Memories - List your first early HOME computer(s)

[Esined]

This is what we had! Wow, this brings back so many memories. The TRS-80 color computer. And it did hook up to a TV! We had the manual it came with, "Getting Started with Color Basic," and that's how I would have learned how to write simple programs. It was so cute and user-friendly...wow, seeing all this again just blows my mind.

 

 

[Jarred]

Sinclair ZX-81

Radio Shack MC-10

Radio Shack Color Computer 3

Commodore Amiga 500

 

Later in the 80's, I inherited an IBM XT Clone.

[Desert Dan]

So far nobody has claimed that they owned the first Apple Macintosh which had the monochrome display and released in 1984.   As a freshman in school, I remember the computer department buying a few of them.   Otherwise we had Apple II's and variants thereof used in Computer Class.   I still remember the green displays.

 

 

[Qapla]

I did not "claim that I owned the first Apple Macintosh which had the monochrome display and released in 1984" because, to this day, I have never owned an Apple comuter, phone, watch, tablet ... in fact, the only Apple I ever owned, I got in the grocery store ...

[Desert Dan]

I remember faking I was sick a couple times just to stay home from school so I could do some programming on projects of mine in the BASIC language.  😋

 

Home computers were evolving fairly quickly and it was exciting for me as a teenager.

[Pabo]

My family couldn't afford a computer, nor did we relly have a use for it. It was not until the early 2000's (HP Pavillion - Win XP 256MB RAM) that I actually purchased a computer myself.

 

However, I remember using many friends, relatives or the schools computers in my youth, but I mostly played games though.

 

Commodore Vic-20 - Friends

C-64 - Friends

Amiga 500 - Cousin's

Apple II - Primary School and friends

Microbee - Primary School

Macintosh II - High School

IBM DOS - High School

IBM Win3.1 - High School

 

[lovjahupepl]

My first one was an Adam Computer by Coleco

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleco_Adam#/media/File:Coleco_Adam_(adjusted_version).jpg

Coleco announced the Adam at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show (CES)^[1] in June 1983, and executives predicted sales of 500,000 by Christmas 1983. From the time of the computer's introduction to the time of its shipment, the price increased, from US$525 to $725. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleco_Adam

I can't remember what I paid but I really wanted one because I was expecting to do programming on it as I was going to college.  However, it ended up being used mainly for playing games the favorite being "Qbert". 

[Desert Dan]

13 hours ago, lovjahupepl said:

My first one was an Adam Computer by Coleco
 

 

Thanks for sharing - I forgot all about that one!

[Desert Dan]

Does anyone ever watch the old "Computer Chronicles" on Youtube?   It is so funny to watch how they got excited about real simple things when doing their demos with various guests.   But in reality, in that day, the small stuff we are used to now - back then were groundbreaking features.

[Qapla]

I remember how excited people were when the MODEM improved, and you no longer had to place the phone receiver in a cradle - you could plug the phone cord directly into the modem ... a little box sitting next to your computer.

 

Then ... how fascinated people were with modems that could be INSIDE the PC, plugged right into the bus. When they achieved the 14,400 full-duplex ISA bus modem, people were amazed with the "blazing speed"!

 

 

[Tortuga]

I remember the first time that I used my modem to access the Internet. I visited a site somewhere in Europe and then shut everything down and called my Internet provider to make sure I wasn't going to get billed for a long distance phone call 🤣

[Desert Dan]

25 minutes ago, Tortuga said:

I remember the first time that I used my modem to access the Internet. I visited a site somewhere in Europe and then shut everything down and called my Internet provider to make sure I wasn't going to get billed for a long distance phone call 🤣

 

Yeah, imagine me in the days of 1200 baud modems originally living in a rural area.   In order to access "Bulletin Boards" or BBS's, I had to be very cautious with the long distance charges to the nearest big city where they physically existed.   I remember me and a friend taking a trip to San Jose, Calif and spending the night at a motel with a computer and just downloading as much stuff as we could from tons of BBS's in the area just so we didn't have to incur long distance charges.   Fortunately that was later and during the time period for the speedy 56K modems, what an upgrade!   The handshake sound still rings in my head perfectly - who could forget it?

 

Unless they see a documentary, many of the younger generation have no clue how far we have come since then with the advent of the internet, both for good and for bad.  We all take it for granted now, but it used to be a very "text-centric" world, one without the graphics of today.

[bobby]

Compaq and a later Dell  

[jwhess]

2 hours ago, bobby said:

Compaq and a later Dell  

Speaking of Compaq, does anyone recall using the "portable" computer unit.  It had an 8" green screen monitor and 2 5 1/4 inch floppy drives (no hard drive).  You booted the system with a floppy disk with DOS on it (usually version 2.0 or up to version 3.0)  Once booted, you put your application diskette in the other drive to start work.  Then you took the DOS disk out and put a blank diskette in to copy your work onto it.  You could take it to a customers house and plug it in (no batteries)

Edited December 8, 2023 by jwhess

[JkentBZ]

First computer was Atari 800 with a 300 baud modem as seen in War Games

 

Then upgraded to Amiga 500

 

Then moved to PCs. Too many to list.

However even having computers in my life for 40 of my 50 years I am still blown away by today's computers.  My latest upgrade is a legit gaming laptop (not for games but for the extra cooling) its specs and capabilities are impressive. 

 

[JkentBZ]

3 hours ago, Desert Dan said:

 

Yeah, imagine me in the days of 1200 baud modems originally living in a rural area.   In order to access "Bulletin Boards" or BBS's, I had to be very cautious with the long distance charges to the nearest big city where they physically existed.   I remember me and a friend taking a trip to San Jose, Calif and spending the night at a motel with a computer and just downloading as much stuff as we could from tons of BBS's in the area just so we didn't have to incur long distance charges.   Fortunately that was later and during the time period for the speedy 56K modems, what an upgrade!   The handshake sound still rings in my head perfectly - who could forget it?

 

Unless they see a documentary, many of the younger generation have no clue how far we have come since then with the advent of the internet, both for good and for bad.  We all take it for granted now, but it used to be a very "text-centric" world, one without the graphics of today.

I ran a BBS in Northern California for years. Had a cool hacker name 'The Faction'

[Tortuga]

10 minutes ago, JkentBZ said:

I ran a BBS in Northern California for years. Had a cool hacker name 'The Faction'

There was a JW BBS back then but I can't remember the name...

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

35 minutes ago, jwhess said:

Speaking of Compaq, does anyone recall using the "portable" computer unit.  It had an 8" green screen monitor and 2 5 1/4 inch floppy drives (no hard drives).
 

Yes, I remember them, but I worked for the opposition. We were the Australian distributors for the 'Osborne', then later we took on the KayPro. They were all in the 'portable' computer bracket. (More like lugable than portable. Lol)
Then I went to work for Data General, and I became the top seller of the DG-One down under.

Old (Downunder) Tone
 

Edited December 8, 2023 by ➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

Data General- One.
A better unit came soon thereafter, the Toshiba T-1000

Old (Downunder) Tone
 

Edited December 8, 2023 by ➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone

[Tortuga]

I remember my first Palm PDA. It was really cool to have a computer that small. 

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

I imagine my phone now has more processing power, threads and capacity than any PC I had in the 70's , 80's and maybe the 90's

Old (Downunder) Tone

[Tortuga]

7 minutes ago, ➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone said:

I imagine my phone now has more processing power, threads and capacity than any PC I had in the 70's , 80's and maybe the 90's

Old (Downunder) Tone
 

Its hard to imagine that men landed on the moon using less computer than we hold in our hands.

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

Its hard to imagine that men landed on the moon using less computer than we hold in our hands.

Yes. It is amazing. And I like the movie "Hidden Figures" where the computer calculations were checked by the human minds. Lol

I found a website to compare my phone vs CPU's.
It is hard to compare, but it is fun to think about.

Old (Downunder) Tone

[-Chris-]

Started with an Atari 600XL with a glorious 16k RAM and borrowed cassette storage from a brother. That computer met an untimely demise (long story).

 

Built a little computer with a 6809 in community college microprocessor class in the early 90s. I'm still drawn to some of the low level aspects, although I also appreciate getting awesome things done at a very high level and have been constantly moving higher up the stack of abstractions.

 

Next was a 2nd hand 286 with a good pile of extended / expanded memory and a pair of 20MB hard drives in the early 90s. 486, Pentium, AMD and a variety of computers followed.

 

 

[Desert Dan]

1 hour ago, Tortuga said:

I remember my first Palm PDA. It was really cool to have a computer that small. 

 

Forgot about those too.   This thread with all these old systems, laptops, etc all coming back to me.   A lot of "Oh Yeah...!" moments.