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Desktops: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer?
- 7/13/07 1:22 PM
First time I used a computer...
by ZTBELL21 - 7/13/07 8:48 PM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
It was an Apple IIe in an elementary school computer lab in 1991- I primarily used Print Shop on it to make cards and drawings. It had 2 floppy drives, a few kb of RAM and that was about it.
The first computers I owned were a 1996 Panasonic ToughBook CF-25 and a 1992 Tandy 2500SX/20, which were decent machines for their respective time periods. The Tandy was obtained in 1999, the ToughBook was obtained in 2001, as my first desktop and notebook, respectively.
My first computer was an Apple IIe
by margieg14 - 7/13/07 9:03 PM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I was a Special Education teacher and we used Apple's at work starting in the early 1980s. They had one floppy drive, no hard drive, green monatone screens. I bought an Apple IIc for myself in 1986 and took a class in Basic and tried to convert it to Apple basic for myself.
Thanks for asking the question. It is fun to surf down memory lane.
Margie, a first time poster.
My first computer
by george.russell20 - 7/13/07 9:10 PM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
My first computer was an XT model, with a harris 8086 processor. I didnot have a choice in getting one as I desperately needed it for uni.
I paid over £1000 for it in south africa, it was the dogs proverbial at the time, within 6 months the AT 80286 was on the market, from there the cpu chip rapidly changed in capabilities and price.
I kept the XT 8086 until 1993 when I left to come home, it was still working as well as the day I bought it. The hard drive was a conner 40Mb, all the ram was plugged as chips straight into the motherboard.
According to my inlaws it is still going well.
at work, 1980's, at home, Radio shacck was big in the 1990'
by xotic224 - 7/13/07 9:10 PM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
and I bought a Tandy that actually had a hard drive, which I guess not every computer had in those days! I really loved the Deskmate software. It was easier to use than Dos and the early version od Windows; however, they had knowledge that Windows was on it's way - when I inset\rted a disk with a Microsoft program, I got a message saying something like: this product is not equipped for Windows.
Timex ZX Spectrum 48k
by Kutusov - 7/13/07 9:11 PM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Basic was great fun! pmsl
.....;-))
by punkypaul - 7/13/07 9:24 PM In reply to: Timex ZX Spectrum 48k by Kutusov10 PRINT"hear hear pmsl 2"
20 GOTO 10
TRS-80 III (Radio Shack)
by Groover_1971 - 7/13/07 9:13 PM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
It was 1980 or 81 and I forked over $999 for an all-in-one keyboard/cpu/monitor with no storage except a cassette tape recorder (sold separately). It came with a whole 16K (not Meg) of memory and a black and white TV tube for the monitor. I maxed it out with 48K of RAM, added two 180K single-side 5 1/4" floppies, a serial port and "Level 2 Basic" (wow, level 2 no less) for an added cost of about $1200. That doesn't count the $850 dot matrix printer just in case I wanted to print something from a word processor (oops, I didn't have one of those). I bought mine while I was in the Navy living on the ship. I rented a motel room for the weekend and started learning BASIC. Luckily I had somewhere to store it onboard. The most use I got from it was learning to program and cruising the "bulletin boards" with my super fast Hayes Smartmodem 300 (thats 300 baud). Those were the days when nothing was compatible with anything else. The good thing about that is there weren't any viruses either.
my first pc
by punkypaul - 7/13/07 9:13 PM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
the Spectrum Zx81 ! wow what a power house . then the commodor 64 followed by the amiga 500 (i think) bbc miro , atari 520 / 1040 st the atari`s i used for music with cubase the only one i attempted to program (in basic ) was the bbc micro , wow great times typing programs on store demo machines in c1981 then watching with great pleasure as the sales staff scratched there heads as how to remove my name (or whatever , ahem cough cough) i had flashing all over the screen , like I said great times! ps never had an apricot though, anyone remember those, what happend to them ?
cont ....
by punkypaul - 7/13/07 9:35 PM In reply to: my first pc by punkypaulhow did I forget this beauty?! it was an Amstrad c 1984/5 really handy as the cassette deck was built in , well stuck on the end . its really bugging me as I cant recall its full designation , erm they were navy blue if that helps jog anyones memory?
20+ years ago
by john3347 - 7/13/07 9:15 PM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
My first PC was an Amstrad computer. It had a 4 digit processor number (8086 or 8088, I forget which) and had two 5-1/4 floppy drives and no hard drive at all. You had the Operating System (DOS 3, I believe) on one floppy and your application on another. My next one was a screamer: 80486 running at 66 Mhz with a 540Mb hard drive and a 3.5 floppy drive and CD ROM drive.
VIC20 with Cassette Deck and 13Inch B&W TV in the 80s
by dfwtxlthr - 7/13/07 9:16 PM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hey my first computer was a VIC20 I bought at a Montgomery Wards store. I had a cassette player I hooked up to it and loaded software from cassettes. I had a 13 Inch Black and White TV I connected to it for the monitor. I remembered ordering software collections on cassettes from ads that were in some of the early magazines. One of the most frustrating things I remember was trying to figure out where a program would start on the cassettes. You would fast forward or rewind to get close and then you had to hit play and it would load when it found it. Kept that computer for a while and then got a CompuAdd 4.77 Mhz PC-XT Clone with a 20MB Hard Drive. That was a great improvement for the time. Bought a 300 baud modem for it and could dial into the BBS's. That was pretty cool back then. Could download some things but you had be sure and matchup the protocols (remember zmodem). Next PC was a Gateway 486DX2..... Great memories.
1994 It was when i was 4 years old
by totesen - 7/13/07 9:17 PM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
i was born on 1991 so a im 16 right now my first Computer was when i was 4 my dad bought a Macintosh Quadra 610 and i liked it a lot specialy for games and drawing... i had that computer iuntil 1997 because i used at school Windows Computers and i started to hate the mac because i had no new Games jaja that was when i got my first Pc A Compaq Presario 3333 With Windows That was also the first time i new the internet and i still love it! then in 2001 i bought a Sony Vaio Desktop with Windows XP, then a Dell inspiron 8600 and Finally in 2006 i bought my Vaio Notebook With Vista.
Commodore 64 ... for my 6th birthday
by AlexGreatMK - 7/13/07 9:44 PM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
That would make it 1989...
The thing had 64 KB of memory, and had to be hooked on a TV... It could load games by a USB key (lol), actually, the only way to feed it some data was through a tape recorder... Later 5 inch soft floppy came out, but it was too damn expensive for me to get...
Since then I've gone through
- 4x86 @ 66 MHz with 4 MB Ram and 512 MB hard disk
- Pentium 1 @ 133 MHz with 16 MB Ram and 1 GB hard disk (and a CD drive)
- Pentium 3 @ 450 MHz with 128 MB Ram and 10 GB hard disk (and a CD burner)
- Pentium 3 @ 550 MHz with 64 MB Ram (first laptop @ home)
- Pentium 3 @ 800 MHz with 64 MB Ram (biggest crap I've purchased from HP) (and a DVD Rom)
- P4 @ 2.6 GHz (quite a jump, but happened in 2-3 years time) with 1 GB Ram and 120 GB hard drive (wow... 2-3 years) (and a DVD Burner)
- CrapBook Pro
- Core 2 Duo @ 2.0 GHz, 2 GB Ram... a modern day machine (for now) that's about 7 months old now...
Wow... time flies... I'll be 30 before I know it...
First computer
by edenney - 7/13/07 9:45 PM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
The first computer I used was a Commodore Vic 20, back in 1982 or 83 I think, and the first computer I owned was a Commodore 64, which I think I got in 1984. I had an Okimate 10 color thermal printer that at the time was hot stuff. That was also the first computer that I ever used to connect to my first BBS, using my lightning fast 300 baud modem. At that speed, simply chatting on a DDIAL with 3 or 4 other people would sometimes have you backlogged for minutes, unable to keep up with the conversation. When I got my first 1200 Baud modem (which someone kindly donated to me), I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread! Commodore 64s were great for games, far better than any equivalent IBM PCs at the time, but they weren't great for much else.
The first "real" computer I owned was an antiquated Tandy 1000-25 IBM compatible that I got in 1989. It was an XT, but technically it only ran at about 4MHz, not even the full 4.77 MHz that an XT should. This computer was so slow it wasn't even funny, and it certainly didn't have a hard drive, just dual 5.25, low density floppies. In fact, Radio Shack who manufactured the Tandy line, claimed this computer wasn't capable of supporting a hard drive under any circumstances. I found that out after spending countless hours trying to install a 10MB, full height MFM hard drive brick into it. Amazingly though, a good friend of mine who was a computer Guru in the true sense of the word, figured out somehow that if he soldered a small piece of metal onto the MFM controller, he could get the controller and the system to recognize the drive and we eventually got the whopping 10MB hard drive installed.
Things were definitely different back in the day... DOS ruled and when Windows came along, 3.11 loaded faster on an 8MHz 286 with 256K RAM and a dog slow MFM hard drive than XP does now on a 3GHz Dual Core P4 with 4 gigs of RAM and a 10,000 RPM IDE drive. None of that Plug and Play crap, it was all about jumpers, com ports, and IRQs. Your bios was on a floppy disk and if you misplaced it you might as well throw your computer away. No internet to find and download drivers from or find information about anything, though a small percentage of companies by the early to mid 90s had a BBS, but they usually didn't have much on them and trying to find the # of the BBS to begin with wasn't easy. 16 color EGA graphics were hot and 256 color VGA graphics were the wave of the future. If you had an 8-bit Sound Blaster you were the man. Oh and let's not forget there was no such thing as Email, just messages posted on bulletin boards. CD-ROM drive? What's a CD-ROM?
On the flip side, viruses were almost non-existent and only propogated by attaching themselves to files on your floppy, so it wasn't that hard to protect yourself and everyone used DOS based McAfee VScan. There was no such thing as Spyware or Adware, what a WONDERFUL thing! Things were a lot simpler in many ways, more difficult in others. I have some fond memories of computers in the 80s and early 90s, but I wouldn't want to go back 
.
My first PC
by peter seaward - 7/13/07 10:28 PM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I worked on Honeywell mainframes from 1968, H800, H1800, H8200 , but my first PC was something called a "Superbrain". Have no idea who built it. You pushed 7" floppy discs vertically into a drive beside the screen and the keyboard was attached.....used to take ages to "update" your spreadsheet every time you made a new entry, so there was an option to not update the spreadsheet until you had finished all your new entries.
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