OK, I nicked the idea from another thread, but everyone on here must have a story to tell about their first computer.
Not a very interesting story in my case, being something of a late computing developer.
I bought a Toshiba laptop about two years ago.
Would still have it were it not for a little accident with a glass of pop.
Over to you....
Last edited by: Iffy on Tue 21 Dec 10 at 19:10
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I could not list all the computers I have had because I would crash the MySQL database!
Eitherway a breif list
1984 - My parents first C64, don't remember much about it
1990 - parents second C64 I learnt BASIC on this machine and was never off it.
1993 - My first IBM PC, A 386 SX20 with 2MB RAM, 80MB IDE HD and Windows 3.0/Dos 4.0
1996 - First 486, an SX2 50 with Windos 3.1
1999 - was building my own PCs by this time and was at the local computer shop every week. I remember in 1998 paying £160 for a 2GB hard drive for my 486 DX4!.
2001 - My first laptop, a Dell 386 with 1.5MB of RAM and Windows 3.1. Paid £30 for it.
2008 - My first smartphone, a Nokia N81.
The first time I ever used a mouse was in 1991 when my primary school just got an Acorn A3200.
I first use Windows when my cousins first got their PC in 1992.
Got bored of it all now, my main PC is an antique (AMD X2 4200, 2GB RAM, 500GB HD, Vista) when you consider my job!
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Was a Sinclair SX81 and later a Toshiba MSX thing (which was actually very good)
My first PC was an IBM with a full 25mhz and a 45mb HD..
Last edited by: Pugugly on Tue 21 Dec 10 at 19:19
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25Mhz was that a 386 or one of the early 486s? The only 486s I remember with 40MB hard drives are the ones me and my mate old.
I remember being 15 and coming back home with wods of cash we had made from selling 486s out of broken bits.
Our favourite was buying IBM PS/2 VGA monitors at £20 a pop and selling with high end 486s. We made quite a lot of pocket money until my parents found out and put a stop to it!.
While most teenagers were getting drunk I was at computer markets playing Delboy.
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1981: IBM PC with 16KB of RAM and twin flopppies of 360k..
Or was in 1982?
Time flies..
Last edited by: madf on Tue 21 Dec 10 at 19:20
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>> 1981: IBM PC with 16KB of RAM and twin flopppies of 360k..
>>
>> Or was in 1982?
>>
>> Time flies..
>>
Sorry 320K floppy, 360L came when Dos went up from DOS 1.x to 2.x
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I borrowed a "Pet"(?) from work and actually wrote some simple programs for statistical tests (correlation coefficients, Chi2 etc)for data collected for Geography projects. We then moved on to the very sophisticated BBC computers with tape input! I couldn't imagine writing a program these days (I can't even get my printer to work wirelessly!!) I also remember going round to see a guy from Leicester Uni about setting up a receiver to get images from weather satellites in the early '80's (?)and he showed me how he could receive pictures from colleagues at other Universities in the USA via his computer. I suppose it was the beginnings of the internet?
Pity I'm such a technotit!!
Phil
I also remember, I think, Research Machines 360Z and a "286"
Last edited by: PhilW on Tue 21 Dec 10 at 19:29
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RJ will know a lot more about that than I do. I am bit rusty with TCP/IP now so I don't remember the exact dates.
I am pretty sure by then mid 80's DNS was around so the internet was worked pretty much the same as it does today. The big difference is the world wide web was not around then.
I have a 1983 advert for Compuserve some where which is advertising the C64 modem. Buying it would allow you to send emails and do online shopping on your C64. And yes that was 1983.
Of course the first communications via universities and computers happened in the early 60's so by the early 1980's it must have been very common. Again I don't really know anything about that side of the things.
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My first one was a ZX81.
Bought as a kit.. £49.99 as memory serves.
Worked first time, but that keyboard was terrible.
As was faffing about with a cassette player to load and save programmes.
then
spectrum,
spectrum+
amiga,
PC (1995)
Last edited by: AnotherJohnH on Tue 21 Dec 10 at 19:41
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Like PU, my first computer was a ZX81 which had an extra 16Kb added soon after. First experience was with a TRS-80 though. Then followed (with some omissions):
- ZX Spectrum
- BBC Master 128
- Atari ST
- Lots of good kit at Uni to use ;-)
- My first 'PC' which I had was based on an Intel 486 and ran Windows 3.11, OS/2 Warp and Linux
- Various PC I built since
- Cheap PC via the PC4Home type scheme which I still have (and it has an Nvidia GTS250 GPU)
- Work laptops - various but currently a Core i5 with 8GB RAM
- Apple iMac
And smartphones too which now includes an Android 2.2 on a Galaxy S.
First experience of 'mice' was around 1985 and I wrote my first mouse/GUI based application in around 1986/87 on the BBC Model B. Had scrolling windows, overlapping graphics, etc.
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The RM was probably a 380Z running CP/M - Z80 based hence the 80.
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You must have been very young when you had those early computers. I was 11 when I got my first PC and didn't really start programming it until I was 13 (QBASIC and then Quickbasic) although I did mess about with Basica a little bit.
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As Rattle mentions, the Internet as we know it has been around for decades and is TCP/IP based. It spawned from DARPA NET and apart from speed etc is largely the same to be honest. The flaws in how DNS works goes back a long way.
New protocols and applications have come along since like the WWW. Before we had websites we had things like Gopher and USENET. I suppose some people think World Wide Web = Internet but that is not the case. Internet is just a network of networks including our home LANs now.
Anyone remember using PRESTEL though?
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I remember seeing PRESTEL but never used it, never had any reason to.
Didn't even use the world wide web until late 1995.
I actually think the biggest change to my life apart from first getting the internet is Facebook. My group of mates rarely even organise things via SMS or mobile calls it is all done via facebook now accessed via a smartphone.
I was on the bus today coming from the city centre and I had to stand up. I was staggered at the amount of people using Facebook on the bus. I haven't traveled on a bus in rush hour for a good year and the chance within that year was shocking.
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"The RM was probably a 380Z running CP/M - Z80 based hence the 80."
That sounds more like it - we had a weekend up in Manchester to learn how to use them - most of it went over my head (oh, except the beer in the evenings - that went down my neck)
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At Home
In order
Sinclair ZX81 (kit)
Commodore Pet
Commodore Vic 20
Commodore 64
(all home built from here on)
IBM PC with 1 floppy and 8k memory
IBM PC with two 360k floppies and 16k memory
IBM PC XT 512k memory one 360k floppy 10mb Hard drive,
IBM PC AT, 286, 512k main memory, 512k xms memory, 10 mb hard drive
IBM PS2 386 running OS/2 1.1 then OS/2 2.0
Then various home brew computers stepping through the intel line running variously OS/2, os/2 warp. Os/2 4. Windows 2.0, 3.1, 3.3, NT, windows 95, windows 98, windows 2000, XP, Vista and Se7en.
I have had 8 Thinkpads. 4 PDA;s 3 smart fones.
At work I had
IBM/360
IBM/370
IBM 4380
IBM 3090
IBM S38
IBM S/390
IBM 3600
IBM 4700
IBM AS400
IBM 8100
IBM P series
IBM Z series
Operating systems I have used
OS/360 OS/VS2, MVS, VM/CMS, TPF, VSE, DPPX DPCX, OS/390, OS/400, AIX, 4690.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
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How the heck do you remember all those Z?
I had a 10mm spanner once - think I might have lost it! But I have got 7,8,9,11,12,............
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In the computer business, you learn a new language. One that exists of acronyms, and digit groups, Its so extensive a dictionary was published.
Not only can I remember them all, I can actually see the hardware and its floorspace in my mind, and still see the user interfaces,
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" I can actually see the hardware and its floorspace in my mind, and still see the user interfaces, "
I can do the same with my spanners - except the 10mm, lost it a long time ago, wonder what it looked like?
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>> I can do the same with my spanners - except the 10mm, lost it a
>> long time ago, wonder what it looked like?
It was a little bit bigger than the 8mm, and a little bit smaller than the 12mm.
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Our first computer was a 48k Spectrum (rubber keys!!). Not sure of the year, but it must have been early '80s - 82/83? IIRC Daley Thomson's Decathalon killed the keyboard (1984?), and it was replaced by a Spectrum 128k with 'proper' plastic keys.
Our first PC was some sort of cast-off from my Dad's office - it must have been around 1986/7 - definitely an IBM, but I don't remember anything about the spec other than the green screen, the imense wight a a very 'clicky' keyboard.
I bought an Amstrad PC1512 when I started Uni in '88; 5¼ inch floppy drive and 10, or was it 20? MB HD with an 8086 processor, which a quick google shows, was a stellar 8MHz!! Funny thing is, I'm sure it cost around £500 - half the cost of the 5 year old Uno I bought at the same time!!
Peter
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Reading the replies to this thread has made me realise I lied.
My first computer was an Amstrad PCW8512.
But I never regarded it as a computer, just an electric typewriter.
I think Locoscript was the only program I had.
www.fvempel.nl/8256.html
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I had one of those as well iffy - green screen et al...!
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Me too! And a carp printer with a daisywheel and an expensive cassette ribbon. My son had a ZX80 years before and got very good with it, went on to become a technician/programmer in USA.
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When IBM released the PS/2 I remember our school got a few. We tried setting up the Model 30 (twin floppy) and the Model 50 (20Mb hard disk) and the latter did not work. At xmas the headmaster wanted to take home one. I pointed out the Model 50 did not work so he took the other. I asked if I could borrow the Model 50 and get it working and he said yes.
So headmaster got the lower spec machine and after plugging in the hard drive properly got that working. Actually it might have been over the summer I got the computer (6 weeks). I bet schools don't lend computers to pupils anymore.
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Smart-phones -5 x Blackberries ( 4 work, one of my own) and my iPhone4 !
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Started with a ZX81 and worked my way to PCs via Spectrums and countless others. I can remember when Teletext was cutting edge and you chose a TV by how quick the Fast text was.
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I have had four true smart phones.
Nokia N81
Nokia N85
Nokia N97 Mini (business phone)
Samsung Galazy S (personal phone).
I did have a Windows phone many years ago but it lacked 3G, WIFI and GPS so can't call it a smartphone really.
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my first computer
1985 a c64
1985 a commodore amiga a500
1998 a pc with a cyrix m2 processor 333 mhz, s3 virge dx, 1 gigabyte ram, a floppy all on windows 95
2004 a medion pc with a athlon xp 3200, 160gb, 512 mb ram a nividia 5200 fx card, upgraded the lot to addin a additional hd a 320 gb, upgrading the ram to 1.25gb, the gfx card to a nvidia 7800 gs its a agp, and upgraded the psu to a akasa 400 watts, and a antec mid tower unit as when i upgraded i had heat problems with the original medion case as that was mini tower sized.
Just waiting to upgrade to the next intel/ amd bulldozer cpu prob april 2011
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I remember the alchol fueled arguments I had with my mate about the Cyrix M2. I had one clocked at 333Mhz (it was actually a 300Mhz over clocked) and my mate had a Celeron 300A.
He reckoned the Celeron was a lot better as the cyrix had a weak floating point unit. My reply was with the amount I saved buying a Cyrix I have 64MB of EDO RAM you have 32MB.
Funnily in around 2002 we both went our seperate ways, he become a recluse and I became the opposite.
None my current mates are really into computers apart from my university lot who I now only see every few months. I think it is a good thing really!
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The Celeron 300A easily overclocked to 450MHz by upping the FSB. It also benefited from on-die L2 cache (the Pentium II at the time did not).
So I think your mate had the better CPU ;-) Now around that time a little known company called NexGen had a good CPU and the ideas behind that gave us all modern x86 CPUs from AMD and Intel (AMD bought them). The NexGen gave us a RISC implementation of the CISC x86 instruction set.
EDIT: And the later Socket 370 Celeron's based on Mendecino could be used in dual CPU configurations too ;-)
Last edited by: rtj70 on Tue 21 Dec 10 at 22:23
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First 'PC' I owned - ZX81
First 'PC' I used - commodore Pet
first computer used - some ICL thing running FORTRAN under George3 - some things are well consigned to the histiry books
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GEORGE was a well designed operating system and FORTRAN still has it's uses for the right type of programming. Designed by Backus of Backus-Naur Form (BNF) fame. Suppose you'd need to have studied computing programming to appreciate that link.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Tue 21 Dec 10 at 22:01
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Well I was studying Environmental Science at the time, expecting beaches, volcanoes, glaciers, not being stuck inside a windowless breezeblock building coding punch cards ! - a building that still retains some connection to both the environment and computing, as if I recognised the pictures correctly, what used to be UEA's computing centre now houses the Climatic Rasearch Unit, which was the subject of much hacking and or discussion last year
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my 1st PC was a IBM AT 286 with 1 meg of ram (you would not belive the size of the card) and a 30meg Hard Drive running Windows 3.0 (yes thats correct 3.0) that I still have the set up discs for in my parents attic
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We had a Spectrum 48k which we all shared, but the first computer that was all mine, and which I spent years of my life learning the intricacies of, was a Commodore Amiga 500.
I absolutely loved that computer. Intuitive, fully multitasking OS, four channel stereo audio, 4096 colours, and all the expansions and plug in add-ons you could want.
Watch the space scenes in the sci-fi series Babylon 5 to see what an Amiga could do with the appropriate hardware expansions. So far ahead of a late 80's PC it was laughable.
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Just remember the one we had in school, basically a telex terminal, you had to contact the mainframe by telephone connect it to a modem the size of an encyclopaedia with rubber cups for the standard GPO phone - we could programme it in BASIC to land lunar modules - you needed a lot of imagination.
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I worked for a large corporate and introduced their first LAN in 1994, 2 Dell Pentium 90s with 1GB HDs (big then) and 8mb RAM running Windows 3.1.1, Windows for Workgroups.
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I suppose I could claim the first computer I used was back in 1969 when the firm where I did my engineering apprenticeship got a multi head drilling and milling machine controlled by a punch tape. It had six heads as I remember and the tape was fed through dictating all the operations. Only myself and the other apprentice were allowed to use it for ages because management and shop floor couldn't agree on a bonus system for the new machine.
I remember getting my ears chewed off by the machine shop charge-hand one day when he caught me standing on the trailing tape as I loaded some work on. Revolutionary bit of kit back then, especially for what was a back street company.
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First computer I got my hands on was a Foxboro Fox 2/30.
It had 16K words of core memory (24-bit word) and 128K words of fixed-head drum storage, later upgraded to 24K and 256K respectively. The base cabinet was about 4ft wide, 3ft deep and 6ft high and ran an operating system called Multi-Programming Operating System which had a real-time component and an interactive/job component. It was programmed in either Assembler, Fortran IV or a macro language called MAX (for process control functions).
To boot the machine you had to load a paper tape into the reader and use two banks of toggle switches on the frontpanel to load binary data into hardware addresses to get the reader to read the tape into core and begin execution.
rtj70 said:
>FORTRAN still has it's uses..
Fortran is still widely used in bread & butter HPC environments, often optimised with sections of assembler or C when the compiler isn't as clever as it could be.
Rattle said:
>He reckoned the Celeron was a lot better as the cyrix had a weak floating point unit.
Floating point use is negligible in most commercial/PC applications so your extra 32MB was the better choice.
Kevin...
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>> rtj70 said:
>>
>> >FORTRAN still has it's uses..
>>
>> Fortran is still widely used in bread & butter HPC environments, often optimised with sections
>> of assembler or C when the compiler isn't as clever as it could be.
As I know it is - how do people think they programme a lot of the high performance systems. The likes of the original Cray produced excellent library files to help programmes to take advantage of vector processing units. Nowadays it's massively parallel systems.
I did enjoy computer architecture at uni where I met some important people for me at least:
- One of the chief designers of ARM (Steve Furber)
- The main architect behind what Apple used to move from PowerPC to Intel CPUs (they called it Rosetta). The company he founded (Transitive) was bought by IBM.
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I learnt to count and calculate on an Abacus ! - Does that count ? Oh and I could use a slide rule !
Last edited by: Pugugly on Tue 21 Dec 10 at 22:38
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>> Oh and I could use a slide rule !
Tried using my brother's slide rule in the 80s. I broke it. Ooops. And when we looked at log tables in school (more for interest) I spotted an error in them.
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I have often wondered if I was born 10-15 years earlier what I would have ended up doing.
I was never that good at maths so computers would not have interested me that much but electronics would have done. I would like to think I would have been one of the first to buy the ZX80 or ZX81s.
I did program in BASIC at a fairly early age but it wasn't to calculate things, I made lots of graphics so the maths was used purely to make something pretty on a TV.
I know by 11 years old I wasn't interested in all the fancy graphics the Amiga could do and just wanted a proper IBM PC.
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>> I know by 11 years old I wasn't interested in all the fancy graphics the
>> Amiga could do and just wanted a proper IBM PC.
Lovely OS as well, Rattle. The graphics were its selling point, but it could do so much more. You could even buy XT and AT PC cards to plug into it for full IBM PC compatibility.
I'm not a sad, nostalgic so-and-so at all. ;-)
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I did originally want an Amiga but by early 93 it was becoming clear that the PC would win and the Amiga was dying out. I still wonder if I had made the right choice though.
I certainl;y got ripped of with the PC, an IBM PS/1 but I sold it for a good price back in 1997 as a farmer wanted for its build quality rather than power.
I remember even in 1994 the RAM being the main issue with it, I could never get OS/2 Warp to run it. When I got my first 486 the first thing I did was install OS/2 but it was still not powerful enough so I ended up Dos 6.22 and Windows 3.11. By then Windows 95 had come out and I remember being so excited buying Windows 95 for Christmas 96 (yes I know I was late!).
I don't really have much experience with Amigas.
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I could run OS/2 Warp on my 486 - must have been 94. It also happily ran WfWG 3.11 inside a virtualised DOS session too. It was certainly fast enough. Linux at the time made best use of the limited hardware - programming the graphic driver for the monitor was 'fun'. You had to calculate refresh timings and getting it wrong would destroy the CRT.
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>> driver for the monitor was 'fun'. You had to calculate refresh timings and getting it
>> wrong would destroy the CRT.
That was a bit of an urban myth. They never destroyed themselves, a few would shut down with a buzzy noise but would always recover after a rest! - Mostly.
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Shutting down X windows was necessary to debug. But driving a CRT at the wrong H and V refresh was not a good idea ;-)
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This was a lowly and rare 486 SX2 50Mhz with 4MB RAM. I did upgrade it to 12MB when the price of 72-pin SIMMS fell to about £30 for 8MB (I was a teenager so poor) and could have probably ran 0S/2 easily with 12MB of RAM but by then Windows 95 was out.
Didn't really get into Linux until about 2003 when I bought a second P166 MMX laptop with 16MB RAM. XP would not run on it for obvious reasons but found a nice Linux distro called Vector which ran on it. I even after many days of reading forums managed to get 802.11b working on it too. Actually that was on my second laptop, the P233MMX :(.
Last edited by: RattleandSmoke on Tue 21 Dec 10 at 23:38
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The Amiga had a pre-emptive multitasking OS which would run in as little as 256KB of address space, and which would comfortably fit, complete with GUI, on an 880kb floppy disk. The definition of efficient code.
Commodore basically acquired the Amiga corporation, and therefore the Amiga as a 95% complete product. It was a testament to how far ahead of the PC it was that even with near zero development through the end of the 80's, it remained competitive. By the early 90's though the PC's constant hardware development took it past the Amiga.
Commodore basically didn't have a clue what they were doing. Very little hardware development, and poorly managed OS upgrades with compatibility issues.
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The Amiga was certainly ahead of it's time.
Dedicated chip memory and system memory with co processors.
Paula, Agnus chips etc come to mind.
The nearest we get today are GPU processors of graphics cards and ARM processors.
From what I have heard the ARM processors do relatively little processing and just dish work out to hardware supporting chips.
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>As I know it is - how do people think they programme a lot of the high performance systems.
Perl, Java? ;-)
Kevin...
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>> Perl, Java? ;-)
You are joking aren't you. Even with a JIT compiler, Java is pseudo code. You don't spend millions on a fast computer and run an interpreted language. If anyone does then I am surprised.
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>You are joking aren't you.
You seem to have overlooked the ";-)".
Kevin...
PS. I work in the High Performance Computing division of a major manufacturer.
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No I didn't overlook the ;-)
A lot of applications are poorly written hence us needed 8-core machines soon to run Windows and Office.
Java (as used on Android for example) is not efficient.
But the work done by Transitive on binary code emulation/conversion was a bit clever... code stored native after conversion. Now an IBM company.
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>No I didn't overlook the ;-)
>A lot of applications are poorly written hence us needed 8-core machines soon to run Windows and Office.
Microsoft, nuff said!
>Java (as used on Android for example) is not efficient.
Java's primary objective was to be portable, not efficient, you're missing the point.
Believe me, customers who spend tens of millions per annum on power, cooling and infrastructure costs do not neglect code efficiency.
Kevin...
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>> you're missing the point.
No I'm not ;-) You're assuming something about my background then. I said it was inefficient. I never commented on why Sun created Java.
Rob BSc MSc (Computer Science).
When SETI first appeared my brother went on honeymoon and left it running on his computer. Two weeks later he was in the top ten worldwide for work done. I'll not say what computer it ran on and how expensive it was. It was not a PC ;-)
Last edited by: rtj70 on Wed 22 Dec 10 at 00:34
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>No I'm not ;-) You're assuming something about my background then. I said it was
>inefficient. I never commented on why Sun created Java.
>Rob BSc MSc (Computer Science).
Eh?
Kevin...
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I was pointing out I know why for high performance systems you'd not for example use Java. I studied amongst other things computer architecture, CPU design and compilers/languages at university. Hence the BSc/MSc reference.
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RTJ
Kevin was merely pointing out that customers who spend gazzilions on the infrastructure to gain HPC, tend not to use unsuitable compliers or code bases. Massively parallel or not, each node still costs money.
You appear to have taken it all the wrong way.
Oh and I have seen plenty of BSc/Msc computer sciences graduates who cant plug an Ethernet cable in the right way.
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"Rob BSc MSc (Computer Science).
Eh?"
It's the poor man's equivalent of 'Do you know who I am?!'
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>>Would still have it were it not for a little accident with a glass of pop.>>
Liquidating your assets?
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...Liquidating your assets?...
I only slopped about a tablespoonful of drink on the keyboard, but it still totalled what was a £400 laptop which was barely out of warranty.
I know they're not meant to be waterproof, but I was disappointed it wasn't a little more resistant to spillage.
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Funnily enough, I was 10 when I got my first computer in ’85 (excluding an Atari 2600 some years before – Pitfall Harry FTW!!)
It was a Commodore 16+4 (the plus 4 related to a full extra 4 Kb of ram IIRC)
1987 – Atari ST, wanted an Amiga but they were £700 compared to the ‘summer special’ ST pack at £400 I think. A 386 (or maybe 486) pc was stuff of dreams at £1500 upwards.
I quite liked the user interface on the Atari (TOS).
1996 before I got my first PC and got on the www with ‘Freeserve’. Since then various Desktops & Laptops, but always buying in at the bottom to mid range. I’ve never spent serious money on a computer for new technology.
I wonder how my daughter will remember her first computer in 25 years time?
Widows 7, 3GB RAM, 320 GB Hard Drive, Pentium T4500 (around 2.6GHz)
Commodore plus 4 – 20Kb RAM, Cassette tape media. No idea what sort of chips inside and can’t remember anything about the OS.
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My list of pc's :-
1986 (ish) - Commodore 16 (made some programs on it but always ran out of memory).
1990 - Commodore 64 (made various programs including a word processor with drop down menus (it was very slow to use).
1994 - Commodore Amiga 1200 with CD drive and 300 MB hard drive (made various programs using blitz basic) - also got into the Demo scene
1997 - Pentium 200 - Packard bell (hell) machine with numerous problems throughout its life.
After this I had numerous pc's.
Too many to list to be honest.
Also made a program called goo media center that is out there on the winter-net.
Now I have a Acer aspire one running windows 7
Ubuntu 64 bit server (with its massive film and mp3 storage) streaming mp3's and films over the lan and web.
A Hisense media box connected to a 37 inch TV that can play all media from the server.
Quite an integrated setup.
Shame my blackberry phone does not support flash otherwise I would be able to watch films on that as well.
Last edited by: diddy1234 on Wed 22 Dec 10 at 09:08
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My first computing experience was on a BBC Micro owned by my middle brother.
I think he paid best part of £400 for it.
Would have been the first time I'd seen a click-button QWERTY keyboard.
Spent many a happy Sunday afternoon tapping in lines of BASIC from a magazine to produce a very, er, basic game to play.
We later moved on to programs on cassettes, but where brother got those from I've no idea.
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>> I know they're not meant to be waterproof, but I was disappointed it wasn't a little more
>> resistant to spillage.
Most laptops now come with spill proof keyboards.
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(dates are approximate)
1979 - Casio FX501 programmable calculator (128 steps)
1979 - Casio FX502 (256 steps) - paid school friend £25(?) to swap with my 501
1980 - Acorn Atom - fully expanded! 12k RAM + 12k ROM
1982 - ZX Spectrum 48k
1986 - Amstrad 6128
1988 - Atari 520STFM
1995 - first PC, from Actinet; P2 300MHz IIRC
DIY since then
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wow that brings back memories
I did not count the 'Casio FX501' as a computer hence I left it out of my list.
I may still have it around somewhere.
The only program that I made on it was a fuel efficiency calculator for the car.
I still remember the massive hinges at the back for the memory slots !
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>> I did not count the 'Casio FX501' as a computer hence I left it out
>> of my list.
Well it did have a proper programming language, albeit limited of course; 'Turing complete' according to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_FX-502P_series
>> I still remember the massive hinges at the back for the memory slots !
Don't remember that at all!
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ahh my error.
I had these :-
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_FX-850P
and
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_FX-702P
These had huge slots on the back for memory expansion.
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>> I had these :-
>>
>> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_FX-850P
>>
>> and
>>
>> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_FX-702P
BASIC?? Those aren't calculators :)
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Did anyone watch 'Micro Men' on the BBC a while ago. Story about Sir Clive and Chris Curry (Acorn). Unfortunatley, can't find it online.
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I was the only one with an MSX - early Microsoft tech ?
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...I was the only one with an MSX...
Friend of mine had something like this in black:
tinyurl.com/3yya8wg
I remember playing cartridge games on it.
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It was quite a good programme. It is probably on bittorrent somewhere.
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It's beginning to look as if I'm the only Car4play member who has only ever owned one computer. It's my current e machines 550, bought June 2002. It's had an extra 1Gb of ram installed to bring it up to 1.46 Gb, and it's had a USB2 card and a pair of ports fitted.
I used computers at work but I was largely self-taught. Use of the internet was monitored by the IT department to try to prevent private use. Two office members were suspended for getting caught making private use of the internet during company time. I could get away with making private use of works computers during lunch breaks, but not for t'internet. My main private use (Excel) was for planning, predicting, and maximising my occupational pension.
Last edited by: L'escargot on Wed 22 Dec 10 at 09:58
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The 1980s were an exciting time to get into computers, it was all a huge novelty with new machines being released by the month, some like the Spectrum which became icons - I wish I had kept mine, along with the Microdrive - and some real disasters like the Elan which never saw the light of day despite being hyped all through it's development, and the QL which bombed completely.
It's all a bit boring now, you can walk into Currys and buy any old box which will do everything you want, super efficient but without the buzz you got in the pioneering days.
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1970s were the start of computing moving from a machine in a room tended by geeks and fed with rolls of paper, bits of cardboard or even moving bits of wire, into something that pervades every aspect of our lives both home and workplace.
Computers have not just shrunk and got faster they are now simpler to use in the same way as cars, you can use them every day without a clue about what's under the cover, and most do.
My first computer -funnily enough despite having worked in IT since 1977 on much the same list as Zero with a couple of additions from the IBM list such as the 5520 and displaywriter, and having some form of company laptop since 1988, I didn't own a PC at home until about 1996 which was an IBM 486 running windows 3.1.
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A Sord M5 (look it up...)
CPM (disastrous) system at work
MS-DOS system at work
Tandy 200 16k laptop for work
Amstrad at work
PC 486 SX25
PC with 400 whatever it is and Windows 98 (still in the attic)
Mac G4 with twin 786mb processors (still in use)
iPod Touch
I think I might like an IMac or one of those nice Mac portables with the glass front but I really, really can't summon up any enthusiasm these days. It's just a tool.
I still don't quite feel that way about cars...
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I've got a punchline, "but with only 60 GG's, it couldn't really RAM anything".
But just not the joke...
* GG's as in horses as in BHP, as opposed to GB's or Gigs
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I bought a Dragon 32 from Boots around 1982. They looked the business but had issues that prevented them really taking off... company collapsed 2 years later. It went wrong aftre a short while so I threw it away and didn't bother with another until 1995 when a 486 was our first proper PC.
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Does anybody remember those old MFM hard drives? I bought one when I was about 13-14 for one of the delboy special 486's deals we were doing. He could sell a 486 for cheaper than what you could get a new 386 for.
A 486 SX with no cache (the cache was installed into DIL sockets onto the motherboard those days, it was not built into the CPU) and an MFM hard 20MB hard drive. All installed in the old 386 we had bought for £25.
We were experts of selling the most strange spec PCs ever, 486 DX2-66 with a Hercules green screen monitor for example!
Never really owned many micro computers, I have wanted to start a collection but it costs money. The only micro I ever had I still have and it still works, the C64C.
I really miss programming, I keep intending to write something for Android but even setting up the platform for doing it takes time. I might do it over Christmas when I am bored.
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>>Widows 7, 3GB RAM, 320 GB Hard Drive, Pentium T4500 (around 2.6GHz)<<
Blimey, Widows 7. I've had enough complication with Widow 1.
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Not my own of course, but my first experience was in 1970 at Uni. The room containing the computer could probably house the Saturn 5 moon rocket. In a side room I'd sit at a keyboard producing punched cards for every line. I was supposed to be learning Fortran but spent most of the time programming and printing pictures and calendars.
You'd punch out the cards one day and leave them for the "computer run". The next day you'd go back and collect your printout.
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I do remember "Moonlander" in 1970 on a PDP 8 with Dectape and the output on a teletype...
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>..but spent most of the time programming and printing pictures and calendars.
Ha! - So you're the one responsible for all the ASCII-art (or EBCDIC-art) pictures of topless young ladies that wasted reams and reams of 132 column fan-fold?
Kevin...
Last edited by: Kevin on Wed 22 Dec 10 at 19:46
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>> I really miss programming
Have you thought about doing it for a living?
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Amstrad 8256 in 1987 - but as iffy says, more a glorified typewriter than a computer.
First real computer was a Dan Pentium 1, purchased in 1996. I still have it (just beside the laptop I'm currently typing on), and it still works - but don't use it. I must get round to throwing it out.
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My first computer - RattleandSmoke
