Your first home computer?

[jyl]

Apple II. Then a Tandy PC. After that I worked on VAX terminals and later some sort of PC, with 386 laptops too. Got a personal HP200LX and did my first internet stuff on it (newsgroup, email). First personal laptop was a 486 Winbook. Then used a Apple Newton. There must have been amother personal desktop in there somewhere. Built my next PC, a dual Celeron system on a server chassis with a Tyan board and SCSI drives. Still have those drives but can't figure out how to get the days off them. Had a Toshiba Libretto mini laptop too. Then I switched to Macs at home, still using PCs at work.

[dad911]

Heathkit H-8
Then various heathkits, Apple ][, 2c, 2gs

First computer with a harddrive was Mac se, 20 megabyte drive. $2600, $3000 laserprinter, $1000 add on drive (40 megabyte)

Probably spent $20k on computers in the 80's

[JackDidley]

Late starter here. In 2000 I got a Dell laptop. 30 Gig HDD, CD burner DVD player. Pretty cool to me. I did use my work computers for personal stuff for years before that. Funny thing is, I am still using my 2nd laptop that I bought in 2005. Bumped up the RAM and loaded Linux on it and its still does a damn fine job.

[mikehinton]

Ours was a genuine IBM-PC. 256K of RAM, dual floppy drives, graphics card and an amber monitor that we purchased in 1982. Still the most expensive computer ($3,800) that I've ever purchased!

[WPOZZZ]

I was poor. I only had a single floppy, iirc.

[LakeCleElum]

TI 99A.......Black Friday price of $49.99....use little TV for monitor. To compute, write your own program in BASIC and save on a cassette tape. Games available in a cartridge.....Great learning tool.......

[WPOZZZ]

Originally Posted by LakeCleElum

TI 99A.......Black Friday price of $49.99....use little TV for monitor. To compute, write your own program in BASIC and save on a cassette tape. Games available in a cartridge.....Great learning tool.......

At least you had color. lol

[red-beard]

You never forget your first....

1976 - My first computer was a PR1ME 300 minicomputer, 16bit processors, core memory boards, 1.5 and 3.0MB disk platters and removable packs. I think we got it up to 32 users, but it 2 of the serial lines were never "right", and one was reserved for system console.

1984 - My first home PC was a Commodore 64, sold as a deal for $600 including a green screen monitor, double 5.25" disk drive and a modem. Pretty amazing deal.

1988 - The first PC I bought and paid for was a Toshiba 1200HD, non-backlit LCD screen - 80c86 processor, 1MB RAM, 20MB disk drive and single 720K 3.5" floppy. I added a combination 1200bps modem and 1MB RAM memory expansion card. It served me well as a field engineer for several years.

Everything after is a blur of appliances...

[JavaBrewer]

I learned BASIC in middle school on a teletype connected to UCSB. We input our programs that were batched and run overnight. Got our results the next day. In HS we had PET computers that we programmed with BASIC and saved to audio cassette. Heck even in college (SBCC and SDSU) we used terminals connected school mainframes.

My first home computer was an Apple II in 1980 that a neighbor loaned to me. Had it for 6 months or so. Then it was a Toshiba T1200 that Dad got on trade and handed over to me. I didn't start programming until I got a 286 CPU PC and used Turbo Pascal. From then on it was all PC based systems until 2007 or so when I switched to Mac.

[wildthing]

I guess being one of the "younger ones" here, my first PC was in 91 as I entered college - a 286 with 40MB hard drive and 1MB RAM. It was just starting to become more affordable, but still not everyone could afford one (at least in the 3rd world).

[Seahawk]

Leading Edge with a HD in 1987:

[KFC911]

Originally Posted by wildthing

I guess being one of the "younger ones" here, my first PC was in 91 as I entered college ....

I'm a dinosaur....wasn't until the mid-90s that I purchased my first PC (Pentium 133)....last thing in the world I wanted was to see a a damn computer in my house . By then however, I had been accessing some of the most powerful computers on the planet for almost 20 years....Computer Science degree (mainframes at Research Triangle Park), and a heavyweight Communications Systems Programmer/Networking guy as my day job for some huge corporations....don't miss those daze either..."retired" at 48....loved being a techie...don't miss corporate bs .

[LakeCleElum]

Not mine, but speaking of early computers:

About 1970, i was in college and worked for a Property Mgt company that had six office buildings, downtown Seattle . One, the IBM Building, used most of the first floor for it's 4 computers. Elevated flooring to run cables, rooms enclosed in glass. IBM employees working the night shift wearing a white shirt and tie. Computer as big as a tractor....

All night long, cars pull up to the front door and couriers rush in with "punch cards".....Data is processed overnight and couriers come back in the morning for the reports......

Down in the parking garage, one of the IBM managers has a 300SL gull-wing......Early days of computing.........Happy times.

[RKDinOKC]

First was IBM selectric terminal with cradle modem and 2K space on the school system. One of only 3 students in my HS that were allowed to use it. After college got an Apple IIc as my first home computer.

At one point had a DOS 3.3 emulator for my Mac so I could run a Radio Controlled Airplane program. Was running an emulator to emulate a R/C plane and emulates flying a real plane. Way Geeky Cool.

[nota]

Atari game console then a Atari 400 then a c64 and c128 then 8088 based home build and a mac#1
at work a ibm 360 punch card input

[Don Ro]

Originally Posted by Don Ro

Macintosh
It was just above Pong capability.

I bought this to print out my invoices with a dot matrix printer.
I had a client who asked me, "Are you on the Internet yet?" Of course, I wasn't.
I knew nothing about this world (and not much more now) so I called an Apple store to ask what my Mac needed to get on the Internet.
A long pause, and then he explained why not.
I asked what to do w/my Mac..."Use it as a door stop?", he said.
.

[KFC911]

Originally Posted by LakeCleElum

....IBM employees working the night shift wearing a white shirt and tie. Computer as big as a tractor....

...

First gig out of college.....working in R&D at IBM @ Research Triangle...microcode dvelopment in their communications division...
we did NOT have to wear "the uniform" however . Yep...later on I became a systems programmer...mainframes the size of a small bedroom....I recall when the price approached 10 million each . For some reason, I don't get excited over home computers....

[HardDrive]

Commodore PET.

[impactbumper]

Mine was a commodore 64


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[GH85Carrera]

Like may here I started with Commodore Vic 20. I knew the 8K RAM was not enough so I bought the 16K expansion cartridge with the computer and the tape drive. The expansion cartridge would get so HOT it would really get your attention if you brushed your arm against it. When the C-64 came out I upgraded right away. For a long time I had two floppy drives and the 300 baud modem. I started on-line with Compuserve



I just took this photo this morning. The disc came with a big notebook of instructions. I managed to order a pair of Jeans back then and it was painful slow at 300 baud with zero graphics. I received my first Compuserve bill and almost fainted and canceled that right away.

I finally moved into the real power computing and paid a lot of money for a 4.77 MHz Compaq portable, twin floppy and 256K RAM. I soon saw it need more memory so I ramped it up to the MAX and put in 640K of RAM. Not megabytes, kilobytes. Then I added a HUGE 10 MB hard drive. I remember doing a backup of the hard drive and it took like 35 of the floppies. I still have a copy of the Compaq DOS 2.2 it came with.

I bought Ventura Publisher and got into desktop publishing bought a mouse.



If you look at the mouse you can see it is a Microsoft Mouse, with a serial port, and a steel ball. It says Patent Pending.