my first computer
 

was a sinclair zx81 with a 16k memory ram pack.and i was made up with it, apart from letting it cool down i spent hours righting simple programs in basic

i am posting this because my daughter thinks all computers older than a couple of years are usless and no fun at all
please help me enlighten her with you old computer nightmares and fun :help:

Re: my first computer
 

My headteacher had the same one,

He was friends with my uncle and he would lend it to me...
spent hours programming a box block to go around the screen.

Great fun,

Re: my first computer
 

a bit like the ad with the 2 geeks whatching the boxy green pic of a rabbit grow " woooo wicked fast"

Re: my first computer
 

http://amiga.emugaming.com/newa500.jpg
My First Computer, an Amiga 500, was a single unit (apart from the screen, it could also be plugged into a TV, video was RGB out; not VGA) It had a full sized QWERTY keyboard, the "F Keys" only went to 10 and instead of a full set of Home, End, Delete, Pageup/down keys, etc. ; it had simply a "DEL" and "HELP" key; I never worked out what "HELP" was for, it never did anything in any programs. It had a built in 3.5" Floppy Drive which used Double-Density, Double-Sided floppy disks which weighed in at a meaty 880k, none of this High-Density lark :) By default, it had 512k of RAM, which we had upgraded with a plugin board the size of an average graphics card today which upgraded the memory to 1MB and also had a battery backup for the Real Time Clock allowing the Amiga to ACTUALLY KEEP TIME WHILE TURNED OFF! WOW! The board was always falling out, im amazed it carried on working 'til the end, it was secured in using a rather large blob of Blue Tac :D

Well with all that blurb, you may think; Wow! what a pile of poo. But the games on it were fantastic, I emplore you to download an Amiga Emulator, Kick-Start ROM (Only if you owned the originals ;)) and a few games (Only if you owned the originals ;)) and give it a go, the Amiga was something special, I dont know where we'd be today without it. The film E.T. wouldn't have been produced in the same way without one for one :) :Yikes:

Re: my first computer
 

Started with a Speccy 48K, so a bit better than the ZX81, but still miles behind Zeph's Amiga. That little thing rocked. I would spend hours re-typing snippets of code printed in the back of Your Sinclair magazine, only to find out that I'd typed a B instead of an 8 or a zero instead of an O somewhere, and the whole thing would fall over. VB it wasn't. No fancy IDE, no colourful text as you typed commands, and no helpful debugger either.

I also have fond (er... kinda :erm: ) memories of listening to the screeching sound of loading games by tape, only for it to fail and you'd have to start all over again.

I still remember rubbing out the keys by playing Daley Thompson's Decathlon so much and hammering the keys repeatedly :D Oh, and ruining loadsa Kempston joysticks too when playing things like Outrun or Combat School or Uridium or Green Beret or Zaxxon or....

Re: my first computer
 

My first home pc was a "Dragon", any one remember it?

Re: my first computer
 

my first home computer was the Toshiba MSX, I used to love making up small progams and stuff.

Re: my first computer
 

Same here, Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128, Commodore 16, Commodore 64, Amiga 500 with Extra Ram bit that you had to shoe horn in and then try to wedge the panel in, and then I bought a Compaq in 1994 that went back within a week after which I learned a valuable lesson by buying my 1 and only Packard Bell which went in the dustbin within 6 months of purchase. 1995 onwards I built my own PCs so that I knew what I was getting.
Lost track how many joysticks were snapped playing the old "waggling" games and how many keys on my keyboard failed after playing games like DT's decathlon lol. Man, Your Sinclair magazine and the old type in codes, I spent a week typing in thousands of lines of code, double checked it all, ran it and watched it fail for no reason only to find in the next magazine they had typo'd :mad:
Tape loading games with the pychedelic coloured bars flashing around the screen all the way to the tape stopping as it ran out before the game finished installing. lol the good ol' days ;)
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Which one ;)
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/default.asp
64
32
or
200

Re: my first computer
 

dragon 32 yep

Re: my first computer
 

I started with a ZX80 kit which my dad helped me build, then a prebuilt ZX81, then I got wise and moved to Commodore, had a Vic 20 complete with Assembler cartridge then a C64 followed by a C128 then an Amiga 500 then I inherited my old mans Amiga 4000 when he moved to a 486.

Re: my first computer
 

i bet non of you had one of these with the plug in games a greenie for the first one to name it

Re: my first computer
 

My first PC was a Vanillia 333MHz Pentium 2 with Windows 3.11, which we the went to Windows 95 and finally 98. It had 32mb video card from what i remember.

Re: my first computer
 

ah the memories, started out with some Acorn, can't remember what model, I was too young. Soon moved on to the good old Commodore 64 https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2005/07/10.gif

My first PC was an IBM 486DX 100MHz with 12MB of RAM.

Re: my first computer
 

I must have married your first pc:D

Re: my first computer
 

The first computer I ever used was an 8k Commodore Pet (the one with the built in tape cassette drive!), I also subsequenly used the schools "build it yourself" UK 101.

The first one I owned was the good old BBC Model B.

Re: my first computer
 

was it the posh one with dfs

Re: my first computer
 

Is that an Atari?

Re: my first computer
 

nope way off

Re: my first computer
 

Yep, I'd had enough of bloody tape drives!! :mad:
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There were lots of those! Atari did one, so, I think, did nintendo, then there were ones like Colecovision (IIRC) etc.

Re: my first computer
 

5 1/4 inch floppy :rofl:

Re: my first computer
 

Oi! Less of the personal remarks, sunshine...! :D

Re: my first computer
 

the computer was a computer and it run in basic and it was not atari or nintendo it was intended as a real computer not a console in about 82_83 i think

Re: my first computer
 

Aquarius

Re: my first computer
 

bingo a greenie onits way
http://rds.yahoo.com/S=96062883/K=aq.../aquarius.html

Re: my first computer
 

ok then heres another a bit easier but if you under 30 youve probably never seen one (model please) just dont cheat and blow it up

Re: my first computer
 

Commodore Vic 20

Re: my first computer
 

dag nabit the pic was to big but fair is fair:tu:

Re: my first computer
 

The one I have now is my 1st computer https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2005/10/9.gif

Re: my first computer
 

wait 20 years then look back and cringe at what you have got
hang on 5 yrs these days:)

Re: my first computer
 

my first computer was a ZX81 - bought in 1981 & upgraded with a wobbly ram pack. Then I had a Spectrum - that had all sorts hanging off it - 2 microdrives via 'Interface1' and 'Multiface' & 'Multiprint' units. My collection of 'Your Sinclair' & 'Crash' magazines had to go when the floor threatened to give way, but I still have the covermount cassettes, somewhere. I also used to spend hours 'poking' hex numbers into memory to make a crap 'manhattan' type game, or similar ;) - I never did 'Master Machine Code on Your ZX Spectrum' - but I bet I've still got the book ;)

My first pc was an Amstrad 2286, which came with a 10MB hard drive, 1MB memory, a 720KB floppy and Windows 2.0 - people who think Win98 is bad, should have tried that..:erm:

Re: my first computer
 

I started off using an acorn atom, then moved onto a commodore VC20...

And an ohio superboard.

When I was at school I had an acord electron, then got a bbc 'b' - which was massively upgraded.

After a brief flirtation with amigas (500 - 600 - 1200).... I finally moved into the pc world with a 486.

Re: my first computer
 

HEX they use that to program modern cpu's dont they:confused:

Re: my first computer
 

Heh, forgot to mention that my first PC was a Viglen 386SX, which had a stonking 8MB Ram and an 80MB HDD ...yes, that's right, just 80MB. I still managed to have Win 3.11 installed, along with MS Word for work/studying, and also Championship Manager and Wolfenstein 3D for playing. It, however, did come with both 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" floppy drives, which was nice! :D

Re: my first computer
 

5 Months you mean :p::D

Re: my first computer
 

I had some weird thing by Olivetti - it was a PC not a typewriter ;) Had an RF output so I used a portable TV as the monitor. An integral keyboard casing housed the "motherboard", with an ancient 8086 type processor and a single floppy 3 1/2" floppy. Used DOS and had something called GEM which supposedly was a graphical display. And then there was the hideously noisy dot matrx printer :eek:

Re: my first computer
 

I know this is going to seem a weird question but when did the Internet first launch. Was it 1995?

Re: my first computer
 

no, binary 'machine' code is used for cpu's - the hex is how we humans try & understand it, decimal/ascii 255 is binary 11111111 is hex FF - and that is just 16 bit - like Dorian Gray - it's complicated :)

Re: my first computer
 

dont knock it we have given the younger kids a laptop (t1910ts) toshiba
with a wapping 125mb hdd and trying as it will to run win95
:Yikes:
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eerm dont quote me but i was using a modem in 1985 to access servers but that wasnt the world wide web

Re: my first computer
 

Darpanet (upon which the Internet was based) was launched in the late 60s.

What you are probably referring to (the World Wide Web) was first demonstrated in 1993 and launched in 1993.

Bear in mind that although most people know the World Wide Web as the internet, the Internet itself is just a huge number of Interconnection computer networks covering the world and uses many methods of access of which the Web is just one.

Re: my first computer
 

I was referring to the WWW. Wow 1993. So its 11 years old. :Yikes:

Re: my first computer
 

and thats 12
makes me feel like an antique

Re: my first computer
 

Sinclair ZX Spectrum +

Re: my first computer
 

We've done this several times now - so just to repeat - Apple II :)

Re: my first computer
 

MATT was it a 128+ :rofl:
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this was suposed to be about the fun and nightmares of the old computers

like waiting for 30 mins for a game to load just to get <an error occured in line 4425436 rewind the tape and try again>
but never mind

Re: my first computer
 

Nope, a +.

Like the original 48k Speccy, but the keys weren't made of rubber.

Next one we had after that was the +2A (effectively a Speccy128 with built-in tape drive).

Re: my first computer
 

what the bloomin it looks like a droid did lucas give you royalties :Yikes:

Re: my first computer
 

My first PC was a Texas Instruments TI99/4A. The first computer I ever used at school was some kind of commodore VIC thing at primary school in about 1981. The first PCs I used in secondary school were ZX spectrums and ancient IBM PCs around 1984, no HDD. BUT, I can also remember, around 1988-89, browsing BBS's with my fairly well-off mate on some old Apple.

From the TI99/4A I went on to own a BBC model B (Elite mmmmmmm), an Amstrad cpc464, Commodore Amiga, Apple classic 2 (For uni).... various IBM compatible PCs...

Personally, the first time I REALLY used the internet was around 1992 with an apple mac, using gopher etc.

I first got the internet at home in about 1994. Signed up to compuserve... boy did I regret that! :)
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The good old days when copying a game only took a double cassette machine! ;)

Re: my first computer
 

my school must have been posh in 1983 we had bbc a's

oh and a thing in the back room called challenger that looked like somthing out of time tunnel

Re: my first computer
 

I was posh... i had a HDD in my amiga !!
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Pfftt

ha ha

Greenie for making me laugh first thing in the morning!
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I used to love visiting bullitin boards before the WWW was available to me.
Cost my mum and dad a fortune in phone bills lol.

I even started my own but it never really took off as we only had one phone line lol :D

Re: my first computer
 

Mine was a custom built Pentium 1 100mhz, with 16mb of ram, a 694mb HD, 8mb visuals and a small soundblaster card, with a 14inch monitor which claimed 1024 by 768 res but would not go past 800 by 600, and the motherboard from hell, in fact likely rejected from hell it was that bad.

After that I got a 486 Laptop, and a BBC old thing with a Amstrad which I still have with its green screen and dual 3.5inch floppy drives.

Re: my first computer
 

grandmaster my modem had a max speed of 1.2k or 1200 baud

downloading games now thats a phone bill

Re: my first computer
 

BBC B, with no disk drive - bought and added the interface and drive a couple of years later, when we couldn't stand tapes any longer :D

Then an Epson EL2 - basically a 286 PC, with some horrible early incarnation of MS-DOS, no Windows of any kind, 640k RAM and a 20MB HDD.

Then an Escom (stop laughing!) early Pentium (50 IIRC), Win 95 and I think, about 2GB HDD.

Now a classic iMac, G3-450, 20GB. Preinstalled with OS9 but now running 10.2.8 quite happily. At work I have a Dell Latitude C400 lappy, with Win 2k, P4 2GHz (I think), 512Mb RAM and 20GB HDD.

And I love nothing better than to unwind at home playing BBC games on the Horizon emulator on my Mac. So much for progress!

Re: my first computer
 

And in about 10years we will be playing games we play on these laughin and remembering the old times, while (hopefully) we will have holo suites...hmm jessica alba...yes... :naughty:

Re: my first computer
 

heh heh i had a 1200, then a 2400,9600,14.4,28.8 etc

i dont think i could ever go back to dial up ('cept maybe just for email)

My list.

Commodore Vic20
Spectrum +2
Spectrum +3
Atari 65xe
Apricot <--although never really got it to do anything, the big noisy lump just sat there.
Amiga
386 PC
custom 486 PC
custiom Pentium
Loads of other P Series
Now i cant be bothered building at all ( i dont do it for anyone else now either, just no money in it anymore plus the fact the world and his wife seem to be able to build a pc these days, annoys me really.. they are quite happy to rip the top of a computer and poke about but they wont do it to a tv..)

I now run:

AMD 1Ghz ,1GB ram server
AMD 2400 , 512 - main pc
Intel 2800 Ghz laptop 384Mb Ram

Re: my first computer
 

My first computer? A ZX81 (with patented "wobbly" ram pack and thermal printer). the '81 was basically an overgrown calculator with ideas above it's station, but it did teach me programming (started with 10 PRINT "STUART", 20 GOTO 10 :D ) , and it did have one of the most scary games ever (3d monster maze).

Then, I had a spectrum 48k (with the bad colour clash problem and the rubber keys). The speccy had faults, but you could get some interesting effects to display using the "Border" command, and it did have some addictive games (specially Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy and Sabre Wulf).

Then I had a commodore 64. This was an amazing computer for the time. Some very addictive games (Monty on the Run, Thing on a Spring, Parallax, Bounty Bob Strikes back)

Then onto the Amigas. I had a 500 (with 1 Meg ram) and then a 1200 (with 120 Meg HDD). These were, and still are, my favourite computers.

Since then I have had a variety of PCs and Macs, culminating in the Athlon 64 tower PC, Piii700 server and Sony Vaio laptop I have now. While these are all an order of magnitude more powerful than the Amigas, the amiga still had a pioneering spirit that the PC lacks, and windows has always seemed to be a cheap copy of Workbench (the Amiga UI) even though it is more powerful.

Re: my first computer
 

ok here i go

zx81
aquarius
spectrum 32(rubber keys)
commadore 64
bbc a
bbc b dfs
olivetti 486 on win 3.1
custom amd k5 100
custom mmx 200
custom amd k6 500
custom amd duron 900
fujitsu celeron 2800 2x80 gig hdd duel o/s 98 and xp 128meg g force 1024ddr
and various laptops wich i dont count coz i treat them like a filofax
and last but not least :hyper: :hyper: :hyper: not decided what to put init yet but the front looks like a 60s juke box bubbles and all

Re: my first computer
 

My first computer was a commodore C16, I then upgraded to an amstrad 464 (tape drive built in)..

At school we had some old RM boxes (8" floppys) and some BBC Bs - that was in the early 80s..

Since then I have had various PCs - both self built, built by a mates company, and occasionaly (once I think) a shop bought one.. (evesham).

I still remember copying games on my tape-tape recorder on my boom box !!!!

Re: my first computer
 

Started of with a 16K ZX Spectrum
Got the 48K Ram pack
It died, then upgraded to a 48K ZX Spectrum+ with plastic keys!
Then went on to the Atari 520STFM

Then from there to my first pc:
Mine was a 386SX 33MHz, 1MB Ram, 40MB hard drive, 1MB VGA card, 14" Colour SVGA monitor
To start with just had MS-DOS on it. I upgraded the RAM & HD later when I put Windows 3.0 on, then Windows 3.1


I've got a little collection of old computers now, if I ever get round to oding the website, there'll be quite a lot of pictures online.

Re: my first computer
 

Talking of Amigas (which are clearly the greatest home computers ever made), I run WinUAE with Amigainabox, you need a kickstart 3.1 rom and Workbench 3.1 but it's lush!

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2005/07/11.jpg

Re: my first computer
 

Oric Atmos... and I still have it in the attic despite several offers to buy.

I've got the Oric printer/plotter too!

Re: my first computer
 

no wonder your avitar is a silohette:erm:

Re: my first computer
 

Mine was this
http://www.strzelecki.co.uk/images/s...stcomputer.gif

Re: my first computer
 

that is the same one I have lol

Re: my first computer
 

Still got two Amiga 500s but the modulators are duff, loads of games aswell, must get a emulator for them.

Re: my first computer
 

Ah what is it then? There were 2 models. You still have yours!? But you can't get it on the net!:D

Re: my first computer
 

is it an acorn electron

Re: my first computer
 

Nope

Re: my first computer
 

The first computer that we actually owned, rather than borrowing for extended periods of time was a TRS-80 MK1. Bought second hand, the guy who we got it from had retro-fitted it into a custom wooden casing to also include the micro drive and a home-designed soundcard (he was quite scarily good at electronics).

Re: my first computer
 

Don't ask for numbers lol its in the loft storage, and everytime I go upstairs I get lumbered in more DIY jobs.. :dozey:

Re: my first computer
 

amstrad 8256

Re: my first computer
 

I`ll raise you my A2000 - 21MB RAM, Picasso IV GFX card, 2GB HD, 2x CD-ROM, 68040 40Mhz. Not booted it in a while, I assume it all still works, although the keyboard is certainly not in the healthiest of states.

Re: my first computer
 

Yep, or more correctly an Amstrad PCW8256 (PCW - Personal Computer Wordprocessor). That Pic could also be the PCW8512 with double the RAM at 512K and 2 disk drives!

Re: my first computer
 

wife got that they had them at college

Re: my first computer
 

1985 they came out, so I guess mine was a good 6 or 7 years old when when my parents got it.

Re: my first computer
 

theres a bbc computer going for sale on car booty on bbc1 if they get more than £50: i'm gonna eat my keyboard:D

edit> it went for a fiver :rofl:

Re: my first computer
 

*screenshots above post *

Re: my first computer
 

it went for a fiver i can wipe the ketchup of my keyboard