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Ask Slashdot: What Was Your First Home Computer?
We've recently seen stories about old computers and sys-ops resurrecting 1980s BBS's, but now an anonymous reader has a question for all Slashdot readers:
Whenever I meet geeks, there's one question that always gets a reaction: Do you remember your first home computer? This usually provokes a flood of fond memories about primitive specs -- limited RAM, bad graphics, and early versions of long-since-abandoned operating systems. Now I'd like to pose the same question to Slashdot's readers.
Use the comments to share details about your own first home computer. Was it a back-to-school present from your parents? Did it come with a modem? Did you lovingly upgrade its hardware for years to come? Was it a Commodore 64 or a BeBox?
It seems like there should be some good stories, so leave your best answers in the comments. What was your first home computer?
Use the comments to share details about your own first home computer. Was it a back-to-school present from your parents? Did it come with a modem? Did you lovingly upgrade its hardware for years to come? Was it a Commodore 64 or a BeBox?
It seems like there should be some good stories, so leave your best answers in the comments. What was your first home computer?
A wire-wrapped homemade 6809 system, bought from a friend when he got his first IBM PC The thing had 168K of RAM, two floppies and managed to run Unix with 3 users The computer was built aound 1980.
My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81 back in '82. I still have it in the basement... Unfortunately it didn't work any more after an attempt to solder the infamously wobbly 16k RAM pack in place with a ribbon cable.
48KB RAM + 16KB extended, two floppy disk drives, green monochrome CRT display, and a joystick. It was amazing at the time, at least to me.
My parents bought it for their business, but they never really used it, and it eventually became mine. I learned how to program on that computer using AppleBASIC. I also learned that line numbers suck for programming, and only went to 32767 (one of my bigger projects). I eventually learned why there was such a "strange" limit like that after I learned about binary numbers.
Favorite games: Choplifter, Wizardry, Karateka, Aztek, and a few adventure games I can't remember the names of.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Timex/Sinclair 1000.
It was a devious monster, when you filled the 2K of RAM it would just lock up, no data error and chance to edit your code... reboot.
Of course I didn't have the tape drive.
Actually, the first part I bought was an expansion interface. I had access to a model 1 at the store and access to floppy drives, but the expansion interfaces would fly out the door and having a floppy drive was of no use without one.
So I first bought an expansion interface so that I could keep it at the store, then when I could afford it, I bought the model one, a floppy drive and took it home.
My first home computer: A hand-me-down Apple ][ Plus in 1985 (on a loan).
The first computer in which I did serious work: A Sanyo MBC-555 (WordStar, CalcStar) 1984
The first Computer I programmed: Commodore 64 (Basic and Logo) 1984-1985.
The first computer which was my own: A comodore PC-10 1988 (yes, with MS-DOS 3.2 and an 4.77 Mhz 8088 CPU).
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
4MB of ram. Had to buy 4 more at 55 dollars per to run Ultima 8. Being a lab assistant wasn't so bad :)
Those qemm days amirite?
With a TV Typewriter II. 4KB SRAM. Audio tape storage. MIKBUG monitor.
Gradually upgraded to a 6809 with 16KB DRAM. Multitasking OS implemented in a homebrew Algol-68-based programming language.
Still have the thing in a box in the basement.
A Heathkit H8 with the hexadecimal keypad. Then a TRS-80, I think model 3, then a commodore 128, and then the first PC was an ITT 8086 based machine with DOS and I want to say 5MB hard drive. *BUT* it had the amber monitor instead of green, so it was awesomely cool. Added a color card,and really went nuts.
Bought in March 1976 in Berkely. 2Mhz 8080, and 4K RAM with only the front panel for about 2 months. Then added the Processor technology VDM-1 16X 64 Video card, 3P+S I/O card and a CUTS casette tape interface. When I added the GPM memory board with a 2K byte ROM Monitor, it was actually easy to read a game in from casette and actually use the computer for something. (Target and TREK-80 for the win!) I eventually added some more RAM - 16 K Dynabyte cards and a North Star micro-disk floppy system. The system eventually evolved to a Z-80, CP/M 80, 60K RAM and a Morrow 16 Megabyte Hard disk.
enough is too much
...VIC-20. Purchased at a garage sale for $20. Later I upgraded to the C-64... and even later an Amiga 500. These days, computers can do anything and the primary difference between my current Windows 7 Pro machine and the next PC i buy will be the horrible Windows 10 UI. But back in the 80's and 90's every new computer was different and NEW and EXCITING. I miss that feeling. Much like my first run through Ashron's Call.
My first home computer was a slide rule.
You are welcome on my lawn.
yes an Apple Lisa, with an Mac mod chip, for the display. still in my attic.
Any offers?
um, jr. I spent a lot of time with Crossfire, Adventures in Math, Gato, and Kings Quest II. I learned to type playing Kings Quest II. My wife doesn't want our son to play video games, but I've already told her he's going to learn to type on Kings Quest games.
...was a TRS-80 Color Computer at a community programming class. I was hooked! Unfortunately, at the time, there was no way I could afford such a thing on my own. I received the David H. Ahl's BASIC Computer Games books as a Christmas gift, and I would pore over the code pretending to run the programs in my head. I guess those books were the first computer I ever owned. To help ease my computer cravings, I could book time at the local public library on their TRS-80 Model III, which was a lousy computer in all respects, but at least I had some access to it. I had to plan things out carefully, since I only had an hour, and that included cassette loading/saving time. Finally, I was able to get a computer that was affordable enough to acquire, since it was dirt cheap--a clearance sale model Timex Sinclair 1000 (the US version of the ZX81). I think I paid $35 for the computer and another $15 for the 16K RAM pack and some game cassettes. Without color or sound or even an on/off switch, it was certainly a piece of junk, but it was *MY* piece of junk which I could use anytime and any way I wished. Unlike in the UK, the US market had a dearth of software, but we did have a lot of books available, so I programmed as much as I could. I still have it, and it still works (I had to repair the voltage regulator a few years ago), and it still has those same horrid RF interference screen patterns that make it unusable on a modern TV. Fortunately, I have a few old B&W CRT TV's laying around...
Later on I was able to snag an Atari 1200XL on clearance and was finally able to move onto "real" computing. That Atari was by far my favorite computer, but that lousy Sinclair still holds a special place in my heart. After all, you never forget your first! :-)
My first computer didn't use electronic components, but it was battery powered and had lights to display the next move. I used a cigar box from my grandpa as the case. I made it myself back in the 1950's, and all it could do was play the game of Nim.
It always won if it got to move second as is the case with a judicious choice of an initial number. Against those who didn't know the game of Nim, it usually won if it took the first move.
I "won" some coins, less than 50 cents, from the other kids. I think they knew better than to trust me; they just wanted to see it work.
My first computer was a Commodore 64, which my parents gave me for Christmas in 1985 when I was in fifth grade. My grandfather bought me a matching disk drive. I was a lucky kid to get these gifts because my parents were and still are working poor. I now suspect that my grandfather also paid for the computer. In 2017 dollars, it was something like a $1,000 Christmas for me.
I didn't set aside my gifts after a few months like many kids do. A year and a half later I was published in RUN Magazine and received a royalty check for my efforts at the ripe old age of 12. I spent virtually every dollar I had on programming books and magazines. I managed to get on the Internet with my first post to Usenet in 1992 but otherwise I was isolated from any other programmer. I was and continue to be a self-taught, natural programmer. I took all of the requisite computer science classes at the university, but more often than not they managed to suck out all of the enjoyment I had been experiencing programming since I was a pre-teen.
More than three decades later, I'm still doing programming. I switched to 100% Linux in 1994, so I've been doing Linux development for almost exactly 23 years. I still remember those early days.
Just looking at the other responses and I just realized that my first "home computer" (ie something that plugged into the TV and you could program and play games on) was actually my third.
I started with a Sharp PC1211 which was a large BASIC programmable calculator with a QWERTY keyboard, 2k of program memory and a thermal printer base station that allowed you to store programs on cassette: http://www.rskey.org/pc1211 I think it was purchased in 1979.
Then went to a CPM computer I designed/wire-wrapped myself: https://slashdot.org/comments....
And, because games were limited on CPM, mono-chrome text based machines in the early 1980s, I got myself an Atari 400 because it had the most sophisticated graphics and sound at the time (I still have the ANTIC chip manual) which is what you would consider a "home computer".
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Toshiba Satellite 5200, with a Pentium 4-M and I think 512MB RAM At 1600x1200 its higher resolution than my current laptop, and also the monitor I used up until about a year and a half ago. I had it set to 640x480 at all times because the graphics chip was dead, it had about 5 minutes of battery life and could barely run Nesticle. The HDD died after a year and I was too dumb to know to just replace it. Went without a PC for a while until I got a Core 2 Duo with Vista... that's when I switched to Linux, for good.
I put together an Ampro Little Board with 64K of RAM. It ran CP/M and mounted directly on a surplus 5-1/4 inch floppy. I added a second floppy to double the storage and used a surplus HP dumb terminal that had a thermal printer built in and a 300 baud acoustic modem for I/O. It was good enough to run Turbo Pascal and got me through a college CS degree back in the '80's. http://oldcomputers.net/ampro-... I still have the hardware but haven't booted it in over 30 years, so the drives probably won't fire up any more.
Looking at people's responses, I'm guessing a "home computer" is one that:
- Plugs into a TV and could display graphics for games
- Play Games
- Could do programming on it
My first "computer" was a Sharp PC1211 (still have it). 2k BASIC programmable, large format QWERTY keyboard and a printer base unit that allowed programs to be stored on cassette.
My second was a wire-wrapped Z80 S100 CPM system: https://slashdot.org/comments....
Which came down to what did I get when I wanted something that I could play games and program: an Atari 400 - the ANTIC chip graphic capabilities were superior to the other competing small systems. I still have the ANTIC manual for it.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Having learned some BASIC on II's and II+'s at school in Jr. High, the family bought a IIe for home before high school. I forget if we had one floppy drive or two. 128K RAM. Black and white monitor - but it could be hooked up to the TV for color.
I'd hack Ultima III save files to give my character better gear/stats - and the mapfiles to change the map contents.
The programming experiment I remember best was doing mandelbrot on the printer. I ran it over night and got about one really poor line of output before giving up on it.
Z80 at 2.106MHz to sync up with the horizontal sweep frequency on the TV. The II had 48k of memory (wow!) where the 1 had only 32k. Programs on big cartridges (re-purposed 8-track shells): BASIC, word processor, assembler / editor / debugger... we got the S100 cage (5 slots!) and Micropolis floppy disks - quad density! 330K per disk! - and eventually a 10MB hard drive with a controller that occupied two slots in the S100 cage. Character display, 32 lines of 64 characters (yup), but the character bitmaps for chr$(128) and up were in memory so you could get limited graphics that way.
Tandy/TRS-80 CoCo 1, full-sized silver sucker with 4K RAM and tape drive. Those were the days!
Dad even splurged on a $600.00 floppy disk drive. I've told him it was the best money he ever spent. Thirty years in IT -- I have no idea what I would be doing today if I had not convinced him to spend the money on that PC. Thanks, Dad.
Really an awesome computer.
So easy to program, I was dinking around in assembly language in no time.
Absolute statements are never true
It was an Acorn Atom, with a 1MHz 6502 and 4K of static memory. There was a 4K gap in the memory map after the 4K of memory. So I bought 8 2114s (1K x 4bit I think) and soldered them directly on top of the existing chips, with the exception of the select pin. With the help of a few 74xx chips to do some address decoding and driving the select pins, the new memory was mapped in to the gap. I didn't really know what I was doing, but it worked.
I was the school sysadmin on a AT&T 3B5 & a bunch of 3B2s for a few years and borrowed Apple IIc's, Apricots (a 386 PC maker back in the day) and then a Mac +.
For my first personal machine I wasn't going to be using an underpowered Atari or an Amiga or PC with substandard graphics (this was back in the CGA day) & besides I wanted a _real_ Unix.
The school owed me some serious money for my time and in lieu of payment I wrangled a deal. The school bought a brand new fully kitted out Mac II (16 Mhz 68020 with 4 Mb RAM, a 40Mb hard drive and a 13" 640x480 screen) that they wrote off as non-functional & I picked it up for $1.
I installed A/UX to it, added a 1/4" QIC drive (so that I could move files easily to/from it) and for years had a faster, more powerful Unix machine at home than the Sun 3's I was administering professionally. A few years later I upgraded the RAM to 8Mb, upgraded the CPU with a 32 Mhz 68030 on a daughterboard that replaced the 68020 & the 68881 MMU and added a L3 cache.
That Mac II lasted for over a decade as my primary home computer.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
6502 processor and, if I remember, 1k of RAM. I bought it as a kit when I was a student at university and soldered it together in my room.
Unfortunately one of the RAM chips I think, died. A few years ago I donated it to the Museum of Computing in Swindon, complete with the original mailing package.
My next computer was the BBC B, then I moved on to PCs with a 386 SX.
... Started out with Audio Cassette player to load and save software.
Then came floppy drive solutions, ending up with a pair of 400/800kb 40/80-track, double-sided, switchable drives in a bridge case that sat over the back of the BBC.
Then a 6502 Second Processor was added, which made programming in BASIC much more reasonable [more space for code, in any screen mode] and brought me "Second Processor Elite". Wow...
That gave way to an Acorn Archimedes A440, which had an *actual hard drive* [MFM configuration - even pre-IDE drives]. of 40Mb capacity... That and 4Mb of RAM, in the days when an IBM PC could not handle more than 640kb thanks to design limits... as well as a 4 MIPS 8MHz risc processor [the precursor to the chips that power 90+% of smartphones sold today...]
Happy days.
At Galdor we had an ICT-1301 in a purpose built building in the back garden of the house we lived in. It was built in 1961 and given the name "Flossie" by the manufacturers. She still exists and is waiting to be restored to working order, for the fourth time, at the National Computing Museum at Bletchley Park.
Ahhh yes, finally an article that belongs on Slashdot.
My very first computer was a TRS-80 Model I that my dad got for us back in 1980 or so. It had an external cassette recorder for saving programs - 600 baud AFSK encoding, IIRC.
That thing was fun to play with, although I got a lot of blank stares when I'd presented a program I wrote to my 3rd Grade show-n-tell in NYC in 1982. I think it was a sorting program or something like that.
I wish I could remember some of the games so I could perhaps find them today...
A Salora Manager, a clone of a VTech Laser 2001. Made in Hong Kong, MOS 6502, a maximum of 32+32 kilobytes of RAM. Still have it, but afraid to start it up 'cause those huge power bricks might let out their magic steam.
My father had a TI Silent 700 teletype terminal. It had an acoustic coupler modem and used thermal paper. The paper was hard to find, before FAXes were common.
I lived near Dartmouth College and at school we had a teletype + modem to dial in. We also had accounts at Timeshare corp. I figured out how to use the Silent 700 to connect to Dartmouth's DCTS (or DTSS) and their chat room (conference).
Later, we got an Apple ][+ (never a modem though). In college I had a Z100 DOS system (not PC compatible), a Z248 80286 and after college I put Minix on it.
That lead to a Gateway DX486 with Linux SLS and 0.98pl5.
The Coleco ADAM!
Buzzing the information Superhighway at Warp speed
My first home computer was the Commodore VIC-20 with a datasette (cassette deck). The beast first thought me Basic and later assembler. The VIC was later sold, and a Commodore 64 with a 1541 diskette drive took it's place. What a time !
Jake.
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
Cromemco Z-2 my father picked it up with a auction lot he bid on and won. Had a single Cromemco serial terminal.
It's why to this day I favor Unix and it's derivatives as I cut my teeth on Cromix.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
In 1975 my father brought home a KIM-1 that had been built by the guy who designed the IMSAI 8080. I eagerly typed in the 6502 instructions included in the HOWTO manual that came with it, and I got an idea of what Turing Complete was all about. Great fun. But at the time there was no way to save the instructions, so you lost everything when the power went down. I got over it: I was 10 years old, and it was a great way to learn about volatility and, as I mentioned, Turing Complete.
Then in 2005 I was working for a GPS company (which later became Garmin). One day my manager came to me with an SOC data sheet, and he said something like, "This is a really cheap part, but we need to program it to coordinate the 32-bit GPS part with the SSD part, and the USB part." I read the datasheet and about screamed with joy when I saw that it was a 6502 (now owned by ST Micro). Once again, the 6502 taught me in an amazing way: the 6502 was bit-banging (I2C) the NMEA sentences out of the 32-bit part, and control of the SSD part, and was able to control the interface to the USB device. My job: write firmware (YES! FIRMWARE on a 6502! NO MORE POWER OUTAGES) so the high-speed USB part could power things and exchange NMEA sentences; make the SSD hold the ephemeris and almanac for the 32-bit part. That little 6502 certainly did it's job, and I had great fun re-learning the 6502 instruction set.
It was maxed out. 48k Ram and (eventually) 4 floppy drives. I thought I had reached nirvana when I reached the point that I could edit, compile, assemble and link 'c' programs without swapping floppies...
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
My first computer was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 16k which I upgraded later to 48k. One of the first things I bought for it was a Pascal and a Forth compiler. Man, Forth rocked. Awesome language.
Actually, my first home computer was a slide rule, both at home and at work. But when they became available I bought a Commodore 64 with a floppy disk drive and a printer. Used it for everything, especially word processing (what a relief being able to easily correct my typing mistakes before sending a letter) and even had a little database program for all of my genealogy research. What a big aid to organization that was! On weekends my son used it for games, and for re-writing those games. He already knew BASIC (by absorption I guess) so I learned it too. And I got a cartridge for the C-64 that enabled me to send and receive AMTOR digital signals with my ham radio transceiver.
Meanwhile, at work, I was doing assembler language (PAL) on a DEC PDP-8 for data acquisition and processing in a small lab. Those were the days!!
A little later I bought an 80286 for home. Today you can buy three or four computers for what I paid my my '286.
Proudly, my first was a TI-99/4A. And did I ever get every penny out of that thing, nursing it along until 1993 or so. Texas Instruments makes more chips (to this day?) than Frito-Lay. So of course their computer was something special. 16 bit TMS9900 CPU. Amazingly high quality parts and construction - literally cast aluminum around my 32k RAM expansion card. And they built-in owner loyalty by fostering and supporting users groups, even after they'd left the Home Computer market. TI knew how to sell to scientists and engineers; they clearly didn't know how to sell to the general public. And they kept the software model closed (any different from Apple today?). It was the very earliest days of the digital age; they failed in the market as much for social reasons as for design reasons. So, sadly, that machine becomes an evolutionary dead end. But what a machine. Look at TMS9900 Assembly Language.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
The first home computer I used was the Atari 400/800 at my junior high school.
The first home computer my family owned was an Atari 400.
The first home computer I owned is the Atari ST, which I still have along with an Atari 800 XL that I bought second-hand later on.
Technically my first computer was some kind of clunky Sinclair programmable calculator, which met all the requirements of being an actual computer. But just barely. It was, for all intents and purposes, unusable for anything meaningful.
Next came an Atari 800 with an actual keyboard (not the chicklet keys). Two cartridge slots, two floppy drives (one of which was a "Happy Drive"), and a full 48-fuckin'-K of memory. Whoo hoo!
It had a 300 baud modem which could be set to *any* baud rate, all the way down to 1 or 2 baud so you could actually see the letters...coming...out...on...the...screen...one...by...one.
God times.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
The first IBM PCs were slow to arrive but the gray ring Binder in a cloth wrapped box was. A treasure trove of info. Great primer on bios and hardware for newbie. Read it cover to cover uncounted times while I waited for the actual hardwareto arrive. IBM deserves kudos for bringing a lot of soon to be engineers up to speed. I also constantly visited the Pc store in downtown SF which became a social hub. For years used to look look at this manual every time I need to check the ASCII code table page... though I suppose the internet has moved us on from that. Great days, Showing off the piano app for my Aunt and Uncle, Mom and dad.
"Knowing everything doesn't help..."
It had a 6502 processor (same as used in the Apple II), and used a TV set for video display. My brother helped set up a cassette player to store data in Kansas City Standard. I wrote a Life program in assembler for it.
I thought it was cool that the first page of memory could be used for indexed-indirect or indirect-indexed membory and used that feature in my Life program.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
... on a visit to Radio Shack, the sales guys were setting up this TV typewriter showing some crude blocks of white on black graphics and some all-cap text.
They "broke" it and I saw:
10 ... do something ... do another thing ... do some more stuff
20
30
Then they fired it up again.
After 9 years in this man's Navy as an avionics tech working on a 64-8-bit computer with ferrite core and programming a TI calculator, I realized IT WAS A COMPUTER!!!
I told them to box it up. They said they couldn't because it was a store demo and the only one within 200 hundred miles.
The manager walked in and told them to sell it to me because, "That's what we do here."
I took it home, breezed through the manual, had it calculate orbital speeds based on distance from the Sun (some being beneath the surface and exhibiting relativistic speeds).
It was the TRS-80.
You can look up the specs.
I wrote articles for 80 Microcomputing and ordered an A-D converter from Analog Devices and made battery checkers and digital thermometers.
Saw one at the Smithsonian Institute, many years later, when I visited D.C.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
A Heathkit H8 with 4K of memory, programmed in Octal. Later on it got a H19 display/keyboard and some floppy drives, followed by 64K of memory and a Z80 processor card...
I see no one has mentioned the 8008 yet so I guess I'm the oldest geezer.
Popular Electronics had plans for an Intel 8008 based computer so I hand wired it on a homebuilt chassis. 256 bytes of memory. Programmed in bare machine code (no stinking assembler crutch). Added an octal keyboard and display which made it much easier to program. Also added a cassette tape interface which could store and read programs... Programmed and ran a few games on it.
I think I still have it buried under the house somewhere.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
The ST was the last Atari I had. I was hoping they'd have an Amiga comparable system, and doing computer graphics and some video editing in the early 90s, Amiga was what some local TV stations were using for their graphics. The ST was a vast departure from my previous Ataris, but it was awesome. My first was a 400 with 8k, upgraded to 16k; the membrane keyboard upgraded to a third party keyboard. I learned assembly language on it (the 400). Upgraded to 800XL and ultimately 130XE with paper route money. I feel bad for kids today - I don't think you get the same experience and understanding given a modern computer and incredibly complicated (by comparison) operating systems. I just feel like you don't really get the same kind of "aha! so that's how it works!" experiences you could with the simpler computers.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
1k RAM (including the screen), 1 MHz processor. I was maybe 13 and it changed my life. Then we got an Apple ][+, 48k RAM plus 16k extension, the CP/M card, two 5" floppies. Sweet!
80kb of ram! We started with the Adam till it went bad after a couple of months and we returned it for a Commodore 64 -- never looked back. Used the Commodore 64 from 1985 through 1993 when I finally purchased a 486DX2 50MHz with 4mb ram a 400mb hard drive -- Windows 3.11.