Old School - What was the first computer you used?

[Bill Tarling]

My first computer experience was on an old Wang 2200B (back in 1973 - long before the first home computer) in high school. It helped that I had 24 hours access to the school, so I would often show up at 4AM and leave school after 11PM just so I could play with it.

[logang]

My first computer was a generic no name with at 300Mhz CPU and I don't remember the rest of the specs. I was able to play Diablo 2 on it but asking for much else was pushing it. I ended up giving it to my mother when I joined the army and she hung on to it for too long, this was back in 1999 or 2000

[ArrayKnight]

Macintosh Plus

[kopfstoff]

first computer i "used" was the commodore c64 ->

my best friend back in the days had one, and we did nothing else then playing the old classics on it every weekend when i was there.

i was like 8 or 9 years old, when i got my first real pc: the 286 pc, with an "amber brown display", i remember it so well... it was an old pc from a friend of our family and since i was totally hooked after he showed me "doom", "pitfall", "police quest", "space quest" and "prince of persia", i got his old machine on christmas once. i was amazed as i got my first colour monitor one year later or so... (photo is not mine, but comes close to it) ->

first thing i did was type out comic books to learn typing. my mom went crazy when i was playing games on it, since sound was cpu generated and often not more then 3-4 high beep signal sounds... she hated racing games the most, but loved the fluid animations from prince of persia, so did i.

beside that i played through almost every video game console generation, because of that friend i mentioned earlier. good old times.

@BillTarling crazy! never seen some like that before in real life.

[Dalec]

A Tandy 2000...

[andrew_robinson]

A Commodore PET.

[Raphael van Lierop]

Texas Instruments TI-99 4A.

Didn't have any storage for it either, so I would input games from Compute! magazine, play them for a bit, and then lose them once the power went off.

We also had Apple ][s in school. I recall using one for a typing and spelling program in Grade 3.

This all would have been 1982/83. Old. School.

[Bill Tarling]

I would input games from Compute! magazine, play them for a bit, and then lose them once the power went off.

Until we moved to Cumberland, I still had all my original Compute! magazines -- it was the greatest )

Texas Instruments TI-99 4A.We also had Apple ][s in school. I recall using one for a typing and spelling program in Grade 3. This all would have been 1982/83. Old. School.

Old School?!? *pishaw* You were spoiled with that fancy modern equipment -- and a good thing for all of us too, otherwise you may have ended up as a full time pancake maker instead of a game developer!

[Raphael van Lierop]

Actually, I also recall my dad having a Timex-Sinclair 1000 with an accounting program on tape. I don't think I ever really used it though.

I also remember it having the most annoying keyboard ever.

[pablo]

I think the first computer I ever used was an Apple ][ in school, we had an intro to computer class.

[Bill Tarling]

I also still have my AMSTRAD PPC 512 portable laptop (still working perfectly too)

Talk about a powerhouse computing machine:

CPU: 8088 @ 4.77 MHz

Memory: 512kb RAM

OS: Dos 3.0

Power: 10 'C' cell batteries

Audio: Beep sound

Video: 640x200 9" Mono (green) LCD

It's a real featherweight at only 22 lbs. and considering the massive processing power, I couldn't imagine anybody ever needing anything more powerful.

[kristian mattila]

First computer I saw, operated and eventually owned was a Commodore 64.

[Dara]

My first computer was the Amstrad CPC 464. Although mine had a green screen or was it green text....

I later remember learning to program DOS at school like a year later (or maybe that year, it was a while ago) no idea what they were but I do remember being able to make games on them (verrry basic ones) as projects and they were on a daisy chained network using coaxial cables

[TattooedMac]

first computer i

"used"

was the commodore c64 ->

And that was mine too. I remember being at college in about '85' and we were the first school or institution to have 20 C64's linked and i remember cracking into the admin console and then taking control of all 20 machines. Back then when it came to computer class, if 20 machines tried to load up games like Pitfall and Bolder Dash (all time favourite game) no-one would go anywhere, so the teacher would lock out all except 1 and things worked well. I had number 12 so i had a while to wait, so on the weekend's i found a way to bypass the Admin console and i became admin . . . HAHAHAHA i still get a laugh out of people not knowing what was going on and the teacher looking so confused as to why he didn't have control . . . .

Just think if i kept going down that path, i could be Mr Wiki Leaks lol

[logang]

I think the first computer I ever used was an Apple ][ in school, we had an intro to computer class.

I answered the question wrong, I also first used an apple ][ in school though I think it was the GS model.

[janet_chamberlain]

I used the Apple in high school and I had a Vic 20 at home. For college my parents upgraded me to the Commodore 128. I learned how to hack internals with those machines. Learned about how to how to retrieve "erased" memory. Editing sprites for games took forever back then.

[Kennedy]

My first one was a schneider euro PC2

http://www.heimcomputer.de/pics/europc2_2.jpg

[JetroKoro]

My first computer was something called Spectravision. It was basically a C64 mock-off.

After that my first PC was some generic 486. I can remember all those sleepless nights playing Doom II, Jazz the Jackrabbit, Commander Keen, Duke Nukem 2 and a Finnish "Worms" -clone, Liero.

Hop to "modern PC age" happened somewhere in the 90's with some Compaq's 400mHz Pentium 2.

Between the 486 and P2, I just enjoyed my Sega Megadrive (Genesis in the US) and Playstation 1.

[ExaPaw]

Well, I kinda feel to young to jump into the conversation, but I'll do it anyway.

My first computer was a "zombie rig" built of old trash parts from my dad's work. I was like 5 years old and he built it for me so I could play "Freddi Fish". It was running perfectly fine on the good old Win98.

Now I'm 16 and love all kinds of technical things. ^^

[robdoar]

Apple 2g in elementary school

HP model 7000 at home in the early 90's

[Bill Tarling]

Apple 2g in elementary school HP model 7000 at home in the early 90's

Oh sure, you were spoiled... starting with a monitor with more than one color

We were ecstatic to have our first color monitors -- there was a choice of grey text, green text or amber text... or for cheap people (like me) purple cellophane over the front screen to pretend I had a color monitor]

[robdoar]

Apple 2g in elementary school HP model 7000 at home in the early 90's

Oh sure, you were spoiled... starting with a monitor with more than one color

We were ecstatic to have our first color monitors -- there was a choice of grey text, green text or amber text... or for cheap people (like me) purple cellophane over the front screen to pretend I had a color monitor]

I still tinkered with an old IBM 5150, and Commodore64...

My mom worked for Dell in the early 90s, had lots of cool stuff around the house to tinker with.

[brostoevsky]

In the early 90s when I was a little kid, since my dad was a software developer we had a 1987 IBM PS/2 Model 80 at home with a whopping 70MB hard disk, 4MB RAM and an Intel 386 processor. I learned my way around the DOS filesystem and Win 3.1 before I knew how to read.

I used it to play games like X-COM: UFO Defense, 7 Cities of Gold and Wolfenstein 3d alongside more traditional kids games like Reader Rabbit and Math Blaster and Oregon Trail before we got a better computer and I moved on to all the great mid-late 90s games.

That was 9 computers ago not including laptops.

[elloco999]

The first computer I ever used was back in 1984 I think. My dad brought his computer from work for Christmas (he had a week off). I don't know the specs, but it was a huge tower with only a 5 1/4 floppy drive and no harddisk I think. My parents had to forcibly remove my sister and me from that computer when it was time for dinner I'm pretty sure that's when my love for computers started.

The next year my dad bought a Atari ST for Christmas. So that was the first computer we owned. Followed several years later by a i468 with 16MB RAM and an actual 500MB(!) harddrive. Our first real PC! I learned my first programming on that machine (QBasic).

In 1998 I bought my first own PC. A Celeron 500, 256MB RAM, 20GB HDD and a Matrox 400 graphics card. That was the first of a long line of PC's I bought. It was also the last computer that I didn't assemble myself (did pick all the components myself, but the store assembled it).

Man, I have fond memories off all these computers.

[Malak]

First computer used was an IBM mainframe donated to my High School and needed punch cards! I still have the stack of cards and I made a horse racing game.

First one owned was a Radio Shack Color Computer II.

First game played was a P51 flying sim on it.

I had an calculator fairly early and thought the LED digits were so freakin' cool!