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What Was Your First Computer?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the you-never-forget-your-first dept.

michaelmichael writes "News.com.com is running a special report, asking readers to tell everyone what their first computer was. This was prompted by another article commemorating the 60th anniversary of ENIAC." I started on a trash 80 in like 5th grade. And although I did a lot of programming and games on 8086s, it wasn't until I got a 286 in middle school that I really considered a machine "Mine".

6 of 1,485 comments (clear)

  1. Amiga 500+ by Use+Psychology · · Score: 5, Insightful

    mine was an Amiga 500+ - ah, those were the days.

  2. You made me a programmer by Renegade+Lisp · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My first computer was a Sinclair ZX-81 which I got when I was twelve. Much more deeply than the actual computer I remember the moment when I had first switched it on and typed "print 2+2" on that piece of membrane pretending to be a keyboard ("print" was actually a function key, you couldn't type it letter by letter). I still remember my astonishment when I pressed the "New Line" field and the number "4" appeared in the top left corner of the screen. It was something radically different from a pocket calculator. Or so I felt. Since this moment the fascination of programming has never left me again.

    1. Re:You made me a programmer by chato · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I think what was lost when the IBM PCs became popular, was the fact that you no longer started inside a programming language interpreter. In an old ZX80/Atari/Commodore, after booting you had just the prompt:

      READY

      The computer was inviting you to type something. Nowadays the computer invites you to explore what others have done, not to create your own stuff to make it work. And that's a huge difference.

  3. First encounters with modems is more interesting. by XorNand · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My first computer was a Packard Bell Legend II AT (286), purchased by my father in 1988. The interesting thing is that my parents were absolutely steadfast about not allowing me to have a modem. My father was overly concerned about me calling Sydney Australlia (always Sydney for some reason?) for hours at a time. My solution was to illicitly buy second-hand 2400 bps modems from the kids at school who were, at the time, upgrading to expensive new 14.4kbps ones. And I do say "modems"--I went through three of them after my parents kept discovering them. I would get up at 3am and run a 100 foot telephone cable from our living room to the basement, where I would spend about three hours a night chatting and playing Tradewars 2002 and Legend of the Red Dragon. Always by dialing only local BBSs of course. Kinda funny that 15 years later I would help found a VoIP company, which helps people save on calls to Sydney. ;-)

    --
    Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
  4. If I'd got a NES would I be working in Pizza Hut? by MBAFK · · Score: 5, Interesting
    My dad wouldn't buy me a console when I was little, he thought you should be able to do more with a computer than just play games so I got a Commodore 64 for Christmas when I was 7. By boxing day I was bored shitless with Rambo and read the manual, after "10 print "Commodore 64 "; 20 goto 10" I was hooked.

    Sometimes I wonder what I would be doing now if he had given in and bought me a NES.

  5. Re:Mac 128K by daveschroeder · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hmm, after re-thinking this, perhaps the bigger news here is that I found a wife.