For the geeks: Your first PC

[Lias]

What were the first computers/PC's you guys had?

First PC I ever used was an Apple in school, but I dont really remember it.

My first computer at home was an original C64 , with a tape running through my mums 14" tv. Many many many hours of my childhood were spent in front of this and its sucessor C64C

My first IBM was my dads 8mhz 286 AT, with I think 2mb of ram, but a whopping 110mb hard drive (MFM/RLL boat anchor style). We also had an XT with dual 360k floppies and dual 10mb HDD's but I rarely used it. I still remember the thrill of dad bringing home an EGA card and monitor and us upgrading from herc mono and being able to play police quest in 16 colours.. BLISS!

The first IBM I brought myself was a 386 SX-20, with 4mb of ram and a 40mb HDD for which I paid around a thousand bucks second hand. Also got my first modem around this time, a 1200 baud external monstrosity (it was not all that far descended from the acoustic coupler era). Discovered the internet and BBS's and life was good.

How about you guys?

[NighthawkNZ]

Sinclair ZX 81, and a zx Spectrum then a C128D (I still have this), from there a XT then ummm hmmm a 286, then 386sx (it had 8mb ram wowsers) and a 80mb hdd then I got a 686 (with 64 me rab and 4 gig hdd) which still have and use as a linux test system. now we have 5 or 6 various systems , both PC, Mac and Linux most are under a year old of various size and power... (be a bit rusty on the full names and stuff)

http://nighthawk.muzic.net.nz/studio1.htm
the specs are bit old cause im too lasy to update it... ;)

ZX81 (http://www.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/computers/zx81/zx81.htm) ZX Spectrum (http://www.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/computers/zxspectrum/zxspectrum.htm)
C64 (http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=98)

[pervert]

I was upmarket, I got an Amiga 500 at about $3500 when I was very young...:rockon:

[Disco Dan]

The Spectrum Sinclair. :gob: :gob: :gob:

[sAsLEX]

Amiga 500. We had two legit games and four cases of a few hundred other discs of games in the end. The best games were spread across 5 or 6 floppies.

[Indiana_Jones]

some compaq computer in 1997

-Indy

[riffer]

Some horrid thing that Dick Smiths brought out. Had a numeric keypad. All the programs had to be entered in via the keypad, in hex. urgh. (1976)

Then a Vic20, then a Commodore64.

Then got into them at school - a Challenger 1P (http://www.doublebit.com/archives/software/challenger1p/), Apple IIGS, IIe, XT, AT

Then work - 386SX25, 386DX33, Mac Plus, Mac II, Mac IIci (with Rocket CPU Card, 37MB RAM, a 12 inch colour and A4 Radius Pivot), then a Quadra 700, Quadra 840AV, PowerMac 8100/80, PowerMac9500/180MP, PowerMac G3, PowerMac G4 Sawtooth 400, PowerMac G4 Quicksilver 733, PowerMac G4 Mirrordoor 1.25DP, then my current Mac - Dual 2Ghz G5/3.5GB RAM 24inch Cinema Display)

My personal computers since the Commodore 64 - Acer Extensa 366T laptop, Compaq Deskpro 4000, Compaq PIII 600, Toshiba Satellite 4300 laptops (still use one at home in the lounge for surfing KB), Apple PowerMac G4/400 Sawtooth customised with ATI Radeon 9600Pro, 2GB RAM, 21 inch G4 Display CRT, and a custom Athlon 64 3500/2GB RAM, Radeon X600 video & 17 inch Philips LCD.

Phew. That's about them all.

I can remember buying a 32MB drive, paying $600 for it, and having to partition it into 2 partitions cause DOS 3.2 wouldn't recognise a single partition of that size.

[NighthawkNZ]

Some horrid thing that Dick Smiths brought out. Had a numeric keypad. All the programs had to be entered in via the keypad, in hex. urgh.

Then a Vic20, then a Commodore64.

Then got into them at school - a Challenger 1P, Apple IIGS, IIe, XT, AT

Then work - 386SX25, 386DX33, Mac Plus, Mac II, Mac IIci (with Rocket CPU Card, 37MB RAM, a 12 inch colour and A4 Radius Pivot), then a Quadra 700, Quadra 840AV, PowerMac 8100/80, PowerMac9500/180MP, PowerMac G3, PowerMac G4 Sawtooth 400, PowerMac G4 Quicksilver 733, PowerMac G4 Mirrordoor 1.25DP, then my current Mac - Dual 2Ghz G5/3.5GB RAM 24inch Cinema Display)

My personal computers since the Commodore 64 - Acer Extensa 366T laptop, Compaq Deskpro 4000, Compaq PIII 600, Toshiba Satellite 4300 laptops (still use one at home in the lounge for surfing KB), Apple PowerMac G4/400 Sawtooth customised with ATI Radeon 9600Pro, 2GB RAM, 21 inch G4 Display CRT, and a custom Athlon 64 3500/2GB RAM, Radeon X600 video & 17 inch Philips LCD.

Phew. That's about them all.

Oh yeah I forgot about the Vic20 I have one those in the spare room somewhere to I think... (or did I actually throw it to the tip...) :scratch:

[bungbung]

First personal PC

Sord M23, Z80 processor 128k ram and twin 5 1/4" drives, a Z80 graphics card and 14" color screen. (about 1985)

First IBM clone was a 6Mhz 286 with a 3Mhz 387 co processor and a horrid yellow phosphor monitor and hercules graphics. 20meg HDD yay

[RantyDave]

As a kid I had a Sinclair ZX81 followed by a Spectrum.

Then nothing for about ten years.

Then an Amstrad PCW8256 (word processor with pretensions); an Atari ST for my last year in Uni; Nothing for about two years; A Brother laptop (piece of shit, never buy a brown computer); A P75; A P2-233 I got for a song when work went broke; An Athlon 1600; An iBook G3; A PowerBook G4 (for sale); And now an Intel MacBook.

Somewhere in there I ended up owning a PPro 180 (still being used as a server); a p3-700 overclocked to 933; a couple of MiniITX based machines (very reliable low end servers); a G4 PowerMac; a dual G4 PowerMac (recently upgraded too); and an Athlon64-3000 that's used by her indoors and for games.

In my defence about 3/4 of these were at least allegedly for a business at the time and four of them were second hand.

Old schoolers need to see this - http://www2.b3ta.com/heyhey16k/

Dave

[TerminalAddict]

zx81
10 chars

[Flyingpony]

First computer machine was some Sega box well before Sega became popular.

[ArcherWC]

Apple IIE with the brown screen :yes:

many many hour of Elite on that :yes:

[XP@]

ZX80 :-P
dad helped me build it from kit form. it lasted about 2 weeks then blew up.
We built another one and didn't put the case together and pointed a modified hand held fan at it. It then lasted about a year when it was replaced by the zx81, after that the c64 which is still in my dads attic, and was still working about 6 years ago!

[Drum]

First computer machine was some Sega box well before Sega became popular.


The Sega SC-3000 perhaps? Which was my first.
Also had zx-81, Spectrum, Vic-20 and C64.

When I did computer studies at college, we were the first year that the course started. We had Vic 20's. The 20 stands for 20k, the amount of ROM that they had!!

[bobsmith]

My first was a Pentium 100Mhz system with 8Mbytes of RAM with Windows 95 in 1996 in Korea. I was one of the first around my block to have windows 95 and well it didn't get used much for a while as most of the games and programmes my computer savvy friends back then had were for DOS. It soon got updated with 16Mbytes of memory and stayed with me for 2 years until it got replaced by a pentium 3 1Ghz machine in 1998 or 1999. Since then I've switched to AMD and currently have a AM2 dual core machine.

[Flyingpony]

The Sega SC-3000 perhaps?
** Does a quick Google **
Yes it was (at least according to my fading memory of it) (linky (http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=206)), with the rubbery keys. Got it 2nd hand back in the early 90's.

[k14]

Can remember the day when all the parts arrived fairly clearly. I had an AMD XP1600+ (palomino core), 256mb ram, 40gig hd, geforce 3 ti200 ($550 worth), 4 speed cd writer too, very speedy....

[ManDownUnder]

In this order

ZX81
C64
IBM clone, 40MB HDD 1 MB RAM, paper white mono screen

Successive series of work machines/notebooks.

[Skunk]

Built from scratch from plans in a magzine. 4Mhz, 64k ram. No hard drive - just a modified tape drive. Programmed in BASIC or machine code. This was about 1978...

[Drunken Monkey]

A Spectravideo 328 or something like that. One of those old MSX based thingies that died out around the mid-eighties. Coolness. Not. I guess it was technically better than the Atari 2000....

[crashe]

Vic 20 - Sold it.
Commodore 64 - Still have all the games and the printer, ran it throu the 14" tv. GEOS was the way to go before microsoft hit town.
(plus still have 2 containers full of floppy discs - some naughty ones too..... lol)

Windows 3.1 - Ex-parliament computer. Still have instructions on how to operate it etc - then upgraded to.
Also got a HP Laserjet4L printer - Now all these years later I have to replace the toner or look at getting another printer. $$$$$$
windows 3.11 - Then upgraded to another machine.

Windows 95 - buggar all gigabytes, 32 RAM memory and 333 CPU - since then I upgraded a few times to get the following....
Windows 98se - 20 Gigabyte and 64 RAM memory - Now I have the following.....
Windows 2000 - 80 gigabytes, 256 RAM memory and 500 CPU

I also stilll have all the discs to load up Windows 95 about 50 of them to load it all on.

[onearmedbandit]

C64 with tape drive. Oh how I remember waiting 45mins until you turned the tape over to continue loading Guantlet, only for it not to work so you would reload it again.

[Hillbilly]

1st PC? A "PC General" Pentium 120 w/32 Mb 60ns EDO Ram, 512Kb L2 cache and 1.2gb HDD. I then upgraded the S3 Trio 64 graphics card to a Creative Graphics Blaster w/2MB V-Ram and then a Creative 3D Blaster with the Rendition Verite V1000 chipset and a 40ns EDO ram. Ooooo.... 3d acceleration at it's best! (V-Quake anyone?) Also upgraded the mother board to get the "new" Pentuim 200 (before MMX) and added a second HDD - the massive 2.5 Gb 5" Quantum "Bigfoot".

[Mental Trousers]

zx 81

[Swoop]

I doubt that an Atari 2800 with both joystick AND paddle controllers gets an inclusion in this geekathon.

Some kind of apple machine at school...
C64 - cheers Meatbomb!
Commodore AT/XT (5-1/4" floppy A & B drives!).
*cringe*

[NighthawkNZ]

Our school had Apple II, and then upgraded to BBC Micro... :gob:

[Mom]

Commador 64............learned to write BASIC.........think i may have managed to create a primitive ball and bat type game thing......:shutup: wish i had not admitted that somehow.......first real computer was a HUGE thing installed at the BNZ i worked at, that would have been early 80's

[bane]

my dad bought a Dick Smith "System 80" in 1979 (cost >$1000 at the time, a lot of money!). Based on the Radioshack TRS80, it had 16kB ram, green mono screen, and a tape drive. Even with only 16kB ram to play with, still had over 500 games.

By 1982, it had been upgraded to 64k ram, and had a DD disk drive. Last update it had in 1985, was a 10meg HD...(wow), and a 1200 baud modem to connect to a bulletin board called Tinkerbell.

My first PC was a Franklin Ace 1000 (copy of a Apple IIe - in fact Apple shut them down in a court case). Cost me $50 in 1987...

ah the memories

[Joni]

Im showing my age... but my first was a 486 - 100Mhz :yes:

[NighthawkNZ]

Im showing my age...

So what does that say about me and my 1st puter... :innocent:

[Jantar]

The first computer I ever used was an IBM 360. The first I owned was a Dick Smith System80 with 16 kb of Ram, followed by a 64 kb TRS80, then an Amstrad 286 with a 20 MB HD, an IBM 386 with a 120 MB HD which got upgraded to 486, then pentium etc etc, until it just couldn't be upgraded any more. It finished 16 MB ram and 4 GB HD, and I still have it here tucked away in the spare room, but haven't used it for some time now.

[Mr. Peanut]

Acorn Electron

10 Print "Fuck I hate BASIC"
20 Goto 10
Run

:angry:

[rainman]

Oh this is sad... My first computer was a Compukit UK101, which I built from a kit. Buying this took almost all my wages from the electronics shop I was working in - and who I bought the kit from.

After that, a weird CP/M machine with 8" floppies called I think an Ibex, a zx80, then zx81, then spectrum, I think there was a vic20 in there too but that might have been a mates, assorted apple ii's, an epson hx20, a sanyo mbc550 (8088 processor?), and many IBM compatible pcs from XTs to the present including one of those breadbox-style PCjr things and just about one of everything else up to my current P4 something. Might have missed a few. Never a mac though, for some inexplicable reason - I'd buy one today if I didn't think the non-existent money would be better put towards a decent cruiser... :)

I was offered an IBM System/34 once, but didn't have room in my garage, so the owner cut the drive bays out the front and installed a small bar fridge instead, with shelving for spare beer in the sides where the huge 64M drives used to go. :drinkup:

[limbimtimwim]

My first computer was probably one of the first clones of an IBM XT in the country. After that, just a usual progression of x86 based shit.

Old man made a few bucks selling those back in the day.

Probably the most exotic system (Which isn't really) I've got is a SparcStation 10 in the wardrobe though with half a dozen hard disks and 128mb of ram, which back in the day would have cost an absolute stack of cash. It's got a single 40MHz cpu, I could put in another CPU but I'd need to find another SS10. It still goes, uptime is a sad 29 days at the moment due to a powercut. It runs my email and webserver.

[Magua]

1998 my first comp. HP something. 266mhz, something like a 5gb hard drive, if that. :S

[Rhino]

DSE VZ200 with 16k RAM, cassette tape loading. Upgraded to VZ300 with 5.25 floppy. Z80 based machine that I used to write assembler on. At the same time I was looking after an Epson QX10 cp/m 2.2 machine at work. No h/d, put the cp/m boot disk in drive a: and your application disks in drive b:

Since then I have had Intel 286, 386, 486, Pentium 90, PII, PIII and P4 machines with various O/S installed. At work I have used a multitude of machines and O/S's including SCO, DOS, Win95 to XP, BSD and Linux.

[deeknow]

What the hell we're doin talkin up all this geek stuff on a bike forum I dont know, but the 1st machine I ever actually paid for (with my hard-earned pocket money) was a programmable Casio FX-702 (pic attached) which I bought in 1982. I thought it was a mighty thing at the time, on-board BASIC interpreter, I/O port (I bought a thermal printer to go with it), 12-character LCD display, 3kB of memory.. yee ha !!! what more could you want :Punk:

all my friends were jealous of course... oh wait a minute, no they weren't

[NighthawkNZ]

we had a sharp similar thingy at school... spend hours typing in the code to find out you made a typo and it didn't do what you thought it did.. :)

them were the days

[RantyDave]

a SparcStation 10 in the wardrobe though with half a dozen hard disks and 128mb of ram. It runs my email and webserver.
You, sir, are a geek. We need a special geek certificate for this sort of thing. If you ran IRIX you'd get a golden geek certificate.

Dave

[Pathos]

I played on my dad's trs80 for five minutes before begging him to let us take it apart with a screwdriver.

The first computer that I fell in love and the first new computer we bought with was our HP pentium 150mhz with win95. QBasic rocked and it could play interstate 76.

My first machine was a AMD 2500+ barton system that I'm on ATM. Fantastic machine. It's my younger brothers late christmas present.

My first brand new machine is sitting next to me waiting for the motherboard to arrive. Core 2 duo extreme overclocking ftw ....

[Shadows]

ZX81 with a whopping 8K of RAM. Later it was upgraded with the 16K RAM pack before being redeployed as a door wedge.

[Donor]

Ahhh... my dead sexy Commodore][ - cost of around $900 (I got it cheap!) approx 20 years ago... didn't have the coin to upgrade to the uber powerful Commodore 128, so just had to keep bribing me mate with booze and pirated software to let me play Barbarian on his. (It loaded SO much faster from floppies vs the old Dataset!)

Still have it sitting in my garage, working well... need a joystick though, so's I can do the Spinning Web Of Death move... that rocked!

Nowadays, progressed through the XT/AT wars, fallen in and out of love with Intel, and currently shacked up with AMD. Duron 1800 in my desktop with 512MB and an ancient GeForce2 MX 4000 32MB card ... yes, **32MB** I just don't need anything more than that, it displays my essential pics at 1280x1024 in 32 bit just fine thankyewverrrymooch!

The lappy is a run of the mill Compaq V2000, running Kubuntu, so nyah nyah to Billy Gates... and an ALL wireless LAN, so's I can sit in my dunny and post messages on what PCs I have had and seen, and still use today... cripes... pass me a match will ya?

[scracha]

Atari 65XE. Then a Commadore 128, then a Spectrum 128, then Amiga, then an Amstrad 286. Then various PC's. If work is mentioned then the nicest were rackmounted arrays of Power PC's and Sharc processors. Quad core PC's are for girls.

Atari basic + 6502C assembler...mmmmmm