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Subject: What was your first computer?

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Vrecknidj
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05/23/2006 8:57 PM  
Mine was the Atari 400 (membrane keyboard). I had a cassette player for storage (no disk drives for me!), a black & white TV for a monitor, and I had these bulky cartridges I plugged in for apps.

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05/23/2006 8:59 PM  
Commondore 64 (the old crap brown one)
Playing Pool of Radiance and Curse of Azure Bonds...man i loved thoses games.

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05/23/2006 9:08 PM  
Tandy, TRS-80, w/cassette storage.



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Kansas City, MO USA

05/23/2006 9:57 PM  
I had an Atari 800. My parents bought it used without the disc drive. I had five cassettes, one was Basic and the other PILOT. My mom would check out books from the public library with huge programs written in basic, but no way to back them up to disc. I begged for that computer, and despite it's total crappiness I loved it- for about a year.
My first GOOD computer was a 486/75mhz with 4megs of RAM. Still pathetic by today's standards, but that was 11 years ago.

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05/23/2006 10:01 PM  
Used a bunch of Apple's at school (don't remember the model) but I think the first home computer I remember is the original IBM PC. A few years later we eventually picked up a Compaq Deskpro with dual speed, 4.5 MHz and 7 MHz!

I know a friend of mine had a computer that used cassettes as storage/programs, and another used the old 8 inch floppy disks (same construction as the 5.25" floppies, just larger).


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zenthrus
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05/23/2006 10:08 PM  
Apple II (school) and Commodore 64 (home). I used to surf the essentially non-existant web (primarly BBS stuff) with my stylish 600-baud modem. Such speed [:O][:P]

Commodore's text-based RPGs (Zork, Hitchhiker's Guide, Bard's Tale Trilogy, etc.) are still usually more fun than the fancy, graphics-tastic stuff these days. There are exceptions, of course [:D]


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Adelaide

05/23/2006 10:43 PM  
Ourfamily had a trash 80, and used a friends C64 a lot.

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05/23/2006 10:46 PM  
TRS-80 Color Computer with "chicklet keyboard" (16K RAM if I recall), cassette player, a number of cartidges (games, word processor, etc), and a sturdy dot matrix printer with a big black marker to re-ink the ribbon.


scruffydude7
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Rock Hill, SC

05/23/2006 10:57 PM  
A Commodore 64, and boy did I ever love that computer. Its still in the attic.

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Fearfrost
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05/23/2006 11:53 PM  
Atari 400 with the tape drive membraine keyboard. Ahh memories[:)]

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Flint_Firestone
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05/24/2006 1:24 AM  
Tandy 1000 Meny a wasted day playing rouge and the old gold box games from TSR IIRC it took like 6 to 8 5 1/4 disk to play pool of raidance.

Opps did I do that
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Sammael
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05/24/2006 4:48 AM  
Commodore 128D. Twice as much memory as the 64, but only half of the games worked!

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Ghendar
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The G Spot

05/24/2006 7:08 AM  
I was a latecomer to the computer world. My first computer was a Pentium 166 running windows 95.

WotC - making me wish more and more every day for a return to the TSR days. :(

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Janos M.
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Hamburg / GErmany

05/24/2006 8:31 AM  
My father bought me and my brother a Amiga 500 while he used an Atari (don't know the model)

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Vrecknidj
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05/24/2006 8:46 AM  
quote:
Originally posted by zenthrus

Apple II (school) and Commodore 64 (home). I used to surf the essentially non-existant web (primarly BBS stuff) with my stylish 600-baud modem. Such speed [:O][:P]
I remember when a friend of mine (who had an Atari 800, miles ahead of my 400) finally got his modem and we got on the boards. We didn't have a clue what we were doing at first, but we eventually found some text chat areas and then we were off and running.
quote:
Commodore's text-based RPGs (Zork, Hitchhiker's Guide, Bard's Tale Trilogy, etc.) are still usually more fun than the fancy, graphics-tastic stuff these days. There are exceptions, of course [:D]
Some of those oldies were great.

Dave

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PatEllis15
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05/24/2006 1:16 PM  
My father was an early computer programer, so we were into computers way early... thus, they sucked!

My first:

Vic 20 4 KB on RAM, casette drive

My Second:

Osborne portable computer, dual 5 1/4 drives, plus a 400 baud modem!!!

Pat E

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Vrecknidj
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05/24/2006 1:56 PM  
Oh the Vic 20, how could I have forgotten about that? A friend of mine had one of those awful Sinclair computers.

Dave

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PatEllis15
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05/24/2006 2:56 PM  
quote:
Originally posted by Vrecknidj

Oh the Vic 20, how could I have forgotten about that? A friend of mine had one of those awful Sinclair computers.

Dave



The really sad part is that I was still using the Osborne (and its CPM based WordStar wordprocessor) to do papers my junior year of college (1991-92).

The only thing I ever did with the Vic20 was play Gorf...

Pat E

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Malin Lug
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05/24/2006 4:08 PM  
How about the old Apple IIe. That was the first computer we had at my parents house when I was growing up. I don't even remember most of the games, but there were a few that rocked... Conquest, Karatika, and the old Dungeon, Dungeon II, Dungeon III, and Dungeon IV the Return of Werdna. Dungeon IV the Return of Werda was the the best, the main character was the bad guy in the first Dungeon game and you started in the lowest level of the dungeon and had to fight your way through adventurers to reach the surface and the city. You would summon monster allies at each summoning circle as your party.

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bigbadjon
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05/24/2006 4:26 PM  
I had an old IBM with the floppy floppies and a Commodore 64. My grampa built them for GTE and built me one when I was little. I knew DOS inside and out when I was 5 and now I do not even remember how to run a disk on it.

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Dragon Snack
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05/24/2006 4:29 PM  
Anyone remember the ADAM? I had cassettes of Donkey Kong and one other unmemorable game for it.

I think we got an Apple IIe not long after that, since there were no real programs for the ADAM.


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Cthulhufnord
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Umass Amherst Baby!

05/25/2006 3:32 AM  
A Mac Classic, we must have got it back in 89' or so. I hated that little thing, it was always crashing on me when I was writing papers and reports.

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Wakalimasu
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Calgary

05/25/2006 3:35 AM  
some atari thing back in the early 80s

then we got a tandy 1000 sx when i was in grade 5 :o

.. age 10.. bout 18 yrs ago

my god


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Idzy
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Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

05/25/2006 10:41 AM  
Timex 1000

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=477

I had a cassete drive and a black and white tv for a monitor.
I think I had 2 games for it on tape, Big Flap Attack and something else I can't remember, I also had a great big huge ram addon that brought it up to 4kb if I remember correctly.

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nyjastul69
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Rhode Island

05/25/2006 10:45 AM  
C64


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PaSquall
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05/25/2006 10:50 AM  
amstrad cpc 6128

But before this I played a lot with my mate's zx81...

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glumag
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05/25/2006 11:20 AM  
Atari 400 w/cassette storage (bought separatedly of course) and child spill-proof keyboard! Nothing like pre-80s computers, yay!


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05/25/2006 1:31 PM  
Whoa, seeing that Atari 400 brings back memorys.
That was my first computer, had cartridges, and a cassette until my dad dropped $400+ for a 5 1/4 floppy disk drive. Man.. that was fast back then.
Still remember playing Temple of Apshai, and Ultima 3.
Then he upgraded to a Apple II GS. Wow, Bards Tale was the shiznit on that system. Later he upgraded again to an IBM XT 286, with EGA graphics. Ultima 5 was "the" game back then.
I also spent hours and hours with the basic cartridge typing in Games from those "Byte" magazines with the code printed in the back. I even tried designing my own basic games based on Star Frontiers, and designed a Lunar lander type thing using Oversized color Ascii characters. It was very rudimentary, but I thought I was pretty cool for a 13 year old.

Way before all that, my very ,very, first experience with computers was my dads Terminal he would bring home from the Phone company. It had the old modem you put the phone receiver into the Rubber circles and it communicated through sound. I played the first "Adventure" game off his server online, and all the text was printed on a spool of paper instead of a screen. I waited each evening for him to get home to see if he brought the terminal so I could play more adventure.

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05/25/2006 1:33 PM  
I had a TI 99 computer.

It hooked up to a TV with a tape drive for storage.

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Vrecknidj
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05/25/2006 4:08 PM  
quote:
Originally posted by Kelemvor

I also spent hours and hours with the basic cartridge typing in Games from those "Byte" magazines with the code printed in the back.
That's how I learned too!

I'd type in a whole program--often it took me hours, and then I'd take out a line here or there, or change a line here or there, and that's how I taught myself BASIC.

Dave

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05/25/2006 6:08 PM  
Ah! Sweeet, here is a pic of the Osborne. Mine had one of the two expansion "holes" filled with that 400 baud modem..



My eyes still hurt thinking about that screen...

Pat E

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05/25/2006 7:34 PM  
I still have my Atari 400, the cartriges and the tape drive.

I do not hink it works however.

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madda
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05/25/2006 8:07 PM  
My very first computer was the Sinclair ZX81, a whooping 1K ram machine with Z80 as the CPU. No storage at all. I had a games book and had to program it in basic before I played. Pure joy.

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05/26/2006 10:52 AM  
My first comp was a tandy, not sure what kind. I remeber it had a 16 color monitor, I used to play lemmings on that thing all the time. We got it used, it was no where near top of the line when we picked it up.

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05/26/2006 11:20 AM  
I had an Apple //e, with a setup almost identical to the one shown here:

http://www.homecomputermuseum.de/comp/detail/79.jpg


Monsoon28
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Toronto

05/26/2006 11:31 AM  
quote:
Originally posted by yack

Commondore 64 (the old crap brown one)
Playing Pool of Radiance and Curse of Azure Bonds...man i loved thoses games.



Amen to that! Don't forget Wasteland, Maniac Mansion & Zak McKracken! [:D]

I first learned how to use computers though with the Commodore Pet! I think I was 9yrs old at the time.
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My first game system was the Atari 2600. I think I might still have both somewhere in my parents basement.

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05/26/2006 11:40 AM  
quote:
Originally posted by madda

My very first computer was the Sinclair ZX81, a whooping 1K ram machine with Z80 as the CPU. No storage at all. I had a games book and had to program it in basic before I played. Pure joy.



The Sinclair ZX81 was a great single-purpose machine.
Unfortunately, this was the purpose:


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05/26/2006 1:56 PM  
quote:
Originally posted by Ghendar

I was a latecomer to the computer world. My first computer was a Pentium 166 running windows 95.


I think I beat you out. My first computer was a Dell Dimension with a 1GB processor. Running the god-awful Windows ME.

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05/26/2006 2:01 PM  
VIC 20: a couple of catridges, a cassette tape drive, and eventually a 30 character/line dot matrix mini printer (but with Black AND Red ink :) ) I once wrote a program to print out random combinations of powers fot the Marvel Superheros game... (back then, random was all the rage :) )

Then a C-64, eventually with a disk drive and a color printer.

Then I moved up to an IBM PC (original), just like we used in my High School computer classes (ACK!)


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Central New Jersey

05/27/2006 9:00 AM  
Mine was a Packard-Bell with a 286 chip (MUCH better than the 8086 chip). Had an EGA monitor. Also had 2 high density floppy drives...a 1.2 meg 5.25" and a 1.44 meg 3.5". I believe the system cost me a bit over $2000 in the fall of '88.
Until that time, I had worked with Apple IIe and IIplus at my high school...

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