Your first computer

[Tonysmedley]

There has been some discussion on the WHR forum about first computers, but there is criticism that it is not relevant to that forum.
What do you remember about your first computer?

My original contact with computers was when the first national census was taken after the 1939-1945 war. It had been decided that the census returns should be analyzed by the new-fangled computer. At that time the only computer the Government owned which was able to do this was the sole War Ministry computer at Worthy Down, used for dealing with Army pay. But it was not available and a second hand computer was obtained , redundant from NATO HQ in Brussels. I believe.

I had the job of arranging the engineering services in the building to be erected to house it ( it was far too big to go into any available office !) It was no easy job. The power supply was the American standard of 110 volts, 60Hz, and the power requirement about 90 Kw - most of which was emitted as heat from the numerous equipment cabinets in the main hall housing the computer, all full of ranks of glowing thermionic tubes. It was enormous. Data entry and output was by yards of punched paper tape, typed in by dozens of women operators. And I imagine that it was nowhere near as powerful as the modest machine I am using to enter this posting. It would have been difficult at that time to imagine today's situation where it is even suggested that PCs should be distributed free to third world countries.

As for me, at my advanced age I had no intention of getting involved, but my son dumped his "old" PC on me and I was hooked.

Tony

[Anonymizeruk]

Well, at only a shade under 25 years old, my first experience with computers is somewhat different!

The first computer I used was an Acorn Electron, which I remember playing games on as young as 3. I could write a simple program in BBC BASIC, but that was pretty much my limit.

Since then, I've gone through a Commodore 64, Atari 1040 ST (with a whopping 4mb of RAM added!), Commodore Amiga with a 80mb HDD, then through to my first PC.

Cheers

Gaz

[Lad491]

Well my first introduction to computers was in the late 1970's when i was working for HMC&E and involved in setting up a yacht movement monitoring system at Portsmouth / Southampton. Communication then was by dial up modem at the amazing rate of 300Kb/s. I can remember the first upgrade we got was to take us to 1200 /75 Kb/s (1220 download and 75 upload) and thought that an amazing improvement I cant remember details about the hardware now - except that they were DEC VaX machines which at the time i think were the markets leaders in business computing.

At home I bought the Sinclair ZX80 when it first arrived, followed the following year by the ZX81, with the 16KB RAM pack extension that wobbled about like no business I still have them both with loads of games. It was also my first introduction to programming and i wrote several text based adventure games. I graduated to the Sinclair Spectrum when it arrived and bought two, one with the original rubber keys and one set into a real qwerty keyboard with an Opus disk Drive. Again loads of games. I still have those too.

My first PC was an Amstrad 3386SX - a real technology breakthrough in those days. It had a clock speed of 20MHZ when all the others (mostly IBM's and Apples) could only manage a mere 8MHZ. 1MB of Ram (640kb available) and a 256MB hard disk. Later i installed a second 512mb hard disk. I still have it and its still a great machine for playing old DOS based games. It cost me £3500

After that I ventured into building my own and built a tower with a DX66 chip, 256mb ram and a 1GB hard disk. Running Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. It cost me £1500 to build myself.

I then had a variety of computers, changing them about every two years.
I still have most of them because i never chuck anything out I currently have 5 PC's all working but only 3 currently in use.

[vidal]

First I ever saw and used was a Commodore Pet, it was only for the "maths club" at school, I wasn't a member, but one day I was allowed to stand at the back of the crowd and watch!

First one owned, was one of these...

[img]http://computer_collector.tripod.com/pics/vintage/ti994a.jpg[/img]

Completely non-standard, everyone else had Spectrums and Vic 20s.

Then came the Beeb!

Download a fantastic Ti99 emulator here.

James

[johndibben]

Around 1998 when I bought one from someone who ran a shop. No idea what it was but it used Windows 3.1.

Before that I swore I'd never buy a computer.

Then I swore I'd never connect to the Internet.

Then I swore I'd never use forums.

I swear a lot

Cheers

John

[Speedbird083]

An Amstrad CPC 464.

Dad used it for work when I wasn't playing Defend or Die, The Covenant, Paperboy or Operation Gunship.

[danny3]

My first computer was the Atari STFM which i got when i was 3 years old, the 512k version then upgraded to 1MB (which i used until 1996 - it was that bad i couldn't afford a computer at the time, and i was 12 at the time ).

I mostly used it for games including something called carrier command, a game that looked really good and lasted a long time (unlike some games avaliable now though).

My next pc (first PC) had 32 MB Ram, a 8MB Graphics card, an AMD K6-2 450 MHz CPU and the most important part the 56 Modem . I had this computer some time around 1998 - 9? Although compared to the one i have now this one is a bit old (I still have the floppy disk drive from it in my current computer though )

[220389]

my first computer ran on Windows 3.1 which my family got around 14 yrs ago and i used to play games on that when i was 3, i've used the Acorn Computers. But my First modern day will computer was an AMD k6-2 500mhz with 768mb of memory, an 16mb ATI Rage Fury Pro Graphics card with 2x pci Voodoo 2 boster cards and an 60gig hard drive.

[Crimpsal]

First use was an Amstrad 1512 running Dos 3.1 at work.

First purchase Amstrad CPC 464, then Sinclair QL - Amstrad CPC 6128 - Amiga 1200 (still got, but now towered with 80gig HD & Z4 board + accelerator.)
PC started out as xx486, AMD K6

Now have K7S41 M/B, AMD Athlon XP2000+, & Gforce 6200 (home built into an old "Time" tower)

[dorlan]

BBC B
BBC Master
Acorn A4000
2 A7000s
3 Acorn Risc PCs, two still in regular use, 1 for spares
2 PC laptops
desktop PC

All still in working order!

Ian J

[dforrest]

My first use of a computer was in Jamaica of all places, in 1972. It was an IBM main-frame (that is all I know about the specification) and we used it to prepare a critical path analysis for the Bank of Jamaica building we were building. All data entry was by punch card based on the data entry forms I completed. I remember that I saw all the cards so I guess I also had to check them but don't remember this part in detail.

The printed output we got was far inferior to what I now get using Microsoft Project on a PC!

David

[Anonymizeruk]

Yay - someone else who had an ST
I still use my ST for MIDI sequencing. Still using a free program that came with a magazine too!

I always wanted to see a RISC PC in action - I used the A310, A3000 and A5000 quite a bit at secondary school.

Cheers

Gaz

[CaptainBazza]

Ohio Scientific C1P, approx 1978 or 79, thence, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga 500, Commodore PC 10 286, PC 386, PC 486 DX 66, PC AMD Kx3, etc, etc, etc, etc.

Worst Quality Control EVER! Commodore, they totally deserved to go under.........their monitors and power packs were rubbish. A high percentage of their stuff had hardware faults. They did not care in the least for their customers, they were noted for completely ignoring feedback. Good riddance....and don't bother to tell me how great the Amigas were, either.

[dorlan]

I always wanted to see a RISC PC in action - I used the A310, A3000 and A5000 quite a bit at secondary school.

Basically the same GUI with some tweaks, but a lot faster!

Ian J

[phill70]

Atari stfm, its still in the loft somewhere

Glyn