Memories - List your first early HOME computer(s)

[Tortuga]

2 hours ago, Tortuga said:

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

Phun Net....

[Desert Dan]

10 minutes ago, -Chris- said:

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.

 

 

Glad to see some brothers had Atari's on here.   Back in the day, there were graphics demos that were usually promoting their hacking group's talent (forgot what they called the demos) but were basically stuff written in assembly language and did some incredible graphical things at high speeds. 

 

After messing with Basic for a very long time, I started to scratch the surface on 6502 Assembly language but quickly decided it wasn't for me.   I remember putting my Atari 800xl system in a duffle bag armed with tons of graphics demo's and took it to an off-campus computer class in high school.  The teacher was interested in what I had to show and he was blown away, considering they had Apple II's at the time in the class.

Edited December 8, 2023 by Desert Dan

[Desert Dan]

Did anyone ever take a Pascal class or do Turtle Graphics?

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

I did Pascal. It was supposed to be the next greatest thing.
I mainly did machine code. 6800 tge 6809, and Zilog Z80. I then jumped to CP/M.
Then later to PC Dos...

Old (Downunder) Tone

[Desert Dan]

Here is an index for the Computer Chronicles series (which are fun to watch on YouTube).   Kind of cheesy now, but it was the thing back in the day.   And the death of Gary Kildall was sad - he almost could have been like Steve Jobs turned out to be they say but played his cards wrong I guess.  One of the episodes is about him and his death.   He seemed like a great guy who had a real passion for innovation and breathroughs.

 

To me, the co-host Stewart Cheifet seemed to be a little uptight at times when companies were demonstrating their "new product".

 

List of Computer Chronicles episodes - Wikipedia

Edited December 8, 2023 by Desert Dan

[coolbrz731]

My first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000.  It ran at a blistering 3.25Mhz and came with 16kb on board memory and the 16kb memory extension.  Mom yelled at dad for wasting money on that extension since it was not needed.  To load a game on the tape recorder took 7 to 9 minutes.  Since I was usually only allowed 1 hr on the computer period, I had to learn to listen to the program loading and tell by ear when it errored out and wasn't going to load.  Otherwise, I just lost 7 to 9 minutes of my time to a failed load of a game.     

Edited December 8, 2023 by coolbrz731

[coolbrz731]

4 hours 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 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)

You're bringing back bad memories, and my shoulders are sore from those memories.  My dad got that computer sometime after the Sinclair.  Guess who had to load the operating system, get it working, and carry around ALL. THE. TIME.  

[bobby]

it was a combination of a good friend who worked for HP for years and later me getting my first computer

that sparked my interest in computers, i went to a trade school for assembling PC and electronic assembly

 

a friend had a 

Commodore Vic-20 - 

Amiga 500 - 

Apple II -was at school 

Edited December 8, 2023 by bobby

[Qapla]

10 hours ago, Tortuga said:

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

 

 

They also landed with far less knowledge than we have - they still know nothing about Jehovah

 

[jwhess]

My youngest brother (11 Years younger than me)  became a FORTRAN programmer for NASA.  I have watched him program satellite orbits on a Commodore 65 at home.  Great memories.

 

Does that remind you of the movies "Hidden Figures"?

[Watching and Waiting]

14 hours ago, ➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone said:

Osborne

Hubby’s first computer; he joined an Osborne ‘computer club’ that met in the public library once/mo. He set it up in our bedroom to keep the kids away from it and I kept him awake after kids and chores were done, playing some rudimentary game and the clacking keyboard drove him crazy LOL. 

Next was a Televideo that by today’s standards was as big as Noah’ ark!

 

Apple IIc for our kids when it came out. 
 

13 hours ago, Tortuga said:

Palm PDA.

Both of us had these. 
 

Then it was various PCs built custom by a friend/brother who had a business and hubby would tweak as needed.  Went to Macs, Mac Books, and IMac and currently have His and Hers mini PCs, His for Serv Overseer needs in NWPUB and Hers for WT Library, my fave study tool. I also have a Mac Mini and Mac Book all in use. He has an iMac. 

 

We shared only one computer for a few years and then finally I started getting my own. 

If we had all the $$$ we’ve spent on computers and paraphernalia over the last 40 years, we could retire!! Oh wait! We are retired! (from secular work that is)

[Desert Dan]

12 minutes ago, Watching and Waiting said:

Hubby’s first computer; he joined an Osborne ‘computer club’ that met in the public library once/mo.

 

I remember back in the early to mid 80's I would occasionally attend "user groups" as they called them and it was quite an exciting time back then to learn more about your favorite model of computer with like interest.   Some of the demonstrations and stuff of new hardware/software or graphics demos were neat.

Edited December 8, 2023 by Desert Dan

[MullumMiss]

286 is all I remember.  I bought a generic brand and on start up it was dos prompt.  I had to put in windows.  It was around 1987. Before I got my pc I enrolled in a Tafe (Aus College) course for computer bookkeeping. I remember going to one of the young boys in the congregation and asking can I come and try his pc because I didn’t want to be the only one in the class that didn’t know how to turn it on.  Funnily enough in the class there were many women in the same boat as me.  

[Desert Dan]

This was my first taste of a windows-like environment on an Atari 520st.  It was called GEM (for Graphics Environment Manager) and released by Digital Research in 1985.  It looked like this:

 

[Qapla]

Did you ever use GeoWorks or DR-DOS

Edited December 8, 2023 by Qapla

[Desert Dan]

1 hour ago, Qapla said:

Did you ever use GeoWorks or DR-DOS

 

I remember hearing about it back in the late 80's.   That was Gary Kildall's original creation at Digital Research.

[jwhess]

Many of these earlier computers which ran the Intel CPU used the 8086 (or 8088) chip.  Some have mentioned that they used computers that used the 80286 (or simply the '286').  That was featured in IBMs computer labeled the AT (Advanced Technology).

 

But how many of us used the one in between?  Intel made the 8086 in 1980 and then the 80186 in 1982.  Very few companies used it, although its computing power was much greater.  One company already mentioned here was Tandy (Radio Shack).  They built the TRS-80 and the Tandy 1000 using the 8086 CPU. Then they envisioned a better machine.  They designed and built the Tandy 2000 with the 80186 in 1983.

 

It had more computing power, it had near VGA color graphics, it could use 'hard drives' and much more.  It had 5 1/4' floppy diskettes that held 720 kb of data (twice as much as others).  But it did not use the standard IBM bus technology and eventually failed in the sales department.

 

 

Edited December 10, 2023 by jwhess

[Desert Dan]

I didn't realize there was an 80186 CPU, thanks for sharing.

[Pabo]

On 12/8/2023 at 4:51 PM, Desert Dan said:

Did anyone ever take a Pascal class or do Turtle Graphics?

 

I remember using Logo or Logos (not exactly sure of the name) but it allowed you to program a small triangle to make shapes. This was on a DOS machine.

 

When at high school in technical drawing class, we were using the Macintosh with CAD software where we had to produce some drawings and also printed the using a multi-colour ink plotter, similar to a 2D CNC machine. It looked similar to the below.

 

[bobby]

On 12/7/2023 at 9:20 AM, Desert Dan said:

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.

no i never heard of it, ill look it up later 

[lovjahupepl]

On 12/7/2023 at 10:12 PM, 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 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)

I still have one of these in my closet.  Someone gave it to my oldest daughter years ago (never used just for nostalgia).  My oldest daughter and I pulled it out 1 day and asked my twin daughter (21 years at the time) where to put the floppy drive.  It was too funny watching them trying to figure it out.  We finally showed them what to do.  They have never seen a floppy drive used nor an ancient computer.  😝

Edited December 15, 2023 by lovjahupepl

[RedRob]

We had a 286 with 1 meg of ram, no HDD and a floppy drive.  WOW!  How things have changed!  I'm now running a Ryzen 7 5800X, RTX 3070, 32 GB of RAM on a B550 in a Fractal Meshify XL case, full of RGB!  I bought it during covid and built it myself.  Building a rig is as much fun as using it!  It runs Watchtower Library in 4k at like 120 FPS!!!  WILD!

[Desert Dan]

3 hours ago, RedRob said:

 It runs Watchtower Library in 4k at like 120 FPS!!!  WILD!

Watchtower Library includes 3D games that run at 120fps at 4K resolution?   Just kidding.  Nice machine and decent choice of graphics card.

[Michał]

Amiga 600


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