What was your first computer? - And why did you get it? (and more autistic details that almost no one would care about)

[alex_theman]

Was it an Amiga or C64? Was it a PC or Mac? Was it a Sinclair with a "rubber keyboard" ? As something like that can be done in a poll, I want autistic levels of detail like:

• Why did you get it?
• What brand was the PC? (If it isn't a C64/Amiga/Mac/Sinclair (unless you had a Mac clone)
• What software did you get with it?
• What are some of your tales of this machine and its community (if you remember any)?
• Do you still have it? If not, when did you sell it?
• And more!

 

[CatParty]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80#Model_4

 

[alex_theman]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80#Model_4

View attachment 145870

I want more detail than that, because :autism:

 

[CatParty]

I want more detail than that, because :autism:

it was soooooo long ago lol i just remember learning how to program it to count on its own and make the screen flash different colours

 

[alex_theman]

it was soooooo long ago lol i just remember learning how to program it to count on its own and make the screen flash different colours

I assume you didn't own it, and it was your school's/parents' computer?

 

[WEEDle]

Spoiler: Apple Macintosh

My grandparents got this beast for free from a friend that no longer wanted it. Got it around 1997? Was ridiculously outdated by then of course, but better than nothing. I was 5 years old at the time so all I remember doing with it was using the paint program and printing out my drawings and stories I would make using that. It was in black and white. I remember looking through some of the file directories and stuff like that but it was so long ago I can't remember much.

About a year or so later the same friend gave them another computer, more up-to-date but still behind the times. I can't remember much about it other than it run Windows 95 and I played some games on it like Sonic 3D Blast, Broken Sword, GTA 1 and some Tetris clones with a USB game pad. It was one of those huge, fat monitors typical in the 90s and it was already starting to yellow. It had internet capabilities but sadly we had no modem and they never got around to getting one until a few years later and with a new computer running Windows XP.

I remember being jealous of the kid across the street because his family had a computer with Windows 98 and the internet, and he had better games etc and made fun of me for my outdated technology and just about everything else.

I still messed around in paint and enjoyed using color.

Why we got rid of them? Well the Apple Macintosh, although a novelty for collectors and such, was admittedly pretty useless for anything we would use it for. The other computer was fine but I think they eventually realized just how shitty these old computers were and it wasn't until about 2004/5 until they got a new, up-to-date PC with internet capabilities. We still have that one, and it still runs okay, but it never gets used.

I got my own laptop in early 2005 with internet connection and that was the beginning of my internet days. I was 13 at the time, and felt pretty late to the party so to speak, but I knew other people who didn't have computers or internet until much later even, so I didn't feel that bad. Where I live we didn't even have broadband connection until 2005 so I thankfully never had to deal with dial-up, and I did get to use computers/the internet at other people's houses in the years leading up to this.

I wish I had been introduced to the internet earlier but hey, what can you do?

 

[Bogs]

This bad boy, mom got it a year after it came out. I mostly used it to make meaningless graphs in the office program, and rename all my mom's documents (not knowing how computers work, she kept having to go to the computer store). Then one day Dark Castle II came into the house and the rest was (terribly uninteresting) history.
Still have it, still works.

 

[CatParty]

parents' computer?

 

[alex_theman]

blank text

You got a NUF for the bad pun. I eat those and use them to summon the old one of puns, Punthlu.

 

[Ravenor]

BBC Microcomputer with a dedicated colour screen, 5in floppy reader an a lythodisk drive > Packard Bell Spectria> HP Internet enabled lapto> Many Many self builds since around 99.... today 27in iMac, 15in MBP and iPad.

 

[AnOminous]

I always had computers around and don't think I actually owned one personally until the late '90s, even when I was repairing them as a job. That first computer, in fact, was actually built out of parts of other junked computers and was originally a Pentium 166 in a case without a cover.

The first computer I used regularly was a TI-99/4a at a friend's house, and the first computers I did anything remotely interesting with were the TRS-80 Model IIIs at school. Those were really great, solid machines. I think they were the first "all in one" model of the TRS-80. They didn't have floppy drives of their own, but a Model 4 did, and was connected to the others through the cassette ports, which all plugged into a switchbox so the machine with the drive could broadcast data to all the others, or you could upload data to it, like programs you'd typed in. So that was also my first (primitive) network too. And it was nice not having to deal with the insanely shitty cassette tape drive, although the "network" used the port for it.

 

[temeluchus]

I was bought a c64 at age 8. It came with a bunch of movie and tv game show themed games. Tape drive, the disc drive was expensive and rare over here.

Notable memory was having the shit scared out of me by a jaggi in rescue on fractalus.

I don,t have my original c64 which was consigned to the skip years ago. I have bought a replacement which i fire up now and again.

 

[c-no]

As far as owning my own computer goes, I had my first computer, a Think Pad from IBM back at the end of 2005. I didn't know much about computers from back then but owning a laptop was the first thing to give me interest in computers. Owning it also taught a valuable lesson in being very careful with what you download. I won't forget how I accidentally got spyware and adware thanks to some toolbar I installed.

 

[DumbCWCQuote]

The first computer in the house was for my dads work it was some old dinosaur IBM that I barely remember we had a string of others over the years but the first that I could call my own was an HP pavilion a6403w I got through the dead relative inheritance program she served me well swapped out a lot of parts over the years still use the monitor on my junker PC and the tower's more or less my night stand now.

 

[Maiden-TieJuan]

Commodore 64. We also had the little printer for the older version, with the tiny ink pens in it.

I remember coding for hours just to make a christmas tree.

 

[SakuraRose]

Commie 64, got through several of those as they kept blowing up, which necessitated repeat trips back to Rumbelows for replacements.

Then it was the Spectrum rubber keyed model, complete with wobbly RAM pack, progressing on to the 48k+ hard plastic keyed model, then finally the +2A, which was notorious for refusing to load approximately half the games.

Moved on to the Amiga 500 in the early 90s, then the 1200, and then built my first PC somewhere around 1995.

All apart from the exploding C64s and the PC still live proudly in my cellar.

 

[Dunsparce]

Tandy 5000 MC.

Apparently it's pretty rare, shame it was thrown away years ago.

 

[XYZpdq]

First computer I used was the TI 99 4As. My preschool had a ton of them. They were great machines for little kids. Cartidge-run, keyboard, joystick, speech synth, a huge educational library.

First one I had was an Atari 800xl, got it as a hand-me-down from somebody. It was my video game machine until I pointed out to my parents that those indian kids in that news story about abject poverty on reservations even had an NES.

But thanks to the Atari I never knew of a Donkey Kong without the cement factory level.

 

[Trilby]

Having grown up in a modest-sized family, naturally I ended up the middle child and had to wait my turn to use the Commodore 64 my older brother hogged for his projects. Never really did much on it besides games and Koala Painter. When the Amiga 500 came out, I wanted that one SO BAD, yet my mom gave me an 8-bit Atari computer instead (one of those XE models). Not much I got out of that besides playing Pac-Man.

 

[crunchysalty]

Was it an Amiga or C64? Was it a PC or Mac? Was it a Sinclair with a "rubber keyboard" ? As something like that can be done in a poll, I want autistic levels of detail like:

• Why did you get it?
• What brand was the PC? (If it isn't a C64/Amiga/Mac/Sinclair (unless you had a Mac clone)
• What software did you get with it?
• What are some of your tales of this machine and its community (if you remember any)?
• Do you still have it? If not, when did you sell it?
• And more!

The first one I played with was the ti-99, when radio shack was still cool: