Your first computer

[Shaun]

ZX81 (1kb) to start with followed by the addition of the 16kb "wobbly" expansion pack!

I upgraded to a Speccy later after I'd taken on every single paper round that came up at the local newsagent (ended up doing the entire local estate of a few thousand houses, morning before school and night after school, as well as Saturday night [sports rag], and the Sunday's [in a time before they became 1" thick with extra mags]).

Felt very proud walking into the shop to buy it with my hard-earned bunch of reddies!!

 

[Shaun]

Proper floppy discs? As in the ones that used to bend

Our first works "server" used to need 30 x 8" floppy drives to do a backup of all its data. It made "backup" days very boring ...

 

[G3CWI]

Our first works "server" used to need 30 x 8" floppy drives to do a backup of all its data. It made "backup" days very boring ...

Floppy disks? I started on punched cards.

I recall when terminals arrived, big day.

...it was also quite common to write your own operating system. That's how that bloke Gates got started.

 

[cisamcgu]

First computer I owned was a Commodore 64 - brilliant for games, rubbish for programming.
My first job was working with PDP 11-24 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-11 and a VAX-780 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAX

I thought they were wonderful, and I still think the VMS operating system has yet to be bettered.

Oh. The memories ..

Andrew

 

[Sunny Portrush]

As the OP, all the above makes my first PC seem thoroughly modern! I also remember having some sort of games system that u plugged into the TV and play a version of tennis on it or when u had no friends round to marvel at it, u could play squash on it with ur "racquet" getting smaller and smaller - who needs HD graphics lol

 

[Dark46]

Commadore 64 with a tape player

 

[morrisman]

The first computer I worked on, in 1973, was a Marconi Myriad 1 that was used at the London Air Traffic Control Centre to process all the flight data for the military side of things in the UK. It had 32Kwords of memory and 5Mword disc drives.

Proper computing!

 

[Supersuperleeds]

Spectrum 48k here as well. Broke ours playing Daley Thompson's Decathlon. Use to spend hours typing in games from magazines and never got any to work.

 

[oldfatfool]

I had a Philips G7000, rocked over the atari system as you could actually compute on it

Followed by a vic 20 with the dodgy tape player with lousy connection.

 

[HB_Dude]

I started off with a ZX81 with 16kb memory pack, after that I had an Oric Atmos with a heady 48kb of memory......such power

 

[gbb]

I remember getting our first properPC, we didnt (many didnt at that time)..even have an internet connection, so it was just a standalone PC. We played solitare, did some spreadsheet and word stuff, just finding our way round it...then sat back and thought....Is that it ?
Without the internet, we soon realised it seemed a bit pointless.

 

[hoopdriver]

An Amstrad, back in the '80s.

First laptop - an Apple with 40mg hard drive and 4mg memory.
Present laptop - Macbook Pro with 1Tb hard drive and 8Gb memory

 

[Sunny Portrush]

I remember getting our first properPC, we didnt (many didnt at that time)..even have an internet connection, so it was just a standalone PC. We played solitare, did some spreadsheet and word stuff, just finding our way round it...then sat back and thought....Is that it ?
Without the internet, we soon realised it seemed a bit pointless.

Aah, 14.4kps dial-up, that thing rocked!

 

[CopperBrompton]

ZX-81, which I still have (though no power supply or monitor, so no idea whether it still works). Then a Video Genie, BBC Model B, ACT Sirius, ACT Apricot, Osborne 1 and then the first Macintosh in 1984. Thirty years later, still using Macs ...

 

[asterix]

I remember getting our first properPC, we didnt (many didnt at that time)..even have an internet connection, so it was just a standalone PC. We played solitare, did some spreadsheet and word stuff, just finding our way round it...then sat back and thought....Is that it ?
Without the internet, we soon realised it seemed a bit pointless.

There was always stuff like dBase and DIY Dos applications. My first job on a pre-internet, pre-windows PC was to write an multi-dimensional, drill down executive Information system fed with data from a mainframe management information system. It used a domain specific programming language but order to speed the thing up I had to write a bubble sort application using DOS and we also had great fun trying to get the mainframe link working reliably. When we demonstrated it to executives the most common critique were the colour schemes we chose. We'd a budget between 1 and 2 million quid so it was a shame when it had to be pulled because no-one could fathom out how to get it to work under Windows, never mind the internet!