First Computers

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Posted by michael on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @09:15AM from the thanks-for-the-memories dept.

theodp writes "You never forget your first love. Or your first computer. Good Morning Silicon Valley readers share fond memories of their first computers, including SuperELFs with 256 bytes of RAM, $99 Timex Sinclairs, 26-pound 'portable' Osbornes, 'high-speed' 300 baud modems, Apple IIs running COBOL, and even a Mattel Aquarius (complete with Microsoft Aquarius-BASIC 1.0!)."

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The "Home Computer Museum"... by tcopeland · 2003-12-23 09:16 · Score: 4, Informative

...has a list of most of the candidates, including the Mattel Aquarius.

No TRS-80 pics, though... odd...

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Re:It was horrible by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 09:23 · Score: 1, Informative

Was it the Amstrad PC1512? 5,25" disk drives, EGA-type graphics, AA size batteries under monitor for the real-time clock. Almost PC-compatible, but not quite. Ran GEM and had a fucking ugly mouse with a non-standard connector.
Atari! by ZorinLynx · 2003-12-23 09:33 · Score: 4, Informative

Everyone remembers Apple II and C64, but does anyone remember Atari 400/800?

I dug this up in my closet recently. Very amusing little book:

http://www.cs.fiu.edu/~flynnj/ComputersForPeople /

I never had an Atari, but they had neat graphics ability. It was more of a C64/128 competitor than an Apple II competitor. I do remember the 810 disk drives being gawdawful slow, and only holding around 90K per disk. Apple II drives held 140K!

We're fricking' SPOILED now, folks. }:)
1. Re:Atari! by srleffler · 2003-12-23 10:50 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Well, the reason the Atari drives were so much more expensive was that they were "intelligent", which in this case meant you'd issue a few-byte command like "read sector $04A" and you'd get back a 128-byte frame.
  That reminds me: the early Commodore 8250 floppy drives (for the PET) were even more intelligent. The drive unit was a massive box (about the size of a modern PC) with two drives in it and a SCSI interface to connect to the computer. It was controlled with ASCII commands sent to the drive. The drive unit contained its own 6502 microprocessor, just like the one in the computer. With some work one could write programs that ran in the disk drive. Mostly these involved blinking the drive lights.
  There are some interesting Commodore brochures here.
2. Re:Atari! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 11:23 · Score: 1, Informative
  
  The 8250 uses a IEEE 488 interface, not scsi.
  So do all CBM printers and floppy drives and plotters and such from that era..
  
  Interestingly, Commodore made a single drive version of the 8250 later on in the same type of case as the 1541 and called it SFD-1001.
  
  There are a few interesting things about the CBM 8250 and the SFD 1001.
  
  - Both are dual 6502 machines, in fact being more powerfull cpu-wise then the machines they connected to. 1 cpu handled the interfacing with the ieee bus and command handling, the other one managed the disk heads and sector encoding/decoding. On later drives (15xx series) this was all handled by a single cpu. In fact, those drives made for a rather usable smp system when they were not busy dealing with floppies. (heh.. my distributed mandolbrot generator running on the C64's main cpu, a cpu in my 1541 and 2 in the sfd-1001 and 2 in the 8250 made for a nice show..
  
  - Both drives fitted 1MB on a dual density 5.25" floppy.
  
  - Both have an internal transfer speed of around 1mbit/sec, which for that time was amazingly fast.
  
  I have both drives and they still work (both around 20 years old now).. the SFD 1001 had many problems initially, esp. with the head adjustment, but after the last time Commodore fixed it on warranty, it never failed again.
3. Re:Atari! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-12-23 11:39 · Score: 1, Informative
  
  IIRC these were also designed by Jay Miner, who later went on to design the Amiga. These systems had some of the first serious custom chips I believe.
Re:My first computer... by spectecjr · 2003-12-23 09:36 · Score: 2, Informative

A commodore+4, I think (correct me if I'm wrong please), this was released in the states as the vic 20. The plus 4 reffered to the MASSIVE 4Kb of extra RAM, this made it ideal for "Business Applications". It's currently in a loft in Scotland in my mothers house, but still works with the original tape deck and everything!

The +4 was an upgrade to the Commodore 16 (the Vic20 was much older, and had much less oomph). It had several built in apps for wordprocessing, spreadsheet work, etc.

More info on the +4 (click "About")

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Re:P4 by Martigan80 · 2003-12-23 10:11 · Score: 2, Informative

(Mine was a 8086) =)

Then I would kick your ass for being spoiled! I had an Atari 800XL with a 300 Baud modem plus two cartridges.

Who's next to get kicked?

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Re:P4 by higginsm2000 · 2003-12-23 12:50 · Score: 2, Informative

I think you are mistaken. The ZX80 was the first computer from sinclair and had 1k (I think, I had a zx81 with 1k). The spectrum came later, first with 16k and the 48k.

There is no way you could have run elite on a zx80.
Re:my first PC: 286 by b1t+r0t · 2003-12-24 13:55 · Score: 2, Informative

It is truly sad that modern PCs don't ship with a compiler.
Some do.

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