# What was your first computer, and what peripherals did you have for it? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [April 5, 2011, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-and-what-peripherals-did-you-have-for-it/577333 "2011-04-05T23:48:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-and-what-peripherals-did-you-have-for-it/577333/61 "2011-04-07T02:05:00Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > My first computer was a ZX81 with a 16k RAM pack. Me too. Happy days. ---
**Author:** ![antonio107](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7ea924/32.png) [@antonio107](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/antonio107)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-and-what-peripherals-did-you-have-for-it/577333/62 "2011-04-07T02:11:45Z")
My mom bought me this when I was…3? [Tandy RL1000](http://www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/RLRLX.html) IIRC, it had a CGA graphics card. The manual for it brags about the new fangled “fax modem” which makes it an information workhorse. I used it to play Hangman, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: the Electronic coloring book. Peripherals? Mouse, keyboard, crappy serial joystick, and a dot matrix Epson printer than ran off of an ink ribbon, which ripped several times over its course just from getting overheated or something. Really, really stupid design. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-and-what-peripherals-did-you-have-for-it/577333/63 "2011-04-07T03:15:22Z")
> [@antonio107](#): > > My mom bought me this when I was…3? > > [Tandy RL1000](http://www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/RLRLX.html) > > IIRC, it had a CGA graphics card. You mean “1000RL”; I bought the very last one from my local Radio Shack in '91 or so. It’s basically a rebadged [IBM PCjr](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PCjr) but it did have one expansion slot, which I eventually put a VGA card in. ---
**Author:** ![Enright3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/enright3/32/2897_2.png) [@Enright3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enright3)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-and-what-peripherals-did-you-have-for-it/577333/64 "2011-04-07T03:36:33Z")
> [@Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](#): > > TRS-80 Model 1. Cassette deck. Me Too. Except I was 19 or so. [It looked something like this.](http://oldcomputers.net/pics/trs80-i.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Palo\_Verde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/65b543/32.png) [@Palo\_Verde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palo_Verde)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-and-what-peripherals-did-you-have-for-it/577333/65 "2011-04-07T04:51:45Z")
Apple IIC, 1985 or so. It couldn’t really do anything, but we were offered a special deal through a computer class I was taking in high school, and my parent thought computers were the wave of the future so they bought it. ---
**Author:** ![dhkendall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a9adbd/32.png) [@dhkendall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dhkendall)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-and-what-peripherals-did-you-have-for-it/577333/66 "2011-04-07T04:56:24Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > I remember getting interviewed on TV because I made my very own Geocities site, big whoop. :eek::eek: Slow news day much? ---
**Author:** ![JoelUpchurch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f05b48/32.png) [@JoelUpchurch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoelUpchurch)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-and-what-peripherals-did-you-have-for-it/577333/67 "2011-04-07T07:29:51Z")
The first computer I bought was an Apple II. It had Integer BASIC in ROM. I was actually loading programs from cassette for a few months until I broke down and bought a floppy drive. I remember writing a review for the local computer club newsletter about a new program called VisiCalc. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-and-what-peripherals-did-you-have-for-it/577333/68 "2011-04-07T15:58:06Z")
> [@dhkendall](#): > > :eek::eek: > > Slow news day much? Tell me about it. It wasn’t a news channel, but still. I guess people back then were easily amused… ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-and-what-peripherals-did-you-have-for-it/577333/69 "2011-04-07T16:02:23Z")
My first computer was an Atari 400, but I didn’t buy any peripherals for it. My next computer was an Atari 800, for which I sprung about $250 for a 5.25 inch floppy drive. Oh happy days, I can now play _Choplifter!_ ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-and-what-peripherals-did-you-have-for-it/577333/70 "2011-04-07T16:09:58Z")
Oh man, I remember Choplifter! ---
**Author:** ![Desert\_Nomad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desert_nomad/32/177_2.png) [@Desert\_Nomad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desert_Nomad)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-and-what-peripherals-did-you-have-for-it/577333/71 "2011-04-07T16:18:49Z")
Apple IIgs 3.5" Floppy drive 5.25" Floppy drive 1MB ram expansion card Apple 1200bps modem CMS 60MB 5.25" External Hard Drive Supersonic Stereo Sound card ImageWriter II printer ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-and-what-peripherals-did-you-have-for-it/577333/72 "2011-04-07T16:59:26Z")
I had a tandy color computer (CoCo). I had a keyboard, a BW TV as a monitor and a tape backup. I wrote my first program on it. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-and-what-peripherals-did-you-have-for-it/577333/73 "2011-04-07T17:14:28Z")
> [@Enright3](#): > > [It looked something like this.](http://oldcomputers.net/pics/trs80-i.jpg) Ah, yes…the Penney’s cassette player, or a clone of it. The first mass-storage device ever for home computers. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-and-what-peripherals-did-you-have-for-it/577333/74 "2011-04-07T17:42:39Z")
Here’s the commercial for my NCR 8088. 2 floppies, monochrome. They were on sale and I got a rebate ($50 IIRC) for bringing in an old typewriter. I actually bought a $10 manual typewriter at a garage sale for the trade in. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/_xaD8SNcQXg/hqdefault.jpg "Dom Deluise NCR Computers 1985") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xaD8SNcQXg) I used it 5 years and then gave it to my parents. They used it another 3 years. I eventually bought a 10 mb hard card for it. A hard card was an ISA card with a built-in controller and hard drive. I also upgraded to EGA graphics card. ---
**Author:** ![PlainJain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5daacb/32.png) [@PlainJain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlainJain)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-and-what-peripherals-did-you-have-for-it/577333/75 "2011-04-07T17:52:52Z")
The Sinclair ZX81. You had to manually input code. I thought I was so cool by substituting the words “fuck you” for “boom” in the sinking the ship game. Woohoo. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-and-what-peripherals-did-you-have-for-it/577333/76 "2011-04-07T18:25:16Z")
Commodore 64, two joysticks, CBM 1541 floppy drive (huge, noisy and slow, but still better than cassette tape), old back & white TV as the monitor, Power Cartridge ™ to speed up loading and do live disassemby. I think I got a second hand Epson dot-matrix tractor-feed printer to work with it, but that might have been later, when I swapped the 64 for an Amiga 500 ~ _that_ was a fun machine to code on. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-and-what-peripherals-did-you-have-for-it/577333/77 "2011-04-07T18:38:09Z")
A Xerox-Honeywell Sigma Six time-sharing system. For a peripheral, we had a TeleType brand teletypewriter, with a 110 baud acoustic modem, with soft plastic cups into which you placed the telephone receiver to make the connection. Yellow paper in a continuous roll, 10 characters per second, and when you were printing some large output (an ASCII-art picture of Snoopy punting a football was popular), the machine would shake so much it knocked the phone out of the coupler, terminating your call. Whee! (this was 1971, my freshman year in high school. The teletype sat in the math office, and we dialed into the local university’s student computer. It was a toll call to the campus 12 miles away. Man, things have changed!) ---
**Author:** ![nivlac](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/3bc359/32.png) [@nivlac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nivlac)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-and-what-peripherals-did-you-have-for-it/577333/78 "2011-04-07T18:48:50Z")
Of course I had one of those self-assemble computing kits from Edmunds Scientific, but I consider that a toy. The first real computer that I bought in the early 80’s was an IBM 5150 PC, the very first generation. It had the Intel 8088 4.77 MHz chip (no math co-processor), one DD 5.25" disk drive, 64KB RAM, monochrome monitor, IBM keyboard, and PC-DOS 2.0. Going down to the IBM store, picking up computer, bringing it home and setting it up was a very exciting experience at the time! After that purchase I immediately added a second floppy disk drive and an AST board with 256KB. It wasn’t until a year later that I added a 20MB hard drive that required a separate housing that was as big as the IBM PC chassis! My first printer was an NEC daisy wheel printer because I needed something that can print high quality math symbols. You had two choices for programming languages – BASIC or PASCAL (UCSD p-System or Borland’s Turbo). I had a wonderful time with that IBM computer – writing programs, playing computer games, and using software like SuperCalc. The original IBM PC is still in storage in pristine condition. Oh, that basic IBM PC cost me about $3500, and that’s in 80’s dollars, and was worth every penny at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-and-what-peripherals-did-you-have-for-it/577333/79 "2011-04-07T19:13:20Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > Tell me about it. It wasn’t a news channel, but still. I guess people back then were easily amused… Someone I vaguely knew through a BBS in 1995-ish made the national news because she got married to someone she met on the internet. Or should I say, **while surfing the information superhighway!!!** (remember that?) Anyway, my first computer was a ZX Spectrum +, 48K version. When I bought it they were doing as promotion where you got a free [miniature flat-screen TV!](http://www.thevalvepage.com/tv/sinclair/ftv1/announc.htm). Free, I suspect, because nobody had bought the things when they launched. The screen was tiny, they were black and white, and they used a telescopic aerial so you could only get a decent picture if you leant out of the upstairs window while holding it. As for actual peripherals, I had a [Sinclair ZX printer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Printer), which was a thermal printer a bit like (well actually a lot like) a till roll printer. It used a roll of metallic paper four inches wide that looked like toilet paper for astronauts. 🆒 I aslo had a Kempston Pro joystick like [this](http://www.ko-gathering.com/wiki/images/2/2e/Competition_pro_5000.jpg) and another one that was designed with a rounded base that fitted in the palm of one hand, so you couldn’t rest it flat on the table. I can’t think of the name of it so I am trying to Google it… [that’s](http://www.cedmagic.com/tech-info/remote-control/epyx-500xj-joystick.html) the fellow! Konix Epyx. I loved that joystick, but it did cause hand cramp after a while. Initially I plugged the Speccy into the main TV downstairs, then I won a 14" TV in a competition in the _Crash_ computer magazine, so I could have the computer _in my room_. How cool was I? I later got sucked into buying a [SAM Coupé](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAM_Coup%C3%A9), which nobody has heard of. I sold it on eBay about five years ago, for more than I paid for it when it came out. ---
**Author:** ![Mikemike2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mikemike2/32/305_2.png) [@Mikemike2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mikemike2)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2011, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-and-what-peripherals-did-you-have-for-it/577333/80 "2011-04-07T19:13:26Z")
First computer was a Tandy Coco (color computer). I used a color TV as my monitor and a regular cassette tape as my storage. I loved that computer. I had a subscription to the Coco magazine which at one time was hundreds of pages thick. I also used to type in programs for the games and programs from the magazine, until I ordered the magazine with a cassette of all the programs already loaded, pure luxury. I was in university at the time and my parents brought me home a dot matrix printer from the States unexpectedly. It was an excellent gift, but it had a 6 pin head, so it had no lowercase. It would squish a small g up so it would fit on the line. It was bizarre, but my profs accepted it because, hey, progress. I eventually upgraded the ram and the keyboard. Used it for about 5 years. When I got my next computer it was an IBM pc. I was so disappointed with how primitive it was in so many ways compared to my old Coco which had, for example, a WYSIWYG word processor. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-and-what-peripherals-did-you-have-for-it/577333.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-and-what-peripherals-did-you-have-for-it/577333.md?page=5)