Your First Computer

[Westdene Seagull]

I had one of these all conquering beasts -
made in Wales no less !!!!

 

[Barnham Seagull]

Amstrad 464 tape deck and the highlight a green screen!

Oh and what a game harrier attack was!

 

[Theatre of Trees]

Amstrad 9512 word processor for me. Still have it.

 

[ali jenkins]

Didnt get on the console bandwaggon untill late on so i lost my pc verginity to a SNES!!!!

Loved Mario and Paper Boy.

 

[Norman Baker suck my lozenge]

Vic 20,an awesome machine.

 

[Lankyseagull]

Acorn Electron then Commodore Amiga 500+

 

[cardboard]

Texas Instruments

TI99 4a?

Whatever that was?

Had a great game called "hunt the Wumpus"

 

[Buzzer]

1. Sinclair ZX81 with the 16K Ram pack.

Ahh yes the 16k wobblepack. The hours I spent typing in a program (a "skiing" game as I recall) only for it to crash and reset.

Remember the thermal paper too?

Mine was an Oric Atmos followed by a Dragon 32.

Halcyon days!

 

[BensGrandad]

A BBC with a programme written for me that only did stocktaking and letter writing nothing else, in about 1979 ish. My wife usd to operate it as you punched in a figure and then enter that took you to the next item for you do the same until you reached the last entry and you punched finish and it produced a stock report. Absolutely brilliant and simple to use as I said my wife used to sit and operate it at home in between her household chores and looking after the children.

 

[Al Bion]

My first was an Amstrad 8256 PCW which used 3" disks to boot up. The word processor programme that you could load up was pretty good and to be able to copy and paste was a great new trick at that time (I think mid to late 80's). I've still got the whole system in my loft.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

A BBC B, with a monster 32k of RAM. Yes, a whole 32k!!

Me too.

Then an Amstrad PCW9512. How advanced it seemed when I dispensed with the cassette tape deck and had those funny disks instead. And it came with its own monitor, not the black & white tv that I'd previously been using. To enhance the word processing capability, I had three sets of daisywheels. And Supercalc for spreadsheets.

BBC B on eBay for £10

 

[vulture]

Mine was the C16,my brother had the C64 I played a game called the boss for ages

 

[clapham_gull]

BBC B, then an Amstrad 80286? PC

Was the only person at college with a "pc", typing my essays using wordperfect for DOS

In between I did play about with an RM Nimbus ? Writing my pascal programs on wordstar.

 

[bhaexpress]

One of these:-

IBM 360

That's an IBM 360, it wasn't actually mine but I worked on it for American Express when they had the European Head Office in Haywards Heath.

It had 240K of what is now known as RAM (in those days we called it Core as the memory was in fact made of Ferite Core, silicone was only found in wax polish then). It took up a room the size of a basketball court which had full air conditioning and smoke detection and CO2 gas dispensers. The only way to communicate with it was via command through the 'Golf Ball' teletype console or punch cards and paper tape. Most of the output was on a line printer. It was highly volatile and cost a fortune.

They don't make them like that anymore (thank God).

 

[Bluejuice]

The original IBM Ps/2 with 640k of RAM and a 20mb hard drive.

Prince of Persia and PGA Tour Golf in black & white. Happy days

 

[desprateseagull]

first foray into technology was the classic Atari tv games console.

2 choices - ping tennis, or breakout.

groundbreaking stuff.

 

[Trufflehound]

Mine was called a Slide Rule.

I dunno... kids eh?

 

[bhaexpress]

Mine was called a Slide Rule.

I dunno... kids eh?

Not an Abacus ?

 

[Trufflehound]

Not an Abacus ?

Isn't that a Genesis track?

 

[Hatterlovesbrighton]

My mum got a ZX81 from my uncle but can't remember doing much on it really. Remember being facinated about the "space" key. Thought it had something to do with starwars.

Then came an Amstrad 464. Green screen at first then with a modulator so I could play it on the tv. Harrier Attack was class, but so was TT racer and Ghostbusters. Best thing I got for it though was the Light Gun, which came with Operation Wolf.