My first computer was made of plastic and could only count to eight in binary. It literally worked on a series of tubes!
In any case, it’s no contest. The pocket calculator you find in the dollar store has more computing capability.
I had a Sinclair ZX-81 that didn’t work right the 16K memory expansion pack, and a T/S 1000 that didn’t work with the tape drive.
And a handful of games on tape that required 16K of memory.
How many of you Sinclair owners had the TS2040 printer? More reliable than the computer. Mine probably still works.
Sure, but does the iPod come with the dreaded and fabled Commodore PET “POKE of Death”?
I bought my first computer back in '98.
AMD K6-2 350 MHz
32 MB RAM
6GB hdd
Win 95
Same here. I always loved how the VIC-20 was advertised as 5K, but, when you turned it on, you only had a real 3.5K to play with, as the other kilobyte and a half was used for system stuff. It was actually quite impressive to see how much you can do with 3.5K.
Just for fun, I decided to save a blank Word document to see how big it is: 20KB. That’s right, nearly six times the unexpanded memory of the VIC-20.
My first computer was the Coleco Adam. I seem to recall that my version plugged into my ColecoVision, but the Wiki page doesn’t reference this. I think it ran on wood chips or something…
Joe
ETA : Wait! I forgot! My first was actually the TRS-80 Color Computer! 16 phat K, baby!
Joe
My first computer was a Franklin ACE 2000. It was an Apple IIe copy. It must been better than the iPod, it was more expensive.
ETA Oops. I was wrong. It was a Franklin ACE 1000. An Apple II copy.
NAME ACE 1000
MANUFACTURER Franklin
TYPE Home Computer
ORIGIN U.S.A.
YEAR 1982
BUILT IN LANGUAGE Applesoft BASIC
KEYBOARD Typewriter type - 71 keys with numeric keypad
CPU 6502
SPEED 1.022 mHz
RAM 64 KB
ROM 12 KB
TEXT MODES 40 x 24
GRAPHIC MODES 40 x 48 / 208 x 160 / 280 x 192
COLORS monochrome
SOUND 1 voice - Built-n speaker
SIZE / WEIGHT 45 (W) x 49.8 (D) x 11 (H) cm
I/O PORTS Joystick, 8 Apple II compatible slots
BUILT IN MEDIA None
OS Apple DOS
POWER SUPPLY Built-in switching PSU with cooling fan
PERIPHERALS All the Apple II cards and peripherals
PRICE $1,100
It’s funny, out in the wide world most people have never heard of the Timex/Sinclair 1000 or its relatives. But here I count 7 of us (including myself) who had one as a first computer. Of course, my favorite non-IBM computer from those days is the Commodore 128. It might have been the Amiga if I had access to one, but I didn’t. I used to make animations with the sprite editor and some Basic programming. Hell, even on the T/S 1000 I managed to do a rocket blasting off.
You know, the airplane the Wright brothers used was a piece of crap compared to what is available today. But the feeling of being the first, or even among the first, to fly totally beats anything a modern plane can make you feel.
Similarly, while our first computers were crap compared to today’s, the feeling of those first clicks on the keyboard are unbeatable. No kid living today will ever experience it. This awsome feeling only comes around when totally new technologies come around, when you can suddenly do what people previously could not do (like fly or program a computer at home) and nothing major is new for the past couple of decades (maybe mass adoption of cell phones and the web comes close). I’m curious as to what the next big thing will be.
I once mentioned this to a friend of mine, when I made my first (110 baud) modem connection. The feeling of excitement and and accomplishment was amazing. His response was “Oh, I understand completely - it’s like having a new telescope and seeing Saturn for the first time.”
It’s kind of sad how those moments come much less frequently as one gets older…
When I was dating my husband (around 1987) he had a computer he brought home from work that was the size of a shoebox, with the screen on the small end, and it sat up on two little legs. The screen was a dull green and the words printed out in bright green. No graphics, no frills. No printer, and I had to learn basic commands to run a word processing program. I have no idea what it was (Anyone? Bueller?) but when I tell that story to my kids at school they’re horrified. My ipod Nano is way better than that.
First computer: TI-99/4A (black and silver) purchased from Best Products in c. 1982 for less than $200. It was the most expensive thing I owned. It wasn’t too long before I figured out that it wasn’t much better than a low-end game machine.
My first computer was a Commodore Vic20. It is still superior, though, in that it boots directly to a terminal where I can natively type:
10 print "GargoyleWB is awesome! ";
20 goto 10
…and be the computer-hacker-god envy of all my friends.
You were lucky if you had a floppy disc drive. When I got my Commodore 64, I only had the tape drive. That’s right. I stored my programs on cassette tape. Edited to add that this was the first computer I owned. The first one I used, back in junior high school, was a terminal attached to a mainframe at the high school that used punched tape for output.
Might have been a Compaq portable? See also here.
Sounds like the first Compaq.
Damn. Beat me while I was screwing around with the coding.
Eight. 
I got cheated on mine - I’d ordered the kit version. soldered it all up, turned it on and got nothing but zigzags on the TV. Turns out they’d sent a European version that could not be made to work with an American TV. Why were those even on this continent? The replacement was pre-assembled, so I didn’t have that discoverer’s moment of wondering if I was going to smell magic smoke* or if it was going to work. At least the replacement doubled the RAM - went from 1K to 2k. Woohoo!
- Magic smoke is what makes computers and other high-tech devices run. If they break, the magic smoke leaks out and you need to get a new computer.
Had? Despite my post alluding other wise - the correct term is HAVE!
I wonder what the chances are it’ll still boot up. I’ve got the whole thing (including the 5.25" floppy drive) in a box in the attic.
That’s not what I was told. I thought the smoke was the component gnomes burning.
For instance, in a capacitor, there’s a hoarder gnome. He sits in there and stockpiles electrons until you need them, the he shoves them all out other side.
Then there’s the resistance gnome that restricts how many electrons can pass through. But, he’s a delicate one and can only slow down so many at a time. If you push too many at him at once, he overheats and explodes. The smoke is the result of the gnome explosion.
Mine’s still in the closet of my childhood bedroom in my parents’ house, although my mother keeps reminding me to clear my stuff out of there. It was the computer I took to college in 1984 and I had to use a 300baud modem to communicate with the school computer. My roommate had an Atari 800 with a 2400 baud modem, meaning that the text actually could scroll faster than we could read it.