Your First Computer

[prlyles]

Who remembers their first computer? Mine was a Heathkit that you had to put together yourself. At the time it had no storage and used Motorola machine code. Once you turned it off you lost everything. Later they came out with an interface to a tape player so you could save your programs. This was early to mid 70's. Later I upgraded to a TRS 80 that had a 5 1/4 in disk drive. Later they came out with an external hard drive called a Winchester disk. I would hold 5 meg and it had a key that you could used to write protect it. It used CP/M as the operating system which was "borrowed" by Bill Gates later to become MSDOS.

 

[JuleZ '02 HEEL]

Nice idea. Ours was a Tandy, we got it when I was in fourth grade, so that would have been late '80s. No hard drive, everything ran from 3.5-inch floppys. I mainly remember using it to write thank-you notes and play Tetris. Our babysitter had a slightly better Tandy and King's Quest - that was the shiznit.

 

[Raising Heel]

King's Quest

My two best friends had early IBMs. We'd play King's Quest for hours on end.

My family's first PC was an Apple II C. Single 5 1/4 floppy drive until they later came out with an external floppy drive. We had Flight Simulator, which I didn't enjoy much, but I probably spent an entire summer or two playing Wizardry. It came on maybe 4 double-sided disks, which meant you spent as much time removing/flipping/inserting disks as you did playing the game.

 

[tarheel0910]

Mine was a Tandy as well.

 

[prlyles]

Anybody else remember the old text based games like Zork, Wishbringer, etc..

 

[Nuk'EM Heels]

386 IBM-clone, 1MB RAM, 30MB HD

 

[JuleZ '02 HEEL]

Our Tandy was like this one:

 

[prlyles]

Our Tandy was like this one:

Yeah, I had a Tandy 1000. It had a 8088 processor with dual 5 1/4 in floppies. I think the one above had either a 8086 or a 80286 processor.

 

[WhatTheHeel?]

Anybody else remember the old text based games like Zork, Wishbringer, etc..

Infocom was awesome.

Planetfall was my favorite game of theirs.

 

[WhatTheHeel?]

Atari 800 for me. 48KB of memory, external 5 1/4" drive and Cassette Recorder.

Got it in 7th grade and taught myself to program on BASIC. Still have it and play games on it every so often. Great memories. I was more amazed by what it could do then than anything today because of my age aND that the home computer industry was so young.

 

[heelmanwilm]

Anyone remember the "computer" in the basement of the math building at unc in the early 80's. U had to use key punch cards to run your program. Took about two hours to get a huge printout. If u had one punch out of place your printout was gibberish and u had to start all over.

 

[gteeitup]

does a texas instrument count?

soooo frustrated about that one game i couldn't get, tunnels.

 

[gunslingerdick]

I'll let y'all know.

 

[jcolucci]

 

[Nuk'EM Heels]

 

[gunslingerdick]

Want to play a game?

 

[Raising Heel]

I'll let y'all know.

Luddite

 

[HookUNC75]

It wasn't my first computer by a longshot, but when I bought an HP for my sons right after Windows 95 came out, I remember it had this on the Windows CD, or it may have been Windows 98 come to think of it:

 

[JuleZ '02 HEEL]

5MB hard drive, 1956

 

[ElizabethtownHeel]

Around 1993 we had an IBM I think with windows 3.1 maybe I don't remember doing anything on it but writing papers for school and playing a few games. Then I bought a computer from Best Buy in 1995 it about 2100 bucks for that thing. Amazing how fast technology has advanced.

 

[toophly1124]

You ****ers are old.

 

[BillyL]

You ****ers are old.

You'll get there one day . . age well my friend.

 

[cletusnow]

Used this one in 2nd grade.

 

[uncboy10]

We got some kind of cheap used IBM (I think) with like 8mb of ram when I was probably 7 or 8 years old. I never really spent enough time inside to mess with it much though. I didn't really do much with computers until we started using them with school.

 

[UNCTarheel1984]

Leading Edge dual floppy. It was 1985.

 

[coryfly]

When I started teaching I needed one so bought an eMachine. Now we get our own laptops so don't have one I actually own.

 

[coolwaterunc]

I barely remember what my family's first one was. It was some basic thing that just ran DOS. The one I remember most was the one after that, which was a Packard Bell that ran Windows 95. I remember I thought I was stepping into the future when my dad first hooked it up.

 

[heelbent]

Anybody else remember the old text based games like Zork, Wishbringer, etc..

Leisure Suit Larry.

 

[coolwaterunc]

Another thing: I remember being in complete awe when I used a mouse for the first time. Seeing that little arrow move wherever my hand went just blew my mind. I had never seen anything like it. I thought the future was upon us.

 

[UNC71-00]

Leisure Suit Larry.

That was a great game

 

[coolwaterunc]

 

[coolwaterunc]

 

[coolwaterunc]

 

[Raising Heel]

When I started teaching I needed one so bought an eMachine. Now we get our own laptops so don't have one I actually own.

So you watch porn on your phone?

 

[Raising Heel]

I barely remember what my family's first one was. It was some basic thing that just ran DOS. The one I remember most was the one after that, which was a Packard Bell that ran Windows 95. I remember I thought I was stepping into the future when my dad first hooked it up.

5 1/4" and 3 1/2" floppies. Big Time.

 

[tarheel0910]

Top 5 game of all time. Computer or otherwise.

 

[gunslingerdick]

So you watch porn on your phone?

You don't?

 

[toophly1124]

So you watch porn on your phone?

Absolutely.

 

[Heels Noir]

Who remembers their first computer? Mine was a Heathkit that you had to put together yourself. At the time it had no storage and used Motorola machine code. Once you turned it off you lost everything. Later they came out with an interface to a tape player so you could save your programs. This was early to mid 70's.

Holy crap, besides Motorola I don't recognize any of those brandnames. No storage? You lose your work every time you power down?!

No offense, lyles, but just so I'm clear, are we talking about the 1970s or the 1870s?

 

[prlyles]

Holy crap, besides Motorola I don't recognize any of those brandnames. No storage? You lose your work every time you power down?!

No offense, lyles, but just so I'm clear, are we talking about the 1970s or the 1870s?

Yep, I'm old for sure...