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My first Computer

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  • cptjhuntercptjhunter Member Posts: 2,288 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    My very first home computer:

    TRS-80 (Model I) with a whopping 4K of system RAM and a cassette deck for saving/loading software.:eek::D:)

    Me too! Lucky my Dad was an electronics engineer, he upgraded mine to a blistering 16k.:D
  • otisnobleotisnoble Member Posts: 1,290 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    Wow. There are a lot more mature individuals on STO than I thought. Young people think that taking a test in school without using their IPhone is a hardship, but I remember when the only thing we could use for math problems were our fingers and toes with a razor blade for subtraction. LOL
    Fleet Admiral Stephen
  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Member Posts: 35,236 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    C64 here too. I never really got good at using it though. I did however get a lot of experience using a 286 computer that lacked a Hard drive.... Yeah that was interesting. Booting MS-DOS 3.3 from floppy, and running all software from a floppy...
    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    My character Tsin'xing
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  • crusty8maccrusty8mac Member Posts: 1,381 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    daveyny wrote: »
    God.. some of us are OLD...
    <chuckle>

    Shhhhhhhhhhh ! :)
    __________________________________
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  • tyroidtyroid Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    TRS (Trash) 80 Model III that my parents bought used for $300 in '83:

    A Zilog Z-80, 2.03 MHz processor, 16K RAM, 12-inch B/W 64 X 16 text display, Single internal 178K Floppy drives and an external cassette drive port :D

    Santa Paravia en Fiumaccio (which was THE BOMB!!!) took about 30-45 minutes to load with the cassette drive, yahooooooo :)

    1st one Ibought personally was a C128 =)
  • gamerjoshgamerjosh Member Posts: 158 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    I think that anybody who had a hard drive in their first computer was just plain spoiled.

    I had a Tandy 1000 RL

    http://www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/images/RL_WakaWakaTandyLarge.jpg

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandy_1000

    No hard drive, no embedded OS, and you felt lucky when you got a GUI.
    Belief manifests reality
  • otisnobleotisnoble Member Posts: 1,290 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    crusty8mac wrote: »
    Shhhhhhhhhhh ! :)

    I shall not be quiet, I revel in my wrinkles and grey hair. I earned every one
    Fleet Admiral Stephen
  • gfreeman98gfreeman98 Member Posts: 1,200 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    First computer I ever touched was a teletype terminal connected to a DEC PDP-8. This was on a field trip when I was around 4th or 5th grade.

    First computer I ever owned was an Apple ][+. 48K RAM, a 5.25" floppy disk drive, and a color monitor. Eventually expanded to 64K, two floppy drives, and a dot matrix printer.
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  • jonsillsjonsills Member Posts: 10,434 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    First used was an Alpha Micro minicomputer at the community college. Used a teletype with heat-sensitive transfer paper for I/O. Later, the college library got in some Apple ][s, which we were NOT supposed to use to play Wizardry, so as far as they knew we never did... :)

    First owned was a Timex-Sinclair 1000, about the size of a smallish hardback, with a membrane keyboard and all of 2k main memory on board. (I also had the 16k expansion pack that plugged into the back.) Cassette tape storage, and you provided your own cassette player, and the graphics were black and white (s'okay - so was the TV I had at the time, from a garage sale). Long afternoons carefully typing in programs from a magazine... you kids today got no idea how soft you got it...

    First one I bought for myself was a C-64, back in '85 when they were cutting-edge computing machines. I was in the Air Force, living in the dorms, eating in the chow hall, and having more money than sense, and they had them in the Exchange. I kept that for a number of years - even ran a BBS on it (the Time Warp, in Omaha, NE - if any of you were there at the time, I was Timmorn Yelloweyes).
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  • gfreeman98gfreeman98 Member Posts: 1,200 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    jonsills wrote: »
    ...the college library got in some Apple ][s, which we were NOT supposed to use to play Wizardry, so as far as they knew we never did... :)
    Wizardry was the main reason I got that 2nd disk drive. ;)
    screenshot_2015-03-01-resize4.png
  • otisnobleotisnoble Member Posts: 1,290 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    gfreeman98 wrote: »
    Wizardry was the main reason I got that 2nd disk drive. ;)

    We used the college computer to download Doom and the whole campus got motion sickness.
    Fleet Admiral Stephen
  • crypticarmsmancrypticarmsman Member Posts: 4,115 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    gfreeman98 wrote: »
    First computer I ever touched was a teletype terminal connected to a DEC PDP-8. This was on a field trip when I was around 4th or 5th grade.

    First computer I ever owned was an Apple ][+. 48K RAM, a 5.25" floppy disk drive, and a color monitor. Eventually expanded to 64K, two floppy drives, and a dot matrix printer.

    If you want to go there, my introduction to computers was via a teletype, connected via a110 Baud (not KBaud - Baud) acoustic modem (IE you took the phone handset and popped it on to the modem after rotary-dialing the number) to an HP2000 mainframe in 1975 (I was in 7th grade).

    There was one game we LOVED called "STTR1" - which was a Star Trek game where you sheared an 8X8 grid (64 sectors) for Klingon ships that were invading, and you blew them up.:eek::D
    Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012
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    PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
  • sandormen123sandormen123 Member Posts: 862 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    Back in 1984, i believe it was.
    Amstrad CPC464, with colour(!) monitor.
    Really fancy stuff. Got hold of a matrix printer, sounding like a machinegun.
    It actually had a decent amount of games, eventhough the Commodore 64 was THE best when it came to games. Oh I wonder how many joysticks I smashed due to silly sportsgames. You know, slamming the stick right<->left to make that sucker run his 1500-meter distance.
    /Floozy
  • eldarion79eldarion79 Member Posts: 1,679 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    My first gaming console was the Atari Home Pong console in 85 and the first computer I was introduced to was an Apple II. That green machine had one game and it was the turtle game, which was a triangle.

    Our next computer was a Mattel Aquarius and then a Commodore that I cannot remember, but the only thing I remember about that thing, it took like 20 minutes to load. My grandma got them at a rummage sale.
  • collegepark2151collegepark2151 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    My first computer I used in elementary school was an old IBM all-in-one unit with 5-1/4" floppies.

    My first personal computer of my own was a Microsoft with a 386 processor that ran Windows 3.1 and looked more like a surge protector than a CPU. And was about as useful as a surge protector.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]

    Porthos is not amused.
  • otisnobleotisnoble Member Posts: 1,290 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    My first computer I used in elementary school was an old IBM all-in-one unit with 5-1/4" floppies.

    My first personal computer of my own was a Microsoft with a 386 processor that ran Windows 3.1 and looked more like a surge protector than a CPU. And was about as useful as a surge protector.

    Sounds like the first computers we got in our office when I was in the Air Force.
    Fleet Admiral Stephen
  • earlgrey999earlgrey999 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    and I thought I am on of the older ones here :)

    The 1st computer I played on was a C64 playing amazing games like frogger and boulderdash.

    I was lucky that my father was kinda a computer geek back then and so I enojyed a 386 with 21 MHz (without Turbo-Button 16 MHz). A few years after that we got a 486DX2 66Mhz which was breathtakingly fast.
    It's not a bug, it's a feature
  • eldarion79eldarion79 Member Posts: 1,679 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    I still remember Number Munchers, Word Munchers, and of course Where in the World is Carmen San Diego.
  • tsurutafan01tsurutafan01 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    I actually remember getting to play Carmen Sandiego in school, on an Apple IIE.

    Oregon Trail too.

    They had barely enough educational value to be acceptable I guess. :-)


    "We are smart." - Grebnedlog

    Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
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