Computers: A flashback in time.

[Atomic77]

Heres a look at my first computer I had after I graduated High School in 1997.

 

[AsRock]

ZX81 for me , well 1st thing with a keyboard that is, went pretty much though the Sinclare for the most part partly due to simulators later on, how ever i did love the BBC Micro and Chuckie Egg hahaha.

ZX81
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81

BBC Micro
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro

Atari was another with the Atari ST and what a machine that was .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST

 

[Hawkstream]

I am proud to be able to say I built my first PC, a 486 DX4 100, in 1991-ish. In fact I have only purchased 1 prebuilt desktop PC in my life, a Dell in around 1998. Other than that I have built every desktop PC I have ever had .

 

[Silvertigo]

First PC I used was my fathers ZX-80, then he upgraded to the ZX-81, then the famous Tandy TRS-80 level II and the

Commodore 64 was there somewhere as well and then to Windows DOS ver 2?

I recieved my own first PC in about 1982 the Texas Instruments TI 99 4/a.

Had programmable sprites, alot of fun, had to learn to write in Basic, which was ah...very basic to do.

Thankfully Bill did not come with it.

 

[AsRock]

I am proud to be able to say I built my first PC, a 486 DX4 100, in 1991-ish. In fact I have only purchased 1 prebuilt desktop PC in my life, a Dell in around 1998. Other than that I have built every desktop PC I have ever had .

I remember my brother getting a DX66 and i screwing up windows on it which is what got me in to PC's. Then i got a IBM 150 which ran at which was a pile of crap which all so ran hot as hell then AMD popped up for me for a short while until Intel came out with the 233 which blocking the right pins would allow over clocking.

Built my own until 2003 when i moved to the US and all so got a DELL 4550 ( HA ) then carryied on building them my self again after that.

 

[BUCK NASTY]

My first PC back in 1994.

It lasted until 2005(with upgrades) until I built my 1st home grown ASUS K8N-E Deluxe with the venerable Athlon64 3000+(Venice). Graphics powered by RADEON 9600 128MB. Ah, the good ol' dayz! Imagine the horsepower you get nowadays for $2K.....

 

[64K]

The first PC that I got to mess with was in high school. I don't remember what it was but it used punch tape to store programs and a dot matrix printer with keyboard for an interface. Then an Apple II. The first computer I owned was the Commodore 64 in the early 80s. It would be considered a joke today I guess but it was pretty cool back then. I even had a cassette tape drive to store programs. I couldn't afford a Commodore Amiga or Atari ST back then. My first IBM PC was an XT with a whopping 640 KB RAM and dual floppy 5 1/4 drives. iirc it was a a 8088 CPU.

 

[Brusfantomet]

First computer i had access to was a P1 100 MHz with 8 MB ram and "almost" a GB HDD.
The first one i had for myself was a PH one with a p3 550 MHz, 128 MB ram, INTEGRATED voodoo 3 card with 8 MB ram.
Next was a Dell inspiron 8200 laptop, P4m 1,6 GHz, 256 MB ram, 20 GB HDD and Geforce 4 440mx go
After that i built my computers, but have gotten some laptops also. That Dell laptop still works, the battery and DVD is dead tho, but the floppy drive still works.

 

[dorsetknob]

My first system was a Taxan 80286 way back in 1990 it was 12Mhz with 1 mb ram and 20 mb Hd with a 5 1/4" floppy (1.2mb ) 1200 baund modem ( dial up )
Oh Happy Dos Days ( And Windows 3 )

that was when Dos meant disk operating system and not denial of service
virus did not exist and plug and play was a dream

Spoiler: Old Farts walk down Memory lane

yeh I'm one of those

 

[Silvertigo]

Just found the ZX81 with keyboard upgrade and its successor the ZX Spectrum and a 16kb memory expansion pack.

No idea if they still work, need an old analogue TV to test.

Unfortunately the ZX80 is missing from the crypt.

 

[AsRock]

Just found the ZX81 with keyboard upgrade and its successor the ZX Spectrum and a 16kb memory expansion pack.

No idea if they still work, need an old analogue TV to test.

Unfortunately the ZX80 is missing from the crypt.

View attachment 67287

OOh those rubber keys drove me frigging loopy

 

[qubit]

I started waay back in 1980 as a kid, when I got sent on a computer introductory course which included Basic programming. This was on the glorious Tandy TRS-80.

The first computer I actually owned was an Oric Atmos in 1983 after seeing a friend's Oric 1 and programming it. I then upgraded to various Acorn computers, the Electron, BBC Master, A3000 and Risc PC. Shame that platform got mismanaged into the ground and died at the end of the 90s.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Heres a look at my first computer I had after I graduated High School in 1997.

You definately need to put this in the Nostalgic Hardware Club here on TPU!

 

[brandonwh64]

Mine was a Packard bell 386 with 8MB of ram and I can not remember the size of the hard drive but it ran windows 3.1. My first build though was a 486DX with 32MB of ram and a 1GB hard drive running windows 95. I later on added a voodoo 3 2000 but it still played doom and duke nukem great! My second build was when better games started hitting the market and it was a AMD K6 400MHZ with 256MB SDRAM with the same voodoo card and it played HL1 when it came out but BARELY. I then joined the military and picked up a laptop with a pentium 4 1.2Ghz and 1GB of ram which had a ATI 3D PRO 9000 and it would play HL1 at about 60FPS along with BF2. My third build was when I got married and it was a Pentium D 805 with 2GB of DDR2 and a 8800 GTS. This lasted me for quite a while and I eventually went SLI on the same board with 8800 Ultras. The CPU was the largest bottleneck and I eventually went on to a AMD 5400 Black edition with 4GB DDR2 1066mhz sticks. After that I went to a AMD Phenom II 940 Black edition using same board as with the 5400 and same ram. I then went to a Phenom II 965 BE with DDR3 and a GTX 285. Next upgrade went to a Intel I7 920 which I used up until my 2600K.

 

[Atomic77]

The Packard Bell computer I had about 10 years by the way.

 

[Silvertigo]

Slighly off topic, but anyways, below clip is the game I spent countless hours playing as a 12 year old kid on the TRS80 II.

Came on a cassette tape, took maybe 10 minutes to load/set up, had to do that each time to play.

 

[ne6togadno]

first i have used in school was https://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/Правец_8С (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravetz_computers 8C model)

my first own pc was with

, S3 trio 64V+ later upgraded to S3 virge DX cant remember what was mb.

 

[P4-630]

Our first computer was a Philips MSX Home Computer connected to a small compact black/white TV

Most games we had were on cassette tapes.

 

[silentbogo]

Don't know if I should be zealous or feel sorry for you, nerds.

I only got my first computer on the second or third year of college and it was, what I thought at the time, a "gaming" computer with Athlon XP 1800+/256MB RAM/GeForce MX 400.
Yet, during my happy childhood filled with abandoned-construction-site-adventures, forrest trips and smoking cigarettes, I still got my share of soviet ZX Spectrum clones.

My classmate had one, and it was a bad-ass rig: ZX Spectrum with beta-disk and tons of other peripherals. It was old even for that time, but in 90's not that many people had computers anyway ))
The only problem was - few people that had games had them on tape and his floppy drive was useless, so we still had to hook it up to his crappy portable stereo, which meant that during the loading process you couldn't move, breathe or fart, because you'll have to start all over.

We also had Корвет ПК8010 computers at school and that's how I learned to program in BASIC, which came to be the first useless programming language that invaded my brain.

 

[Atomic77]

On this date in 1981 IBM introduces it's first personal computer the 1050. It costs $4000 in todays money.

 

[95Viper]

On this date in 1981 IBM introduces the first personal computer the 1050. It costs $4000 in todays money.

You wording is wrong . That was when IBM introduced their first Personal Computer.
That is not the first PC.

Here is a link to a decent article on firsts in computer invention:
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000984.htm

Edit:

Here is a link to a story at the Observer of what you post....
http://observer.com/2015/08/ibms-first-personal-computer-was-released-34-years-ago-today/

 

[Atomic77]

Thanks for clearing that up. I kinda knew there were computers before 1981.

 

[erocker]

It would probably be a very good idea to take these computer history threads and put them in one thread.

Oh! I'm still using a 486sx in my wheel alignment machine!