Memories - List your first early HOME computer(s)

[Desert Dan]

What was your first home computer (or even computer kit) back in the early days?    Or list of computers, particularly late 70's and 80's, etc.

 

For me:

Radio Shack PC-4 pocket computer with Basic Language

Atari 400

Atari 800xl

Atari 520st

 

PC's:

AMD 386-40 

Intel Pentium 486DX2-66

 

and many more after that...

[Tortuga]

Pc:

286 with 1meg of RAM and a 40meg hard drive. It had a 1440 baud modem and VGA monitor. It had both floppy drives and DVD player I think.

I drove 40 miles to buy it from a guy for $1200. 

Edited December 3, 2023 by Tortuga

[Qapla]

The first computer I first used was an IBM 360 mainframe with punch cards. 

 

As for HOME computers, I did not have the funds to buy one when I started learning BASIC, so I used the Tandy Model I in the Radio Shack store. The manager would let me use it for as long and often as I wanted - as long as it didn't cost him sales.

The TRS-80 has a full-stroke QWERTY keyboard, the Zilog Z80 processor, 4 KB dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) standard memory, small size and desk area, floating-point Level I BASIC language interpreter in read-only memory (ROM), 64-character-per-line video monitor. A cassette tape drive for program storage was included in the original package.

 

Later, I did a substantial amount of altering a program for the TRS 80 Mosel II someone else had written for the Insurance business. The man I did the work for had bought the program but needed it to do things the guy who wrote the program said the Model II couldn't do - so he asked me if I could "fix" that problem. I was able to alter the program to do all the things he wanted/needed. His Model II was like the one in the picture below:

the Model II had numerous features not found in the Model I such as the high-speed 4 MHz Z80A, DMA, vectored interrupts, a detachable keyboard with two function keys and numeric keypad, and port instead of memory-mapped I/O. It sported 80x25 text and a single-sided 500 KB 8" floppy drive, and either 32 or 64k of RAM, along with two RS-232 ports and a Centronics-standard parallel port. The Model II ran the TRSDOS operating system and BASIC.

 

My first home computer was the Tandy 2000

 

 

However, it soon became an obsolete machine and I built my own PC compatible with an AMD processor

 

My current PC is one I put in the fall of 2020 after COVID had hit - I needed something better that the 4GB PC I was given by my FIL to use Zoom effectively.

 

It has an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-core 3.59 GHz Processor with 32 GB Ram with a 1 TB SSD C : drive and a 6 TB spindle D : drive running Windows 10 Pro 22H2

 

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

Motorola D3 kit - 6800
(Precursor to the 6809)
Zilog Z80 kit
I then went to work for the Australian distributor of the Sinclair ZX80 and then the ZX81.

Old (Downunder) Tone

[jwhess]

In 1982 I began at home with a Commodore Vic-20.  Unlike the IBM style machines, it used a Motorola chip.  The original device used almost 5K of RAM memory but less than 4K was available for programs, games or programming.  This computer was the first unit to sell more than 1 million devices in the world (eventually sold close to 3 million).  It ended its run in 1985 and was replaced by the Commodore 64 (a much more usable machine).  By year's end in 1983, it was selling for $90.

 

 

[Witness1970]

I first owned a TRS-80 desktop from Radio Shack ( I loved that store, but they weren't good at marketing.).  Then I had a Commodore 64.  I get a Leading Edge with a HUGE (at the time) 64M hard drive.  

[Qapla]

7 hours ago, Qapla said:

A cassette tape drive for program storage was included in the original package.

 

Just curious ... did anyone here ever "listen" to one of the cassettes that the computer used?

 

[Desert Dan]

2 hours ago, Qapla said:

 

Just curious ... did anyone here ever "listen" to one of the cassettes that the computer used?

 

With my old Atari 400 computer back in the day I used cassette storage with which I was not too fond of due to some quirks.   Did you listen to the data cassette and if so, did it sound like a modem handshake or something?

[Desert Dan]

For the early PC's with MS DOS - Anyone remember how hard it was to squeeze more memory out of the machine by editing Config.sys and Autoexec.bat?   Sometimes this was necessary for certain games, etc.

[Desert Dan]

And RAM used to be so expensive.   I switched to my first PC compatible around 1992.   The machine was a 386-40 (AMD CPU) and it had 4 megabytes of memory.   The memory was like $40 per megabyte!    I did the math years ago and it was amazing how much you can get these days.

 

My first computer was 1983.

Edited December 3, 2023 by Desert Dan

[Desert Dan]

9 hours ago, ➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone said:

Motorola D3 kit - 6800
(Precursor to the 6809)
Zilog Z80 kit
I then went to work for the Australian distributor of the Sinclair ZX80 and then the ZX81.

Old (Downunder) Tone
 

 

That is so cool with the kits.   How far we have come since.

[jwhess]

I began assembling IBM-type computers in 1984.  They were mostly PC and PC-XT type machines.  The units came with 640 K of Ram (or less), no math co-processor and monochrome (black & white) monitors.  Actually, most monitors were green letter on black background or gold on black.  Then we got CGA color and eventually VGA color.

 

When I went into building these in my own store,  People would come in (about 1990)  with a CD disk on their finger.  I knew it was DOOM or Flight Simulator disks.  They wanted more memory because that is what the error message told them.  As Dan  mentioned the cost was about $50 a megabyte.  They wanted another megabyte.  I told them it was not returnable due to possible static damage.  I also told them it wasn't necessary.  Just bring the computer to me and I would fix it.

 

Nope, they wanted to put the memory in themselves and not pay me for the repair.  I sold them what they wanted and about 2 hours later they came back holding the same CD.  I said, "It didn't work did it?"  They said NO.  I showed them how to modify their 'config.sys' and 'autoexec.bat' and wrote it down for the.  About 2 hours later they brought the computer in.  They did not need more memory on top, they just needed to rearrange the memory in on the bottom that they booted from.

 

After that they paid me the $49.95 for the repair service (and I didn't take the memory sticks back)...✅

 

Wonderful memories.

[Desert Dan]

9 minutes ago, jwhess said:

I showed them how to modify their 'config.sys' and 'autoexec.bat' and wrote it down for the.  About 2 hours later they brought the computer in.  They did not need more memory on top, they just needed to rearrange the memory in on the bottom that they booted from.

 

 

Wasn't it great when we didn't have to deal with editing those files just to squeeze more usable memory out of machines as you stated?   And what I used to really get excited about many years ago was the advancement of graphics and drop-in video cards for 3D gaming, being in it's infancy.   And overclocking CPU's and memory, trying not to lock the machine up or overheat things.  🔥

[Myew]

My first was a Pentium Pro 166Mhz with Windows 95 that my dad bought overpriced from a scammer in 1997. It had a giant scanner he used to sell antique automobile advertisements on eBay. We later upgraded it to Win 98 which I really wanted for some reason, probably games. I think it was a 40GB hard drive, don't remember the other specs. Quite slow and really poor graphics, but I used it for Need For Speed II and a lot of older games. Attempted to learn some C++ with help from a friend but gave up on programming pretty quickly. Ended up wiping it at one point when I was downloading/testing out C programs that might've been malicious and formatted it, which my Dad wasn't happy about. But then I learned how to install operating systems... Also one time I left something on top of the CRT monitor and liquid got inside, it shut off, but thankfully ended up working again a day later or two once it dried out. Learned a lot from all the times I messed up that computer. We didn't get a new one until 2004, an AMD eMachines with Windows XP and a DVD Drive which I don't recall the specs aside from again poor graphics which made me a sad poor gamer. Wasn't until 2007 that I finally had some income that allowed me to build my own, and progressed from there into a hardware enthusiast.

Edited December 3, 2023 by Myew

[Qapla]

5 hours ago, Desert Dan said:

Did you listen to the data cassette and if so, did it sound like a modem handshake or something?

 

Yes, I did listen to it. It didn't make the blaring and boinging sounds of modem handshake ... it sounded more like a bunch of angry bees buzzing around. I sometimes wondered what you would get if you put some bees in a jar and recorded it and then used it for data - I never got around to trying it.

 

As for arranging memory allocation, when I was working on the software for the guy with the Model II, no amount of manipulation with the 'config.sys' and 'autoexec.bat' would free up enough memory for what he wanted the computer to do. The guy who wrote the program was partially correct - the PC did not have enough memory to accomplish the task "internally". The BASIC interpreter took up 32K of the 64K the computer had. To do the various sorting and rearranging, I had to create several temporary data files on the floppies and read/write the data one record at a time - creating "holding" files until the job was completed. It was a slow way of doing what modern computers can do since they have GB of memory instead of KB of memory ... but, it got the job done.

 

[Old]

My first computer around 1983 was a Leading Edge 286 notebook with 10 megabites of memory and a floppy drive. I could almost double the memory with a synthasiser program but it did slow it down, way down. It had a small floppy drive and I remember it took 18 floppys to enter the Insight book into Qverse.

[jwhess]

I used Qverse for some time.  I did not really like the 'Folios' program that was available from the organization.  I do not have Qverse anymore, but I have 3 sets of the Folio program with the Bible.

[Desert Dan]

20 minutes ago, Old said:

My first computer around 1983 was a Leading Edge 286 notebook with 10 megabites of memory and a floppy drive. I could almost double the memory with a synthasiser program but it did slow it down, way down. It had a small floppy drive and I remember it took 18 floppys to enter the Insight book into Qverse.

 18 floppies, that is a long time to load.   I can still hear the sound of it in my head, including how noisy old hard drives use to be too.   For multi-disk programs, I remember always worrying about the occasional "read error" and whether it was actually going to finish loading or not when one of the floppies had an issue.

[Dolce vita]

I saw the theme, I said to myself 'I bet only brothers will answer.' I scrolled down the page, twice to be sure and guess?
We definitely don't have the same brain☺️

[Tortuga]

I remember buying a Colorado Tape Backup, I thought it was pretty cool at the time.

[Qapla]

I remember using

• cassette tapes
• 8" floppies - and they were very flexible in black jackets ... I still have some of these
• 5¼" floppies - they were also flexible but not quite as much as the 8" - there were a few colors available before they became obsolete ... have a few of these, too
• 3½" floppies - though they had a flexible disk inside, the case was hard and you could get them in various colors ... have a number of these
• USB Drives - of course we still use these
• Isolinear Chips - well, I haven't actually used these, but I have seen them on Star Trek

 

Edited December 4, 2023 by Qapla

[Tortuga]

8 minutes ago, Qapla said:

Isolinear Chips - well, I haven't actually used these, but I have seen them on Star Trek

I've used Folgers Crystals, they taste better than the Dilithium crystals..🤣

[Desert Dan]

Remember on the blank 5 1/4" disks that were single sided, you used to be able to take a hole punch and make that hole on the side so you could use the other side?   I don't know that it was recommended but it worked for me.

[Qapla]

Also, to protect data on the disk, you could use the write-protect slide on the  3½" floppy or use a piece of tape to cover the write-protect on the 5¼ disk

[Esined]

I'm not sure exactly which one we had because I would have been around 8 years old, but I think it was a TRS-80. In my flawed memory it was a TV monitor connected to a hard drive somehow. My parents kept it on a desk in a tiny room we called "the book room" where we kept all of our publications. I spent a lot of time in that little room playing Pac Man and learned how to do very simple programming. I haven't thought about this in such a long time!