Your first computer

[byegad]

1 ZX Spectrum 48k, circa 1985.

2 goto 1

Yes. Me too. And it had the best spreadsheet, in the form of VuCalc that I've ever used. Sadly it took about 12 minutes to load via tape deck and a large sheet could take several minutes to update after changing a value in a cell. But as a Mathematician it was very good.

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

ZX80 and a cassette recorder to record the programs I had written!

 

[martint235]

16kb Spectrum which I eventually upgraded ot 48kb. When I was up at my dad's in Feb I found my old programming notebook that I used to write Basic and Assembly programs in. The Spectrum itself is in the attic at my dad's but I don't think it works anymore. I'd also fitted a new Spectrum + style keyboard to it.

 

[tyred]

Spectrum +2. Still in the attic at home and still in working order (or was the last time I tried it a few years ago).

10 PRINT "F*** off World!!!!"
20 GOTO 10

 

[nickyboy]

It was 1988 when I first got my hands on a PC. I worked at quite a big company and until then, we all had to write stuff on standard forms which would be taken away by some minion to "The Punch Room". There a dozen or so young lovelies had the job of typing in the stuff I had written on forms for loading up onto the mainframe. This mammoth box was in an air conditioned room that mere mortals weren't allowed to enter. The following morning a printout was delivered to you with the results of your previous day's entries and the process began again.

But then I was poached by the "Costing Department". These were go ahead guys. When I first went there, they had two IBM PCs !! These were kept on a separate desk from the staff. They were covered in dust sheets that you had to remove every morning. And we had a log of usage where you had to write down how long you used a PC for and for what purpose.

Many happy memories learning Louts 123 macro programming language, and dBASE 3 too

 

[MontyVeda]

Yup Specky for me too.... my brother and I got the 16K one for xmas 1982

beautiful machine... a true design classic.

 

[Piemaster]

Sony MSX .....link
MSX was sort of a forerunner to the pc (Microsoft in there somewhere) afaik as it was a group japanese companies that were supposedly working to the same specs. unloke every other manufacturer producing their own machines and standards at the time.

 

[Cheddar George]

ZX81

I remember buying a magazine that had about ten games, you could spend about an hour typing each one in on the crappy membrane keypad. My favourite was a spaceship flying across the screen in glorious monochrome that you moved up and down to avoid stalactites/stalacmites ......... flappy birds if you will.

 

[Mo1959]

ZX81

I remember buying a magazine that had about ten games, you could spend about an hour typing each one in on the crappy membrane keypad. My favourite was a spaceship flying across the screen in glorious monochrome that you moved up and down to avoid stalactites/stalacmites ......... flappy birds if you will.

Ha, ha....yes I remember the games. Took you hours of typing then, if you had made the slightest mistake anywhere, it didn't work. Lol.

 

[Fnaar]

Amstrad PC1512. It was a bit of a shag 'cos you had to use one floppy to get it going, then another to store work on.

I had one of those too. First PC was Wndows 3.1, had less than 1MB hard drive memory capacity and 4MB RAM.

 

[ACS]

ZX Spectrum
BBC micro with Opus 5802 D Double 5 1/4" Dual Disk Drive
386DX 66 with 2 mb of RAM

 

[Cheddar George]

Ah the games .......

Horace goes skiing
Manic Miner
Frogger

Did anybody ever see "Micro men", the comedy drama about Clive Sinclair and the Spectrum/BBC micro rivalry. Clive didn't think there was a future in computer games.

 

[Archeress]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_32/64

Dragon 32 for me.

Hugs
Archeress x

 

[tyred]

My first proper PC was an IBM 486 PS/2 with an 500M hard disk, 50MHz CPU, Windows 3.1, 12MB Ram (I upgraded to 16 at some point), 13" CRT monitor and wait for it.......DRUM ROLL.......


2 floppy disk drives (3.5" and 5.25")

I never actually owned a 5.25" disk.
I still have a working hard disk with Win 3.1 installed on it.

 

[Archeress]

In the early 80's we ran an office computer to do our documentation using floppies. What a PITA! Then I went off to do a computer science degree at UMIST and having splashed out on a PC upgraded it to hard drive PDQ. I've got single photographs that occupy more space than my first hard drive allowed!

Fellow UMIST graduate here too. I was one of those strange creatures doing Paper Science. Lived in St Anselms Hall during my time in Manchester.

Hugs
Archeress x