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First Computers

Posted by michael on 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!)."

7 of 614 comments (clear)

  1. The "Home Computer Museum"... by tcopeland · · Score: 4, Informative

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

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

    --
    The Army reading list
  2. Atari! by ZorinLynx · · 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 · · 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.

  3. Re:My first computer... by spectecjr · · 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")

    --
    Coming soon - pyrogyra
  4. Re:P4 by Martigan80 · · 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?

    --
    This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
  5. Re:P4 by higginsm2000 · · 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.

  6. Re:my first PC: 286 by b1t+r0t · · Score: 2, Informative
    It is truly sad that modern PCs don't ship with a compiler.

    Some do.

    --

    --
    "Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
    "Open source is evil." - Microsoft