What Was The First Computer You Used? When?

[astral]

My first introduction to computing was back in 1965 with an Elliot 803.

Input was on punched tape, generated with a telex type machine.

The programming language was Algol.

The machine took up a whole air-conditioned room

and had a massive memory of 8Kb

No, that is not a typing mistake, 8 kilobytes.

If the prgramme was too big the compiler would generate "own code"

and then you could run using the whole of memory.

[richard_smith237]

ZX81, Commador 64, VIC20, BBC... When I was a Child - Mid 80's.

[lopburi3]

Was in US the week Commador 64 was introduced so that was the first non work experience. 64k of memory was huge and you typed in programs from the magazines of the day. Also bought a digital recorder for input and a tractor feed printer. Next step was Atari 1040 and from there to IBM type PC's.

Unfortunately I was not a child so it has always been me against the machine - and most times the machine wins.

Edited October 18, 2009 by lopburi3

[monty]

TI99-4A

At home, brought over from Taiwan by an uncle..

If I'm not mistaken this was in early 1980.

Back at school we were learning on compaq's portables, forgot what CPU they had (guess 8088 or something), but running DOS and programmed in basic.

Few years later (late 80's) home computing really took of with the IBM AT clones (80286), followed in a rather fast pace with the 80386, 80486 and then on to the Pentium CPU's...

And on then from Msdos (or DrDos) to windows, with first real popular version being 3.1 in the early 90's

[Supernova]

The Apple IIe was my first computer, and it was this machine that started it all... How can I ever forget those long hours programming in BASIC, lol.

Few years later (late 80's), I got the Apple Macintosh SE as a X'mas gift. That's when I taught myself Pascal.

It wasn't until 1993 when I got my first PC with MS-DOS and Windows 3.1.

Edited October 18, 2009 by Supernova

[Deke]

In school in the mid-70's we used an IBM 360. Input was via Hollerith cards. After graduation, the company I went to work for had a couple of DEC PDP 8's with the paper tape type input. Later, we upgraded to VAX machines with teletype terminals and acoustic coupler modems (300 bps max).

The languages were mostly Fortran and Basic.

[ThailandLovr]

Control Data 3600 in 1966 using Fortran and Compass (assembler). Fortran was the first programming course in the then new Computer Science curriculum. I took the programming class just to fill my schedule but ended up loving it and switching my major. I went on to get my BS. Back when dinosaurs walked the earth.

The CDC was a mainframe, but a couple of years later I programmed a mini, the PDP (Digital Equipment) 8/I. Programming in Fortran using punched cards, reading into the 8/I for compilation with the resultant object code being written out to the Teletype punched paper tape. The paper tape was then fed back into the Teletype reader and read directly by the RIM Loader program, which I entered directly into memory using the console switches. An executable was finally written to mag tape. No disk drive. As with Astral, my 8/I had 8K core memory (4K for code and 4K for tape data buffer). I remember starting with 4K memory then being thrilled to get the additional 4K! I can remember reading octal core dumps and manually keying in instructions into available memory locations. Those were very fun days!

Edited October 18, 2009 by ThailandLovr

[opalhort]

My first PC was a PET in Germany, CPU 6502 and the only way to save/retrieve programs was via a cassette recorder in the mid-'70s

No floppy or HDD then!

Then came the Commodore 2000 but all programming was done using DOS and Assembly or sometimes BASIC.

opalhort

[chiang mai]

It was 1968 in London, twin Univac 418's with Fast-Rand drum storage the size of a large car and paper tape and punched card input, you've got to love the Holerith Code and learning to stick bits back into holes (take that where you will but that's what one had to do) - the machines filled a huge computer room and tape sorts took forever - memory, a teenie weenie little bit.

[toptuan]

Around 1982 or 1983, a Radio Shack TRS-80, affectionately called "Trash-80" by its owners. Data storage was on a regular cassette sound recorder. Could store the data for a one-page letter in only 2-3 minutes! I think I had a massive 8K as well.

The computer may have been child's play compared to today, but it saved my neck and my job--in a bank where I could not get all the work done in 8 hours, I brought some of it home to finish up on the TRS-80 using a few simple programs I wrote in BASIC or stole from magazine. 4-5 hours of work were magically done in a few minutes and I took the printouts back to work the next day.

I kept telling the boss there was enough work for two people and he didn't believe me. I finally quit over workload issues, and yes, they had to hire two people to replace me. All they really needed to do was hire one person, put a Trash-80 on his desk, and save a bundle! Such was the short-sightedness of many conservative businesses in corporate American back then.

[chimsa]

Cromemco, enormous thing.

Do they still exist?

[thaimite]

A device called a Nascom II, in the late 1970s assembled from a kit which included soldering the chips in to the board, 2Mhz Z80 CPU with 8K of memory, cassette tape storage, and TV output.

I later added a 64K memory expansion noard which I again assembeld by solderong the parts. The memory card was as big as the main board

I then went on to a CPM machine with Twin floppies called a Memotech

and after a few other machines which ran the CPM OS I finally made it in to the PC world with an Amstrad 512, and have been a slave to Bill gates ever since. (edit For the Amstrad I placed a special order for the 20MB hard disk option. The retailer told me I was crazy to spend the money as nobody could ever fill 20MB of disk space!)

Now I am trying to recall my old CPM / DOS days by learning Linux

Edited October 18, 2009 by thaimite

[PhilHarries]

Dunno, I was an insignificant little grunt working for the British Ministry of Defence, 1960's, and the machine, that I never saw, was called George III and was protected by an army of proto-teckies in white coats. All I know was that IT inhabited a building roughly half the size of an aircraft hanger, consumed the power of a small town and probably had the memory of a pocket solar powered calculator.

Now I have a zillion times the information available to me at a zillionth the time span but........

am I happier?

Edited October 18, 2009 by PhilHarries

[thaimite]

Some of you old computer Geeks may like to check out this page

http://www.computermuseumgroningen.nl/

which led me to read some nostalgic stuff about my old Nascom here

http://www.nascomhomepage.com/

This unit was sold without a case, so the only photos are of the bare board.

[sniffdog]

1980 .... TRS-80 with 4K. A few months later I upgraded to 16K which was almost as expensive as the computer ...

Further purchases: Commodore 64, Atari ST ...

[pampal]

Punch cards on IBM mainframe

Commodore PET

[surface]

TRS80 with a whopping .89MHz CPU. Was just a kid though and didn't get much use out of it. Think I learned some basic BASIC on it.

[MKAsok]

Apple II, ZX-80, ZX-81, BBC B (all at school), Atari ST (2 of these), then PCs (first one was a 286 laptop running DOS).

[bankruatsteve]

1967 IBM 360 - punch cards/Fortran. 1970 CDC (I forget - 4 banks of 8K) punched machine code in octal. 1985- IBM PC with whopping 360K of memory - trash 80, and maybe the first "laptop": how about the Osborn - loved that guy.

[Jingthing]

I used a mainframe (unknown in the early 70s at school) but my first intimate experience with a computer was a Trash 80 in the late 70s. I still remember (later) the excitement I felt when you could do more than one thing on a computer at a time!

Edited October 18, 2009 by Jingthing

[paulfr]

1965 As a freshman, I used my school's batch mainframe machine, an IBM 360. You would submit your stack of punched cards

as your program and pick up your printout the next day.

1969 Summer job, Boston. I had my own PDP8 with 4K of memory. Paper tape input; first the loader and then

your program. The company did control systems work and eventually one of the projects became Modicon,

manufacturers of the first Programmable Controllers.

Edited October 18, 2009 by paulfr

[Ijustwannateach]

Apple II in schools 70s; Atari 400 first computer I owned at home in the 80s

[Forkinhades]

ZX81 with 16K back in 1983, but was using a ZX80 at school in 1979

[swervie2000]

My mother use to be a key punch operator back in the 60s and 70s, she took me to work and I use to play around with the cards and punch machines. I observed and loaded cards into an old IBM. This had to be around the early 70s.

First PC was in high school - Radio Shack TRS-80, or otherwise known as a Trash 80.

This was around 1977-1979.

First bought computer was Atari 800 in 1980.

And so now us early adopters can be proud we paved the way for the locals to do Hi5 and MSN.

[xen]

The first computer i had that i could use use the Atari 1040 (mid 80's)

We had a mini computet from National that later became Panasonic and i read the instructions on progaming but was too lazy to follow up.

[delboy]

My first job after leaving school in 1965 was computer operator in an IBM 1440 computer room. Big mainframe taking up a large air-con room with 4 magnetic tape units and a few disk drives. I think the memory size was 128Kb or 256Kb and input was by punched cards.

Within a couple of years I was a programmer in IBM Assembler, Fortran and Cobol now with a super deluxe IBM 360. 256Kb memory and disk drives with a capacity of 32 Mb (I think). I can say that they were very heavy and were removeable, being stored in individual plastic containers.

I progressed onto an IBM 370 and onto writing programes for the new teleprocessing system. The modems were each about the size of a thick briefcase and were stored in racks and monitors were IBM 3270 VDU's, green display with lightpens.

Then we changed to ICL computers and it was my time to move on, and out, of the UK.

Happy days, spending hours re-coding programs to save 1 or 2 bytes.

Edited October 18, 2009 by delboy

[IMA_FARANG]

I was an electronics technician working on communication systems in the early 1980's. I never paid much attention to those computer things, thought they were just "toys", like the Atari or the Commodore 64, etc. Just for game playing, not serious.

First "computer" we got was a Hewlitt Packard computer (an HP-80D) with a whole 32K of memeory and plug in 16K ROM chip. Had a serial interface to use with some of our HP test equipment. I found out that it could be used to control the test equipment, outputing a frequency into the comm equipment and taking readings of the response. It used what HP called "HP tiny Basic". I wrote some programs to input and scan some of our comm equipment. Once I got hooked on that I started writing other programs to run other tests and record the results on a small printer (thermal tape). That way we didn't have to run the test manually, but just schedule the tests to be run by the computer. Got hooked on the writing of programs to do something useful.

A few months later we got our first IBM compatible....and because I knew how to write the programs for that HP-80D....I became the shop "computer expert".

I wasn't...but I was the only electronic tech who had even an inkling of what to do.

P.S. If you know what "Q curves"; i.e. Quieting curves, are on wideband FM recievers...I wrote a program with an HP signal generator, an HP programmable attenuator, a Marconi white noise generator, and an HP Specrum analyser that ran Q curves and printed the results as a graph on the thermal printer. It took us about 30 minutes per reciever manually, and once we started the program it ran in about 15 minutes on the computer with no operator required to monitor it.

Edited October 18, 2009 by IMA_FARANG

[Kered]

My first introduction to computing was back in 1965 with an Elliot 803.

Input was on punched tape, generated with a telex type machine.

The programming language was Algol.

The machine took up a whole air-conditioned room

and had a massive memory of 8Kb

No, that is not a typing mistake, 8 kilobytes.

If the prgramme was too big the compiler would generate "own code"

and then you could run using the whole of memory.

I started system design and programming around 1963 on an NCR 315 which was built by Elliot Automation much larger than the 803 with 10KB of memory and cost in the region of GBP 200,000.

[balo]

My first experience with a computer was NASCOM II , my older brother built it in 1976, I remember he wrote some simple programs , only using 11110000011101000

Then after a few years I bought Commodore VIC-20 in 1982 and I was hooked.

I owned a lot of computers in the 80's, C-64, ZX Spectrum, Dragon 64, ORIC-1 (my personal favourite) and AMIGA-500.

I still have a working C-64 and play some games on it to impress the kids and show them the stunning graphics

Edited October 18, 2009 by balo

[Spoonman]

First puter i ever used was an Apple IIE at high school, first puter owned was an Apple IIc Plus bought as a christmas present in 1988.