What was your first computer?

Mine was a Tiki 100, a Norwegian z80 CPU (comparable to the intel 8080) machine. It came with 100K RAM and two 200K diskette stations. It ran a Norwegian version of the CP/M operating system. Monochrome screen.

I bought it in 1983/84 for 17000 NOK, around 2000 USD.

I used it for text processing, and for learning Pascal programming (Turbo Pascal ver 1.0). A couple of games as well, one with a snake which grew whenever it got something to eat and didn't want to meet itself. Another one with robots crashing into each other. And a couple of text adventures. I also programmed a game for my oldest daughter's birthday, based on a Norwegian folktale about a herdsman employed by the king to guard a bunch of not very cooperative hares.

I did not use it for keeping track of what was in our freezer, which back then was a huge selling point for home computers.

I had some problems with it, it would hang form time to time. Got a replacement with the same problems. The third machine worked as it should.

The Tiki machines were intended for use in schools. But at that time 16 bits machines were coming, so building, selling and buying 8bit hardware wasn't exactly future proof. The company went bankerupt a couple of years later.

I still have it. Somewhere. And I think the hardware might be OK. But I doubt it will boot, can't imagine those 35 year old CP/M disks work anymore. Perhaps I should try. Could be fun.

My next computer was an IBM PS/2 model 70, running OS/2 1.0.

pibbur who wonders what the watchers got.

EDIT: This is how it looked:

Our first home computer was in 1995. It was a pre-Prentium Compaq machine before HP swallowed them up. We started off with it being on Win 3.11, which no one in our family understood.

A family friend came to install Win 95 a few week/months later and that was a revelation. Very user-friendly for the time and looked amazing.

Unfortunately, the computer ran horribly slow, because the CPU was made for Win 3.11's type of s/w requirements. We still had lots of fun with it and that's how I got into gaming. I think I mostly played the simply Windows games at the time like Pinball, Minesweeper etc. What really got me hooked was when a friend gave me a copy of Age of Empires a couple of years later.

Our first family computer was back in 1982. A Texas Instruments Ti-99/4A:



The OS was TI Basic (Yes, the OS was a programming language). I spent quite a bit of time looking for books at the library that might have game code I could copy and play. We had the optional "speech synthesizer" so we'd get some uber cool talky games. It took cartridges, but also it could be hooked up to a cassette tape to load programs. I still have fond memories of playing Parsec, which was pretty cool game for it's time "Great shot, pilot!".

My first personal computer was a 386DX/33 with 16MB or RAM, Math Co-Processor, 40MB HDD, and an actual 14" colour CRT. My dad was sick of me experimenting with his Autocad machine that he needed for work, so I bought it off him by giving him money every month for a year. I only found out many years later that I got an extreme discount. The adventures really began when I equipped it with a Sound Blaster Pro, and a 2400 Baud modem which lead to the discovery of BBS worlds.

I’m surprised you all still know such details.
My first two ones were second-hand, DOS, monochrome screen. I used them to play games, which I got from someone on 5 1/4 floppy disks. O and to write stuff, but that started with the second second-hand, with Word Perfect.
The first new pc I bought was a Tulip computer.

My first was was an add on to the Intelevision system and I actually learned to programme in BASIC using it. After that though, I bought a Commodore 64 mainly for good RPG gaming!!

I'm not old enough for this to sound cool, so I'll pass.

Caddy said:

Our first family computer was back in 1982. A Texas Instruments Ti-99/4A:

The OS was TI Basic (Yes, the OS was a programming language). I spent quite a bit of time looking for books at the library that might have game code I could copy and play. We had the optional "speech synthesizer" so we'd get some uber cool talky games. It took cartridges, but also it could be hooked up to a cassette tape to load programs. I still have fond memories of playing Parsec, which was pretty cool game for it's time "Great shot, pilot!".

My first personal computer was a 386DX/33 with 16MB or RAM, Math Co-Processor, 40MB HDD, and an actual 14" colour CRT. My dad was sick of me experimenting with his Autocad machine that he needed for work, so I bought it off him by giving him money every month for a year. I only found out many years later that I got an extreme discount. The adventures really began when I equipped it with a Sound Blaster Pro, and a 2400 Baud modem which lead to the discovery of BBS worlds.

Click to expand...

Where's the screen ?

ZX81 in kit form. When I was done putting it together it was more an objet d'art than a computer, which is to say completetly non functional. I mailed it back to Sinclair with some more cash and they got me a working one I learned Z80 assembler on that one.

The first computer I used was a Honeywell time-share initially based in Melbourne then in Texas (seamless move in 1973!). My school had a teletype that you wrote your programs offline (mainly BASIC, which is itself an acronym, and some Fortran, which isn't an acronym) onto paper tape. Then, very infrequently due to costs, you logged into the timeshare service and you ran your paper tape through and hoped it worked. You did lots of desk checking.
The first computer I bought was in 1981, and it was an Apple II+, initially with cassette storage then floppy disk (8 Inch single-sided). I used it mainly to play games like Zork (I had already played adventure on several machines between 1973 and 1981.

I messed around on an Altair 8800 that a teacher owned, but my first PC was a Commodore VIC20 followed by the C64/128/Amiga. I also had the Apples at school, thanks to the same teacher. I was indoctrinated very early. I mowed a ton of yards to offset my computer addiction. Wish I still had some of these.

Early C64 favorites:
Temple of Aphshai
Miner 2049er
Dino Eggs
Jumpman and Jumpman Jr
MULE

Eye said:

I’m surprised you all still know such details.

Click to expand...

You mean, you do not?

pibbur who shivers at the thought

PS. Remembering things like that is as essensial as remembering the names of one's children. And I do remember the name of the oldest one. DS.

My first home computer was a Commodore 64. The person I bought it from was a teenager that was being forced to part with his machine because of some....shenanigans he'd been involved with using said device. I got the system, and maybe one hundred games/utility programs for two hundred bucks. Prior to this, I'd been very familiar with the Apple Two device, but hadn't actually owned one, just used a few in university days.

My first computer was a 486DX, which I assembled from various parts and cast offs. It looked not dissimilar to this one.

My first computer was like this one below:



More about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gradiente_Expert

I acknowledge that MSX models weren't well known outside Brazil and perhaps Japan, but they (the Expert and especially the HotBit HB 8000) were somewhat popular here. The Expert MSX processor was a Z80A.

My first computer was an ELF II Kit, and then i got a C64.

Some people here are very old.
Mine was Pentium 200, 2.1 GB HDD, 0.5MB VRAM, 15" Samtron screen back in '97.
I think there was only P233 stronger than this.

Had it till Athlon 4 1400 in 2001 I think.

I used my brother's C64 from an early age, but when I was a little older I got a ZX Spectrum. I have fond memories of it, but I preferred the C64 overall.

Hey, a fellow 99er

Did you know the machine had a 16 bit processor. The only home PC that had one at the time.

But it also had only 4k. It ranked 2nd in every PC comparison at the time except in their own of course. That's why my Gramma bought it for us. Obviously, in retrospect, we should have asked for a C64, but I did get my chops on that thing.

Its too bad it only had 4k of RAM and its really too bad that it was such as closed machine. They gave us Poke and Peek in Extended BASIC but that's not much good when you don't know what is at any memory location. Extended BASIC also took up a a good extra portion of memory and not everybody had it, so writing programs in it loses half your audience.

It also cost $1000 for the RS232 interface box which you needed just to have a floppy disk. But the Voice Module expansion was years ahead of anything in the market and programmable for. There was even voice recognition software.

The TI-99/8 would have been the greatest PC yet released. It ran at 10mhz.

The company was such a load of contradictions. If only the 8 was released.

Caddy said:

Our first family computer was back in 1982. A Texas Instruments Ti-99/4A:

The OS was TI Basic (Yes, the OS was a programming language). I spent quite a bit of time looking for books at the library that might have game code I could copy and play. We had the optional "speech synthesizer" so we'd get some uber cool talky games. It took cartridges, but also it could be hooked up to a cassette tape to load programs. I still have fond memories of playing Parsec, which was pretty cool game for it's time "Great shot, pilot!".

My first personal computer was a 386DX/33 with 16MB or RAM, Math Co-Processor, 40MB HDD, and an actual 14" colour CRT. My dad was sick of me experimenting with his Autocad machine that he needed for work, so I bought it off him by giving him money every month for a year. I only found out many years later that I got an extreme discount. The adventures really began when I equipped it with a Sound Blaster Pro, and a 2400 Baud modem which lead to the discovery of BBS worlds.

Click to expand...

We didn't have a home computer - they were too expensive - but the school i went to had a donated 6502 box and I could walk over to the university and play on a pdp-11 and dec-10. I can't really call the dec-10 'my' computer but I can say it was a blast to program.

The P2000 was my first one, somewhere in the 80s.

It had a hardware ROM with basic, but also with other stuff. It could also use a tape, on which you could store programs and load games from, that we’re hard to get and looked crappy as well
This is the Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philips_P2000