What Was The First Computer You OWNED?

[arwalden]

Which was the first computer you saw in the store and had to have for your VERY OWN?

(Not the first computer you ever used at work... not the first computer you played with at a friend's... but the one you proudly and eagerly brought home and unpacked and plugged-in yourself.)


I wish I still had my old Apple IIe. (If for no other reason than to play with all the old Beagle Bros. programs.)

[terrya]

1. The Dell desktop I still have.

I bought a PC late in life.

[Deja Q]

2. Atari 600XL

Atari had a cool upgrade where you could send them the 600XL plus $35 and get a 800XL in return.



Sweet.

Computers were cool, back during the days of free enterprise...

[arwalden]

3. I Remember Being AMAZED At My 300-baud Modem...

And spending HOURS exploring BBS's... all alone... connected to single-modem PC's that allowed one connection at a time.

-- Allen

[regnaD kciN]

44. Yep...

...some two-plus years after my first computer purchase, just after Christmas 1984, I shelled out for a color monitor and 300-baud modem for my Commodore 64 (I had moved up from the Atari 400 at that point). I was able to finally unplug the computer from the TV set and move it upstairs into an unused bedroom with a nearby phone jack. I thought a modem would be interesting for news sources and networks like Compu$erve, but I never imagined that there would be so many BBSs out there. Those cold winter nights, checking out every system in the local calling range (places like "One Particular Harbour," "Sno-Link," "64 E/T," and "PPS" -- which supposedly stood for "Puget Polynet Systems," although everybody knew that it was really an acronym for "Pirates of Puget Sound" ;-) ) were like discovering a new continent. Although the sort of (tele)communication available back then certainly can't compete with today's Internet, I can't help but feel nostalgic for the days when a local BBS list was pages long, rather than just a handful at most. :-(

[DS1]

4. Odyssey

then Apple ][

[ProudGerman]

5. Commodore 64

Between my friend and me, we must have had thousands of games on floppies.....big 5 ½ inch floppies. All those games probably wouldn't fill one DVD today.

[KeepItReal]

8. Wanted an Atari 2600...Dad got me a C64 instead...Thanks dad!

Back then I was like, "what am I gonna do with this computer?" It doesn't have any games!

Now I'm a software developer...doing ok even in this crappy economy.

:-)

[RainDog]

6. no old school here...

my first computer was a powerbook 165 which I bought in 93. before that I used a terminal for all my schoolwork, hooked in to a big U. computer.

now I use an iBook...old clamshell.

and I'm still a luddite, or the mac equivalent.

oh well.

[nuxvomica]

7. TRS-80, then TI-99/4A, then C64

I learned BASIC programming on the TRS-80 so that I could cheat at "Hammurabi."

[Robb]

11. Oooh!

Hammurabi! What was that TRS-80 game where you were the centipede avoiding blocks that came up as the screen scrolled?

Loved that box.

But the first one I owned was a Commodore VIC-20, complete with Buck-Rogers-style cassette tape drive. :eyes: I just wished I had something as impressive as the C64. :)

[CrownPrinceBandar]

21. Gotta give it up for the TRS-80

That was my first computer too. I remember sitting for hours coding in BASIC to make some cool graphics maps for my AD&D campaign. I still have it, along with the cassette drive taht came with it.
I went from that to a IBM PS in college, and ABS PIII and finally a self-constructed P4 that I'm using now.

[Athletic Grrl]

33. OMG, I'd forgotten

all about Hamaraubi! The old BF, his buds and I used to play that all the time on some custom-made job the BF brought home from his job at Computerland.

[RebelOne]

9. Yes, that was my first computer. An Apple IIe

Boy, and at that time I thought I had a state-of-art computer.
A whole 64K memory!!!

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

10. Osborne I... apple ][c came a year later for me

But the first one I ever had was an Altair kit, but that hardly counts.

[MadMike]

12. Mine works just as good as ever. No need to upgrade....

[Robb]

15. I've seen some "wrong" things before

...But that picture's just... Damn.

That's wrong.

[GCP]

27. Where the hell did you find that picture?

Got a link?

BTW welcome to DU :hi:

[MadMike]

39. Thanks for the Welcome........

I forget where I found the pic.

I've got tons of em piled up, ready for posting.

I'm happy I found this forum.

[Interrobang]

13. Behold the Power of the Amiga Persecution Complex!!

I had a Commodore Amiga 500, with extra external floppy disk drive, expansion memory pack, and external 2600 baud modem! In 1987/8 I was seriously stylin'! I used that thing for 10 years, too, until Windows more or less caught up with me... ;-)

I miss my good old Amoeba...

[scottcsmith]

14. Timex Sinclair 1000

With a whopping 16K of memory!
Ah, those were the days. Loading programs from cassettes.



Check out the specs on this supercomputer! Wow! What processing power!
http://oldcomputers.net/ts1000.html

[LauraT28]

18. OMG

I had this one too!!!! Scary.

Then the next "real computer" I bought was in 1994 or so... a Packard Bell! GAG! Ahhhh Win 3.11... the good ole days!

Laura

[Cush]

16. Adam Coleco VIsion

back in 83: (I was 6)

http://homepages.compuserve.de/rspezial/vidgas/adam.htm

[bubba_fett]

17. I built mine.

My parents wouldn't buy a computer, so I collected parts on my own and built one. It was a crappy 486 with 8 megs of memory, I couldn't do anything with it but play old D&D games.

I've since only bought one whole computer in my life, a gateway p2 400mhz, and I'm still paying for it, never again...I'm building every computer from now on (except for laptops, if I ever need one).

[HamstersFromHell]

19. Atari 400

n/t

[regnaD kciN]

43. Same here...

May of 1982. The place we bought it from (the cheapest in L.A.) was out of the programming and game "starter packs," and we couldn't yet afford the cassette drive, anyway, so my (soon-to-be) ex and I spent most of the first day typing messages in "memo pad" mode on the flat-panel keyboard. Kind of like an early version of IRC...

;-)

[Catfish]

20. a 386

that I loved, because when I got it that meant no more hours in the computer lab at the University. My Ex had to take it away finally because I liked going into Wordperfect or a stat program from DOS much better than waiting for windows to boot. I've been using this Inspiron 3500 laptop for almost 5 years and it is literally falling apart, pieces missing from the case. I've been saying for a year that it's about to die but I won't give it up until then. I still use my first mail program Netscape 4.7. Only change I've made is I'm now using Mozilla for a browser. I'm very resistant to change.

[Shrek]

22. Commodore Vic-20

With a whopping 3K of RAM!

[jmowreader]

29. Hey, me too!

I even had the 5k expansion pack to give me that big 8k of RAM!

[banana republican]

36. Yeah

Me too

[trotsky]

49. Another VIC-20 pioneer here...

Quickly discovered I needed a C-64. :)

But the VIC-20 with its tape drive was all I needed to get hooked on computers.

[Cleita]

23. My first computer ran on DOS. It didn't have a hard disk

I had to load all programs from a floppy. I didn't do much with it except some word processing. It was a really cheap off brand, too, but I can't remember the name because I don't think the company exists anymore, but it was a knockoff of an IBM PC.

[lpbk2713]

24. First one was a TI-99/4A

Still have it and a lot of software, books, etc. Might be worth something some day

[HereSince1628]

25. Kaypro on the advice of a TAMU IT instructor!

Who thought the entire world was moving to CMS for an operating system...there must be an Aggie joke in their somewhere.

[WillyBrandt]

26. Color Computer Three by Tandy

That was a beast.

[ikojo]

28. The first computer I owned was something I bought from

work when they upgraded to windows based PCs. It was an IBM DOS machine. I had NO idea how to use it and ended up putting an ad in the local "Shopper" paper and selling it for what I paid.

The next computer I owned was a Gateway PC.

[pscot]

30. Commodore 64

with a little bitty tape player for data storage. I was so pleased when I poked and peeked a program called the dancing mouse and a tiny rodent did a buck and wing cross my monitor.

[SmileyBoy]

31. Apple IIgs, circa 1986.

That computer was the greatest thing in the world to me when we first bought it.

[Spirochete]

32. A Commodore Vic 20

with something like 3k of memory. Had a cassette drive to go with it to save data on. Used that as long as i could stand it, then graduated to a Commodore 64, with a 5 1/4" floppy drive, and a 300 baud modem.

[DemoTex]

34. A Compaq "portable"

Ha! It was a large as a very big suitcase. A 640k hard drive with dual floppies.

[Catfish]

35. I remember the first compaq I used

I was working for Treasury in DC and there was 1 PC for about 150 people in my division. It officially belonged to another section but there were about 5 of us who used it. I would take it home on the weekend, it was heavy, I couldn't make it on the metro and the 1 mile walk home very well. So, I had to take a taxi with it but it was so worth it to manage a database I had previously managed by phone modem to a mainframe from the office where your jobs were queued for someone to mount a tape. Oh, the old days!

[DemoTex]

38. Mine more-or-less filled the nose baggage compartment of a Lear 55.

That sometimes pissed my boss, Ken Lay, off. Especially if young Mrs. Ken Lay (Linda - Mrs. Lay #2) was travelling heavy. Or if the Robert Mosbachers (Bob and his wifey #2, Georgette) were on board.

[GOPisEvil]

37. Hey! I had an Apple IIe too!

Bought it in 1985, and used it through college in 1990. :-)

[curse10]

40. I had a texas instruments computer

I was only 4, it was my parent's, but I spent hours programming on it :-) just so I could make a stick figure do jumping jacks.

[KG]

41. late starter

a 486 w/ a 40 mg HD and math co-processer. wow!

[smallprint]

42. Mac Classic

That little thing... I used to play Dark Castle over and over...

[AlFrankenFan]

45. The one I'm using right now

Got it back in 1998. Still works, but very slow Gateway Windows 98.

[Selwynn]

46. Tandy "laptop" which weighted 70lbs and burned your dick off..

if you tried to actually set it in your "lap"

two floppy drivers only.
Liquid Crystal display screen

Those were the days..

[Nihil]

47. Sinclair Spectrum

Yep, the first purchase out of money saved by frugal living at
college was a series I Spectrum. It's lurking somewhere in my
garage, hibernating until the moment when it springs back to
life to convince the children that yes, they really could write
addictive games that loaded from tape and ran in 16kb RAM ...

Used to play on my brother-in-law's Sinclair ZX80 before that,
borrowed his ZX81 to teach myself Z80 programming, discovered his
Apple II had better graphics then moved onto Amigas for their
music. Still got an Amiga 2000 upstairs that my kids all used
for the "Fun School" series.

Nihil

[Screaming Lord Byron]

48. had a ZX81. 1K of RAM! Bow down to it's glory!

[Syn_Dem]

50. Packard Bell

Forget which model...but had 75 mghz, 800 mb hard drive, 8 mb of ram....this was like 1993.