What computers have you owned?

[Ken W]

Commodore 64, Tatume Eistone ,Pemtiuem and a I7

[Dude111]

Originally Posted by Chris

Oh gosh, this could be fun …

Yes mate a good thread!

I started on a TI99/4a and didnt know much of basic,etc.........

Then I got a Commodore64 and I really liked it... Learned basic quite well........

Then the family got Win98se and I started using it alot,it was in my parents room..... Then they got an XP and I got the 98se one in my room here and I love her so much!!

Win98s to me is the best Win OS ever released

[tweetiepooh]

I didn't own a computer until the early 2000's when I commissioned a AMD64 bit PC, now I have a Pentium i7-720 with 18GB RAM (2 banks of 3), 1030GT graphics and 2x1TB spinning rust - as prices drop I may get a new build aiming for best bang for buck type design that will also last 10 years or so.


One of the early machines I cut my teeth on was the Altair 8800. My dad would also sometimes bring machines home from work (ICL) that I learnt various BASIC's and O/S's on.

Originally Posted by tweetiepooh

My dad would also sometimes bring machines home from work (ICL) that I learnt various BASIC's and O/S's on.

The first language I learned was FORTRAN, on the CEGB mainframe at my dads work (Nottingham Grid Control Center). I programmed/updated a few reports that were used by the engineers for a number of years as part of their control of the (east midlands) grid. As far as I know they were still in use until the early 1980's when the control centre closed.

Originally Posted by Halcyon

Chris, I hear those old BBC's are worth a bit now. I actually remember using them with the truly floppy 5 1/2" floppies.
Like you I've found my Mac's to go a long way. They hardly ever got slowed down and always performed well.

They’re worth something in working condition, which is quite rare now. Some of the electronics are known to degrade with time (serious retro hobbyists know which components and how to replace them - so a defunct BBC can still be brought back to life with the appropriate skills and a soldering iron).

Seriously degraded capacitors can explode so I have no plans to plug mine in again, unless I happen to find myself at a convention of some kind where it could be done under controlled conditions (this is unlikely).

My BBC shipped without the optional Acorn DFS but as games got more ambitious and disk-only add-ons became a thing, I pestered the parents and got a 5 1/2” floppy drive with a self-install DFS circuit board from Watford Electronics for Christmas, in around 1986 IIRC. Watford was one of the regular multi-page advertisers in all the main magazines at the time. I got Repton 3 for Christmas that year and having the disk drive made the game editor add-on a breeze. I also got my hands on a ripped-off copy of Elite (disc version) which had lots more going on than the BBC tape version.

The Watford Electronics 5 1/2” floppy drive was cheap and we got what we paid for …. It worked well 90% of the time but if you used it too intensively something inside would jam and knock rapidly against the outer metal casing in a very alarming manner

[Dude111]

They’re worth something in working condition, which is quite rare now.

I do hope theres more out there than we realise Chris

I bought an external hard drive for my BBC Master [ also from Watford Electronics ].

It cost me £478 (in 1992), and was a whopping 30MB
Three years later I bought a 250MB drive for a mere £230.

My first Intel based PC was in 1996, a Pentium from Tiny Computers (£830).

[raging bull]

Another Acorn/BBC user!
Electron/BBC B then Master 128 and finally the Stongarm.
Early days showing my 2daughters the ins/out of basic programming, later my kids passin on their knowledge to the teaching staff pre the PC era.
Must have been a good teacher -youngest daughter level 3 support.

Couple of home build PC with low spec (now) components.
Currently awaiting funds for a decent I7 desktop.

[Ramrod]

Originally Posted by Sirius

Never had a consol

I had a 3DO back in 1994

[Anonymouse]

Let's see...initially, when the ZX-81 came out, I thought computers were just a fad. A year later they were anything but. Oops.
My very first was a VIC-20; I occasionally wrote in 6502 Assembler. It taught me valuable lessons on keyboards, the VIC's was excellent.
Then came the Sharp MZ-700 as part of a course I was doing. I got Hisoft's DEVPAC and discovered the joys of Z80 Assembler. I wrote a routine to bypass load & run, so I could back up games etc. I also wrote an alarm clock program in lieu of an actual alarm clock - very effective.
Then...the Atari 520STFM. Programming in GFA BASIC and 68000 Assembler, a pure joy. I still have a 4MB version.
In 1998 I bought a 486 computer, quite primitive. Later I built a better one. Then a better one still. I got a laptop running XP, 2 more running Vista, and now I have one running Windows 8.1 - yeah, yeah, but I like it.

[Dude111]

Computers are fun arent they???

[Stephen]

Ooft some I can't remember the exact details off but first thing we owned was a

Toshiba MSX when my dad did an OU course.
Commodore 64
Amstrad CPC464+
An old 386 with one of those basic orange monitors, ran wordstsr and not much else
AST 486 from my dad's work when they upgraded. Played Doom and Quake 1 on it.
Some AMD Athlon thing from PC World in late 90s, it had Win 98, with I upgraded to Win Me, eek
Then in 2002 I built my first PC don't even remember the specs, but it had a Radeon GPU as I got HL2 free with it.
Then a Dell XPS 15 machine around 2007 I think.
Then in 2012 I bought a Macbook Pro 15', last one with a DVD drive. Upgraded the RAM to 8GB and changed SATA to SSD and its still going strong.
I plan on building a new rig though in late January with a 12th gen i5 12600K, 32GB DDR4 RAM, 1TB M.2 NVME and a geforce RTX 3070. Should get me back into PC gaming nicely.

[tweetiepooh]

My biggest bugbear with builds today is finding a case that can incorporate optical drive and internal memory card reader. Desk space is a premium so don't want external versions of these. It may be small issues but the rest of the bits are all pretty swappable.
I'd like a machine with multiple discs, one for Windoze, one for Linux and maybe a couple for data, the latter maybe RAID somehow. Partitions for photo's and music would be NTFS or equivalent to share between Linux and Windows unless I can get Windows to read/write Linux partitions. (Always need to be careful as File.txt and file.txt are different in Linux but gets Windoze confused as does author:title.txt)

[Jaymoss]

Originally Posted by tweetiepooh

My biggest bugbear with builds today is finding a case that can incorporate optical drive and internal memory card reader. Desk space is a premium so don't want external versions of these. It may be small issues but the rest of the bits are all pretty swappable.
I'd like a machine with multiple discs, one for Windoze, one for Linux and maybe a couple for data, the latter maybe RAID somehow. Partitions for photo's and music would be NTFS or equivalent to share between Linux and Windows unless I can get Windows to read/write Linux partitions. (Always need to be careful as File.txt and file.txt are different in Linux but gets Windoze confused as does author:title.txt)

Corsair Carbide 100R or 200R

[tweetiepooh]

Current case is CoolerMaster HAF 922. Nice big case, lots of space inside (mostly full of fluff after a bit of use), big fans and space for lots of discs. My feeling is more, smaller discs rather than fewer, bigger.