Then they would spray paint the cards. Spackel it with confetti and decorate the center with some artifical Holly and ribbbons and then call it a Christmas wreath to hang on the front door. They sold many of them back in those days.

As for my first computer it was using a PDP8 in college. Later I bought my own C64 and then progressed on through the years. Of course started with tape drives and progressed on to 5 1/4" disks. My first modem was a Hayes 2400 baud which I paid a small fortune for. Played many games on the BBS before the Internet is what we know today.

I guess to show our ages we should probably discuss music media and our first digital cameras....

[dingdongrb]

1975: anybody remember those IBM punchcards? The chads made great confetti.

Yeah, I remember the punch cards. My mom was a key punch operator in the 60s & early 70s entering data onto those cards. The cards were tossed out when they were read and used into the computers then. My mom and her friends used to bring home the cards at Christmas time, bend them at one end, staple that end, and then staple the cards in a circle where the bent and stapled ends were at the outer edge of the circle. Then they would spray paint the cards. Spackel it with confetti and decorate the center with some artifical Holly and ribbbons and then call it a Christmas wreath to hang on the front door. They sold many of them back in those days.

As for my first computer it was using a PDP8 in college. Later I bought my own C64 and then progressed on through the years. Of course started with tape drives and progressed on to 5 1/4" disks. My first modem was a Hayes 2400 baud which I paid a small fortune for. Played many games on the BBS before the Internet is what we know today.

I guess to show our ages we should probably discuss music media and our first digital cameras....

oops.... does this count?

[BEENTHEREDONETHAT]

I worked on the Kwajalein missle range in the early 70's. Had a cray computer that tooks a huge building to store it and all the perifferals. I immagin my laptop has more speed and power than that cray did and it was a multi million $ computer. Don't mean to imply I had anything to do with it, just friends of the people who did. I was senior engineer for a satellite earth station. Provided a whooping 4 channels between Kwaj and Vandenberg Air force base in Ca. Very high tech at the time.

[dingdongrb]

I worked on the Kwajalein missle range in the early 70's. Had a cray computer that tooks a huge building to store it and all the perifferals. I immagin my laptop has more speed and power than that cray did and it was a multi million $ computer. Don't mean to imply I had anything to do with it, just friends of the people who did. I was senior engineer for a satellite earth station. Provided a whooping 4 channels between Kwaj and Vandenberg Air force base in Ca. Very high tech at the time.

One of my good buddies used to work for Cray located in Colorado Springs. I am sure gallium arsenide technology has since faded as well as Cray has.

[G54]

I had one of the first Spectrum Computers. That would have been 1980?

Well do I remember the days of Manic Miner and the hours of fun spent playing that.

From the computer magazines we spent hour after hour typing in the games program listings only to fine they - or we - had made an error with the data so the program did not work!!

Fun days.

[BEENTHEREDONETHAT]

I worked on the Kwajalein missle range in the early 70's. Had a cray computer that tooks a huge building to store it and all the perifferals. I immagin my laptop has more speed and power than that cray did and it was a multi million $ computer. Don't mean to imply I had anything to do with it, just friends of the people who did. I was senior engineer for a satellite earth station. Provided a whooping 4 channels between Kwaj and Vandenberg Air force base in Ca. Very high tech at the time.

One of my good buddies used to work for Cray located in Colorado Springs. I am sure gallium arsenide technology has since faded as well as Cray has.

Cray was quite a brillant guy. Think Cray Computer Corp. went bankrupt in the mid 90's and cray was killed in a car accident in 96 at the age 71.