Comments on: ASK [GAS] : What was your first computer and how did it change your life?

By: Misty Day, C.A.P.

Misty Day, C.A.P. — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:50:49 +0000

Back in the late 70’s or early 80’s I bought an Osborne, something like a suitcase containing an oscilloscope. The keyboard was built into the lid, and it was very heavy. I fell in love with it immediately and while exploring its capabilities began to fantasize that someone would design an astrology program and an i ching program so I could do research more effectively (that’s my field, paranormal and prophecy). One day I called a programmer friend and tried to sell him on the idea. He took it to another friend and they came up with the first versatile, all-purpose astrology program. I happily played with it for several years. The idea took fire and now there are sophisticated programs everywhere providing everything imaginable in the world of astrology and psychic phenomena. Many are available free on the internet. I’m having the time of my life with them. (One instnce of wishes coming true).

By: Chip

Chip — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:58:45 +0000

I believe the turbo button debuted on the PC AT, and jumped you from 6 Mhz to 8 Mhz.

I remember we had one in our R&D department right after they came out. We wrote a program to just spit out text to the screen — it was fun to see the difference it made when you pressed turbo. Even though it was only 2 Mhz, it was a 33% improvement!

By: Chip

Chip — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:30:38 +0000

For a short while, we used DEC Rainbow 100B as desktop workstations (ca. 1985). With a 10MB hard drive and 192KB of memory, you could dual-boot CP/M or DOS. We had C compilers available for both OS’s, and used PolyTerm to act like a terminal on Unix and VMS systems (moving the RS-232 cable by hand to the desired computer ;) ).

By: Andrei Buiu

Andrei Buiu — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 06:26:00 +0000

Yeah, I had that turbo button also.

By: Mackenzie

Mackenzie — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 04:35:07 +0000

DEC Rainbow 100. In 1996. Good luck finding the right disks for it when you just know “the big black disks make games happen” and your parents know computers need electricity and have wires and stuff. Yeah, that didn’t work so well.

By: venkat

venkat — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 07:12:21 +0000

My first computer is P3 processor ,Intel 810E mother board and 128 RAM ,40GB HDD and 15 CRT monitor I still using it as a server to share my printers and files I don’t want to leave it.

By: Doug Gaff

Doug Gaff — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 02:16:40 +0000

The Commodore Pet computer was the first computer I worked on at school, but I didn’t own one. Also, like most other computer geeks at the time, I used to go to Radio Shack and write annoying programs on the TRS-80’s.

The Commodore 64 was the first computer I owned. I didn’t have the money for a tape drive right away so I used to write BASIC programs, play with them for a while, and then shut off the computer and lose everything!

By: bartlebee

bartlebee — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:19:25 +0000

First computer I ever store bought was the Commodore Vic-20. 5k of RAM. Tape drive. Started to learn BASIC on it then moved over to 6502 assembler. Easy transition over to the Apple ][+ clone that my buddy’s dad bought as a kit form from Hong Kong back in the early 80’s. Spent a few weeks building it (bare motherboard with bags of IC’s, resistors, capacitors, etc.) and then started hacking anti-copy security for games. Oh those were the days. :) I still have a Laser 128 and an Apple //c with games that I cracked back then.

By: Kiltak

Kiltak — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:11:17 +0000

Learned to read using a DOS manual? Now THAT’s scary :)

If I remember correctly, DOS was included in the BIOS on those machines right?

By: Kiltak

Kiltak — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:07:32 +0000

My First 286 was like, 8 MHZ, and there was a turbo button to bring it to 10 or 12.

4 extra MHZ, Yippie!

By: LiamM

LiamM — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:18:02 +0000

The first computer I ever used as an Apple II in elementary school (and my parents kept humming and hawing about buying us one) The first computer we actually owned was a n “IBM Clone” a 286 running at a whopping 12Mhz and a whopping 256K of RAM and a 65 MB hard Drive.

By: bearpupuk

bearpupuk — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:51:50 +0000

I bet most of us oldies could still tell whether a programme has loaded properly or not just by listening to the whistles and burps from the tape drive! :-D