So What Was Your Very First Home Computer ?

[necronx99]

Microbee for me. It was cool cause it had a green display.

[bobl]

Sinclair ZX80 for me, followed by ZX81, ZX Spectrum, VIC20, Amiga, then an original IBM PC-AT

For some reason I'm craving a game of Manic Miner, Jetpac, or Jumpin' Jackson...

Edited May 26, 2012 by bobl

[pattayadingo]

Manic Miner ..... ah, so many happy hours playing that.

Manic miner, oh shit, now we're going down memory lane....

Jetpac

[pattayadingo]

After the ZX and later models, the first proper PC I bought was a P75. With Windows and DOS disks. Cost well over £1K at the time. My son discovered he now had loads on new friends and my house was full of them all wanting to play on it.

First one I built was a P90 after discovering how simple they were to build and I saved a few hundred £ doing it myself.

Great days & great fun.

[xen]

An Atari . Actually i bought it for my son's birthday. Problem was everybody else we knew had Commadore 64 so we could not exchange software.

[keeniau96]

The MITS Altair 8800. Had to assemble from parts, then figure out what to do with it.

[tormok]

Commodore 16 with casette tape station.

16 KB RAM + 32 KB ROM

320x200 display

1.76 MHz CPU

Those were the days.

[lovetotravel]

I used a "trash" 80 for some time, but the one I really got into was the Compaq Portable. My company was one of the first to by an IBM PC/AT in S. California. I remember driving home from the LA sales office worried I'd get into an accident with such a rare item! It wasn't cheap.

The first computer I worked on was a PDP 11, programming in RPG, and an IBM System 360 programming in Cobol. Paper tape, card input or a lovely Teletype model 33 printer. Man, that printer was slow!!!!

Wow...I'm old!

[Sateev]

Apple II+, 48K, with Integer Basic card, dual 160K 5.25" floppies, and a $1800+ hole in my credit card. Learned my second assembly language on it. My first, was....Control Data - on punch cards.

That $1800 was the best investment I ever made.

[Superdude]

An Amstrad

[Superdude]

An Amstrad

[Guest]

ZX Spectrum 48K.

At that time we hade program listings printed on computer magazines, which we had to type in and save to cassette. Oh boy those data sections were difficult to get right

I still remember the first game, which had synthetic barely understandable talk on the start scene. Made to wonder where this computer technology will be going to ..

[Crossy]

Nascom I followed by a Nascom II then I was one of the mad fools who bought a Memotech MTX512 http://en.wikipedia....ki/Memotech_MTX , a great machine with an in-line Z80 assembler for those time-critical routines. Sadly very poorly supported.

Some year later I bought a real IBM PC-XT at an auction.

[jocko]

The 1st smart phone UK only.

Eat your heart out

[jocko]

The 1st smart phone UK only.

Eat your heart out

[mairuu]

Commodore 64

[thaimite]

Nascom I followed by a Nascom II then I was one of the mad fools who bought a Memotech MTX512 http://en.wikipedia....ki/Memotech_MTX , a great machine with an in-line Z80 assembler for those time-critical routines. Sadly very poorly supported.

Some year later I bought a real IBM PC-XT at an auction.

Now there's a man of taste My path was very similar (post no. 8) I do not know how I ended up with the Memotech FDX it must have been a deal as I never had that much money. I do remember several of my friends had the Memotech MTX

I joined the PC world at MSDOS 2 with an amstrad 1512 and stayed with it all the way up to XP (except for a brief and exciting flirtation with OS2 (versions 1.3 up to 4) but am now a confirmed Linux fan. I still have fond memories of OS2 though.

Edited May 26, 2012 by thaimite

[thaimite]

Does anybody out there remember the Heathkit / Zenith Z100 I used one of those in my fathers business for several years.

However do not get me started on Heathkit That is another bunch of fond memories

Edited May 26, 2012 by thaimite

[harrry]

Texas Instruments TI 44A. 10" TV as a monitor.

snap

a great computer wasn't it for the time. I did not have a proper monitor though. The company I bought it from sol it with a large modified AWA TV

Edited May 26, 2012 by harrry

[JSixpack]

Mention of assembling the MITS Altair 8800 reminded me of something.

I've got you all beat. Match THIS:

The Braniac K-30!!!

"The rotary switch rotors held shorting staples which could be crimped into pairs of holes. Connections to the backplane were made by bent pieces of brass, held by screws, pairs of which got shorted together as the staples came in contact with them. The whole arrangement got pretty dodgy as the number of circuits on a switch increased. The bent brass pieces either got mangled or failed to make a connection. But it was entertaining, nonetheless. The most complicated example in the guidebook was a circuit that played a decent game of tic-tac-toe." (parallax.com)

I confess I never got it to play tic-tac-toe. Fact, I can't remember what I got it to do, if anything. It was an Xmas present around 1960 and could hardly compete w/ more dramatic toys you ride, drive, and shoot.

I did mess around w/ it tho. It was quite mysterious and VERY hi-tech.

http://www.oldcomput...ainiac_k30.html

[dominique355]

My first home computer was a Sirius Victor with 2 5 1/2 inch floppy drives. 32 KB RAM. It came with 2 OS on floppy, PC DOS and another, I think something like CPM86, not sure, too long ago.

I learned a lot, especially programming in Basic86.

Then I switched to IBM PC, also 5 1/2 inch floppy. Harddisks were too expensive, 1 MB for 1,000 Swiss francs! Imagine!

[USNret]

As google ads on my browser display "Get 1 terabyte of online storage -- free trial". Back in the day, we were happy with 16K RAM, and a dual-floppy drive (so you didn't have to keep swapping the OS floppy & data floppy in & out.)

I think I had some kinda Zenith; all I remember is that the operating system was CP/M. I found a very expensive word processing program for it, maybe $200, and used this on the Navy ship in Japan where I was stationed. As far as I know, I was the only one on the ship with an actual computerized word processor. The admin staff was lucky to have IBM Selectric typewriters with correction tape.

Some of your recollections brought tears to my eyes of happy memories, and amazement of how far we've come in our lifetime. We truly have a bunch of crusty old bastards on this forum.

[T_Dog]

For me... A Z80 followed by an AIM 65. Nothing like running that code through the cassette recorder twice to run the assembler.

[Thighlander]

HP Vectra 286 8 mhz. 640 k 40 mb hd

[cdnvic]

Vic 20 at home, Apple II at school.

[dionys]

Ditto for me

[Javabear]

I had an Atari 800. Played hours of Dig-dug on it.

[luciferbkk]

I know that I had a small home computer ( more like a toy actually) the brand and model I can't remember before I got my first C64. It must have been in 1979 or so. My C64, never got a C128, used a tape recorder for storing programs and I think it used a 51/4 floppy disk later on. I then upgraded to various Intel processors starting with 8068 ( 4.7 Mhz?), 8088, 80286, 80386. I got my first HDD with 10 MB capacity which was a great improvement. I had green and amber monitors at the time. I also remember using a so-called mainframe in officer's school in 1980?. It was an IBM 360 with a whopping 64 kB Ram and it used punch cards as input. It filled up a whole room and needed air conditioning in the room so it wouldn't overheat. You needed a computer technician to use that thing and give him your punch cards to feed the monster. You got them back with a printout a day later more often than not saying there was a syntax error or other flaws and you had to start all over again. It was so much fun!

[canuckamuck]

Well I guess it was a TRS-80 model II, because I don't think the Atari setup that played pong counts. My most memorable purchase was picking up a 486 with 60MB hard disk and 4mb ram for $5400.00. (yep it was leading edge and I thought I needed it). It was a doorstop within a year.

[grahamhc]

My first home computer was a Sanyo with 2 x 5.25' floppies, one for the program and one which stored the data. It ran on CPM I recall. Bought it from Morgan Comuters in London "Reduced from £1,500 to £199" and used it to produce a club newsletter and membership details.

Next was an AST 286 workstation and monitor bought at an auction, not realising it had no hard HDD or OS. Paid £245 for a 40 Mb IDE HDD.