What was your first computer?

What was your first computer?

  • PC

    Votes: 56 37.8%
  • Amiga

    Votes: 8 5.4%
  • Amstrad

    Votes: 6 4.1%
  • Spectrum

    Votes: 26 17.6%
  • Atari

    Votes: 9 6.1%
  • Comadore

    Votes: 18 12.2%
  • Sega / Nes

    Votes: 3 2.0%
  • Other

    Votes: 22 14.9%

  • Total voters
    148

Ian

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No doubt there will be quite a few people here that didn't start of by using a PC, but infact an Amiga, Spectrum or some other computer.

Tape drives, TV's for monitors, long load times. But very fun :D

What was your first computer?
 

floppybootstomp

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Strictly speaking, a BBC B that was given to me in '89. Only ever used it for Word Processing and a few games that loaded from cassette though.

I can remember that Arcade Tank game, all green lines, and Chuckie Egg.

First really proper computer was in 94 though I think, I was given a 286 in this huge metal case and a small green monitor.

I had avoided computers up until then but I was now hooked.

Upgraded to a 386 which I put together myself and I've been spending too much money on the things ever since.

And in between those two was a Sega Megadrive - lots of fun :)
 

Taffycat

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It was an Advent laptop running ME, bought in February of 2001. Not bad, but being ME it had a tendency to crash rather a lot, so I quickly became familiar with the BSOD. :lol:
 

Adywebb

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A Sinclair ZX Spectrum........thought it was the business at the time :D
 
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A chuckle for the "Abacus" answer...we had those in grade school, but I also had a couple of those "Slide-Rules," and wish I still had mine from when I was in the Army as it was wide, easy to read, and Yellow in color, but not such a bright shade of Yellow that it hurt your eyes, but I forgot to take it out of a storage unit when I left that trailor court in that city, so that, along with some other things were left there...like a pair of army "Jump Boots."

Also, by the time I got to senior high school, the 9th grade, I had a calculator, and when I was in the army, I had purchased one of those Texas Instruments TI-50's, which had a LED readout, the type of readout they say is dangerous for you to view, but they sure could be easily seen in the dark with that bright display, plus, I wonder how many of you did this, take a number and enter it into the calculator, then turn the calculator upside-down to view the word(s) the number makes? For Example: 710 77345, that is 710(space)77345, upside-down would look like "Shell oil."
Anyway it was one of those programmable calculators.

As far as a computer goes, the first one was a Tandy Color Computer, otherwise known as a COCO Computer, then later on it was a COCO-II, or Color Computer 2 by Tandy, then a HX-1000 I think the model of it was, from Radio Shack, and it was on sale for half price, $300.00, and later I found out why, there weren't any hard drives available for it anymore.

These were all bought new.

Then I went to a computer sale and got a 286 computer
for only $50.00, and it had some name I wasn't aware of, probably a little known company and I can't remember the name of it, but it was full of software that I knew a college student would use and had less than 1 Mb left on the hard drive, and I figure that that's probably one reason it was sold, but I used compression to get around 1/2 of the hard drive space open to me, but I also had removed some of what was on it that I knew I wouldn't use.

Once the people let the general public access the Internet, they had it earlier but mainly for businesses, and they also wanted to set up some sort of way to "police" the Internet or protect it a bit once they opened it up for the public, I had to get a different computer and had to get rid of the ones I didn't need, or couldn't use any longer...and hated to get rid of a perfectly working computer, but they weren't capable of using Windows and used DOS, so I had no need for them anymore.

Interesting to note that the Coco and COCO-II were only 40-columns as far as the display goes, so that was different to get used to, as you'd see 1/2 of the first line on the first line, then 1/2 of the second line on the second line, then you'd see the second half of the first line on the third line and the second half of the second line on the fourth line, Etc.

Oh yah, almost forgot, after the COCO-II I did have a COCO-3 which had an 80-column display.

(Beginning of editing) Oh yes, the COCO, COCO-II and COCO-3 or Color Computer, Color Computer 2 and Color Computer-3 used a cassette tape drive to save and load files. (end of editing)

Have a Great Day,
Bernard
 
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floppybootstomp

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Hey Bernie, welcome to the forum :)

I'm going to assume you're from the States - correct?

What is Coco? :confused:
 
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Coco, pronounced like cocoa, which is a chocolate drink, like hot chocolate, is a short name, or nickname, for Color Computer, and I had a Color Computer, a Color Computer 2 and a Color Computer-3, all by Tandy, which I think was a division of Radio Shack, or affiliated with them anyway.

Basically they were nicknamed COCO or Coco but it just stood for "Color Computer" a model of Tandy computer.

I also had an Atari 2600 I believe it was called, later on they had a 5200, and they were talking about turning them into a personal computer, back when they were around, but my 2600, which you placed plug-in cartridges to play games into, died, and I don't think that they ever went ahead with that idea...of making the 2600 capable to operate as a personal computer...back around 1980 or so this was I think...
 
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Oh yes, I'm in Wisconsin, and I was doing a search for Diskeeper, when I saw the "What was your first computer" poll, as I was using the professional version of Diskeeper, but it had developed a problem, and a message telling me the CD is now corrupted, so I can't re-install Diskeeper, I thought that I'd download a free version of it, even though I was used to the Diskeeper Pro version, to keep my hard drive straightened out as far as the fragmentation goes...I use Diskeeper for defragging the hard drive...Have to go now...

Have a Great Day,
Bernard
 

Rush

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Spectrum 128+ cost me mum and dad about £120 came with Daley Thompsons Decathlon and the Neverending story ..cassette was separate and volume had to be manually adjusted for the games to load...mega mega memories...thanks Mum and Dad..just hope i can leave a memory legacy to my 4 kids...Clive sinclair ...what a man/genius..
happywave.gif
 
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486 in 1997.
8MB RAM, 120MB HDD running Windows 95 & Office 95.
Got me interested in pc's & then when it was no use i clocked it.
Ended up with cpu welding it's self to motherboard!!
 
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Back in 1995, my Dad (an Apple salesman) gave us a tower of some sort that was pretty good for the time. Chucked it a when it died, which is a shame because I would like to have had a go at getting it working now I understand more about computers :(
 
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Hi.
Just found this section.
My first computer was an Electron Acorn,just 32 megs I think.Great computer. We bought it for my daughter she was sill at school then. The programs were on tape so a tape recorder was needed,it took ages for the progs` to load,we had a great time with it.
historian
 
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Oh kewl thread :D Well i remember my dad coming home with a present for me it was a Spectrum 48k the little black one with rubber buttons but we couldnt get it working after a whilst we realised it was a dud so we took it back to the shop and we decided to actually upgrade and i got a Spectrum 128k +2 it was the grey one and it even had a built in tape drive!! lol there was also a +3 with a big floppy drive but i never had one of those. I loved my Speccy had a lot of fun with that and its what got me into computers, my first real PC was a 286 with a massive metal case and monochrome black and orange screen :D I remember playing a very early Microsoft Flight Simulator on it i think it was either FS1 or FS2 can quite remember but i remember taking off my plane then going to school leaving it flying all day then when i came home id land it lol good memories :D

Cheers Lee.

Edit i think that 286 might not have even been a 286 wasnt there a 8086 first? I think actually it may have been one of those, its going back a whilst now though and my memory isnt the greatest.
 
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Sinclair ZX-81

The first excitement of programming in BASIC, looking with amazement at the results on a TV screen and storing and retrieving programs to and from mono (IT HAD TO BE) cassette recorder.
 

Rush

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The spectrum 128 was my first serious gaming machine but my first was this one...right at the onset of computing..

binatone_colour-tv-game-4-plus-2_3.jpg



lol beat that ...man i can remember sunday nights ..they were gaming nights...
 

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