First family computer was a TRS-80 from Radio shack, I can’t remember what model. We had a lot of the games and later a few applications on cartridges, and then got the standup 5 and 1/4" floppy drive, though that couldn’t be used to save word processor documents, say, because the disk drive plugged into the same spot as the cartridges and the word processor was on cartridge. So I mostly used the disk for BASIC programs.
The first computer I ever bought with my own money was a Compaq laptop with Windows 98 and a 4 gig hard drive.
Mine was a Kaypro PC, probably about 1986 or 87. I bought it for school so that I could write my programs at home and then dial in to the mainframe and upload them, rather than having to sit at a terminal in the comp center all night.
Dad had an Osborne I back in the early 80’s, which is what I first learned how to program on.
You’re right actually… but whenever I played any games on it, shareware or otherwise, it used to prompt me for the color scheme…and most had the option of CGA, EGA, or VGA. If it had a “Tandy” prompt I could get full color, but otherwise only CGA worked. I guess it wasn’t full compatible with IBM EGA protocol!
You had a 2? Luxury! I saved up my money forever (it seemed) to buy my first computers, the CoCo1. I wrote a program to generate D&D characters and saved it on my tape drive! I was in eighth grade I think.
But my friend Joe had me beat, he had gotten a computer about a year earlier: the Timex Sinclair 1000 with a 16k memory expansion and audio tape drive. Yes, a computer from the company that brought you digital watches.
Remember it - hell I still have it and it still works! Both the original Atari (though the controllers are a little touchy) and the Commodore 64. When hubby and I are felling nostalgic, we’ll dig out one of those, set it up and feel the 80’s rush in!
I shared my brother’s TRS-80 Color Computer for years before it became “mine” as a hand-me-down. I learned a little BASIC on it, but I mostly learned on the TRS-80 Model III at school. (We had some game tapes and cartridges for the CoCo, and I tended to get distracted before finishing any significant programming.)
First computer(s) used in school; Radio Shack Tandy Model 3 (a whopping 16K of RAM and dual 5.25" floppy drives, 12" B/W CRT 80-line display, CoCo model 2 and 3)
First computer at home; Commodore 64 with 1541 floppy drive and 12" color tv display and Smith Corona daisy wheel printer
First Mac used (at school); original Mac 128k back in '84
First Mac at home; Performa 600CD (IIvx without math coprocessor)
Those were very good days for me. I was a wee kid who idolized his big brother, and he was intensely interested in computers. We had a TI-99/4A, and whenever one of those magazines came with a cool-looking game (or application), we’d stay up all night. We’d alternate reading the code out loud while the other one typed. Man, those were good times. Popcorn and play-fighting and coding. Much brotherly love was built around early BASIC code in our house.
Commodore Plus/4 with a Datasette. It was a huge piece of shit that was marketed as a business/home productivity machine (what every 11 year old wants) and sucked at its basic functions: crappy word processor, crappier data manager, etc. It also lacked the sprite and SID functions of the C=64.
Luckily, it broke a month or two in and was already discontinued by the time my mom returned it so the salesman gave her its cost as credit towards a Commodore 128 which was an awesome machine and lasted me many, many years.
I also had a 128 that lasted for many years. Hell, I think it’s still at my dad’s house. But did you ever use it in 128 mode? It seemed to me like the only thing it was ever really good at was running in C64 mode.
I mainly ran it in 64 mode but I had some nifty applications for 128 mode (including GeOS) and liked the 80 character mode you could get with a monitor instead of a TV. Had a few games for it in 128 mode as well, mainly text adventures like Beyond Zork since no one seemed to make graphic based 128 games.
I even used it in CP/M mode since a friend of mine had an old Osbourne and could give me copies of some programs.
My first was a ZX-81 built from a kit. Bit of a disappointment there - got it put together, then found the empty spots on the PCB labeled as “USAONLY” had to be occupied by components or the thing would not be able to put out an NTSC signal. Yup… Sinclair imported a gaggle of PAL-spec kits to the US and pissed off quite a few hobbyists.
The downer to that was they replaced it with an assembled unit, robbing us of the ability to truthfully say “I built this!”
My first “real” computer was an IBM PC-XT clone running at a blistering 10 MHz in Turbo mode with 640k RAM and a humongous 20 meg hard drive that I never came close to filling. EGA video. My first upgrade was for the UART and serial port driver chips to enable two serial ports. COM1 was occupied by a mouse, but out of the box, COM2 was not usable without adding hardware.
Immediately after enabling COM2, I plugged in a manual 300 baud modem. I had to dial the number on a phone, then once I heard the tone, hit the Connect button on the modem and carefully hang up the phone.
The next upgrade was an 8087 math chip so it could run AutoCAD, then there was a succession of faster modems - the external 300 baud gave way to an internal 2400, then a 14,400.
Windows didn’t come until quite a bit later on a 486DX-33 with a VGA display. I think that one had 2 MB of RAM and a 200 MB drive. IIRC, the 14,400 modem from the PC-XT was transplanted to it.
I should say, I got the TI99 4/A as an adult…my father gave it to my husband and me.
Our next computer was a C128, and there were a couple of games that ran in 128 mode, but we usually just used the 64 mode. I played a lot of Infocom games on that machine, as well as a lot of other games. I particularly liked Psi 5.
