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Desktops: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer?
- 7/13/07 1:22 PM
We got our first computer in 1977 (?)
by enelkay - 7/14/07 12:47 AM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
...or maybe 1976. It's hard to remember way back then. Anyway, it was one of the first Radio Shack TRS-80's, complete with tape recorder I/O and 4K of RAM. We thought we were really uptown when we upgraded it to 16K. I don't believe when we bought ours that there were any prewritten programs available, but the machine was equipped with a very basic version of BASIC, and we amused ourselves by writing our own.
Or at least we did when the computer was in working condition, which wasn't very often. I think ours was the original reason the machines got the nickname "TRaSh-80." It spent more time in the repair shop than it did on our desk, and eventually we were able, by dint of excellent record-keeping and threats of legal action, to return the thing and get our money back.
About a year later we got an Apple II+ and found out what a real computer was. A few months later we got a second one and computerized our business. We'd have been Apple users for life except for the fact that when they came out with hardware upgrades (the Apple IIe and subsequent models) they weren't backward compatible. All of our custom programming would have had to be rewritten, and there was no guarantee that the rewrites would work with the next version of the Apples. So we continued to use the II+es for as long as we could, then switched to IBM compatibles which had the advantage of backward compatibility.
I was also one of the first Windows users, as my business became heavily dependent on the use of Adobe PageMaker with its run-time version of Windows.
Windows
by newkiwi - 7/14/07 1:11 AM In reply to: We got our first computer in 1977 (?) by enelkayI remember we had a Xerox microcomputer at the Health Department. As I understand the history they actually come up with the first GUI..Graphical User INterface for the very young..that's anyone under 50. Xerox gave up on it. Talk about a bad business decision.
My understanding is MSDOS and CPM stole a lot from Unix which was a Bell Labs product. Remember when AT&T owned or controlled the baby bells. After divestiture came the cell phone companies the supposed demise of AT&T. Now some of the behometh cell companies have crashed and burned and AT&T is growing. The baby bells merged.. What change a lifetime has seen?
1980s - a Timex Sinclair 1000 & Atari 800.
by ffarg.cram - 7/14/07 1:07 AM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
My first PC was a Timex Sinclair 1000 that I used for about two weeks - it was so limited in software and capabilities that I quickly upgraded to an Atari 800 with the 410 tape drive (connected to a 13" TV) - it was more affordable than a Apple II and was supported extremely well here in Ohio. I still have these systems (and the Atari still works). Every few years I dig out the old stuff and plug everything together to make sure I remember what classic computing was like. There's nothing like waiting for a cassette tape Shamus,
Blue Max, Jumpman or Temple of Asphai to load. The graphics and sound effects are crude compared to today's games but the hours I spent trying to advance from one level to the next were well spent.
OK! Another Atari 800!
by HawaiiMuskrat - 7/15/07 6:07 AM In reply to: 1980s - a Timex Sinclair 1000 & Atari 800. by ffarg.cramThere aren't many of us. I remember Jumpman with a lot of nostalgia. That was a great game. I also had the 410 tape drive, and I later bought the 1020 plotter and used it as a tiny printer. Much later I bought several disk drives and a modem and ran a BBS which I kept going till about 5 years ago, but by then it had migrated to a PC running MS-DOS.
That was a while ago
by RunRagged2 - 7/14/07 1:15 AM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
The first computer I remember using was a Burroughs B6700 main frame at college in 1976.
If you were lucky, you could go intereractive on the green sceen terminals, or one of the two graphics terminals.
I remember we booked both graphics terminals one day and played 'star wars' on them. I think we took a good proportion of the processor cycles to do this.
We also had Commodore PETS with the built in tape drives. I managed to collect a large number of games for this.
My first home computer was a self assembled 'Microtan 65', this was a kit consisting of a single board with 1K ram and a 6502 processor, storage was via cassette tape and the keyboard was 20 charactors. Programming was in machine code. Larger I bought an expansion board and 2K Rom to run assembler.
Later I progressed to a BBC Microcomputer which had a wordprocessor application in ROM.
I still have an Amstrad PCW green screen computer which ran CP/M on a Z80 processor.
My working life saw Texas TI99/4A, Sinclair Z80, Spectrum 16 & 64 and QL, Amstrad CPC and PCW, Commodore Vic 20, 64 and 128, Atari, Dragon, BBC, Acorn, Nortstar Advantage (green screen, CP/M & MP/M and fixed format 5 1/4 floppy disc) as well as the IBM AT.
That was just the 70s and 80s.
Now working with thin clients.
ABC 800
by norrburn - 7/14/07 1:18 AM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
The first computer I uses was the Swedish ABC 800 Manufactured by Luxor
I think it was IBM 370 or something
by vcakmak - 7/14/07 1:28 AM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I had a CS100 course in 1968. We had no displays, but punch-cards. We made holes in the cards to represent code. The memory (RAM) of the system was 64 kBytes.
The first PC I used in 1983 was a portable Osborne computer in the shape of a suitcase when packed. The operating system was CP/M and the memory was (again) 64 kBytes. It had a 6" green on black display with two 5.25" diskette drives and no hard disk. As everyone might know, the 5.25 diskettes had capacities of 460 kBytes. One of the drives was used for the software and the other for data. I used "Supercalc" to calculate the 20-year projection of a 600-bed luxury hotel (Sheraton) in Ankara.
When I started work in 1985 on the Turkish Encyclopedia Britannica, our software manager came to me and asked that we should raise the capacity of our hard disk that was 5 MBytes to 20 MBytes because our relational database of encyclopedia headings was reaching 100,000. I bought one for 5,000 dollars paying cash!
Now I am writing this message on a lap-top with a centrino processor at 1.4 GHz and using a 60 GByte hard disk with a 256 MBytes RAM.
Next year, my relation with computers shall be 40 years old.
Kind regards,
Vedat Cakmak, Istanbul
IBM main frame
by newkiwi - 7/14/07 1:42 AM In reply to: I think it was IBM 370 or something by vcakmakYour story parallels mine so much it was a little shocking. The IBM 360 came out when I was working in the ...Pentagon for Western Union. I was a maintenance tech then. We had SDS, Scientific Data Systems, computers. Their claim to fame was it was the first computer to use silicone transistors and heated memory which made them very stable if not fast. As I recall the hard disk drives looked like two pie pans bolted together with an unbelievable 1 meg of storage. That was in the late sixties. SDS also was the moniker for the Students for a Democratic Society to follow my University days. I think American needs to reactivate them. Could it be that 1984 has now arrived?
My Osborne was the blue case. My original drives were 180 double sided. The originals were 90K. Those were the days..
newkiwi
IN the Seventies
by 2dogday - 7/14/07 1:47 AM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
In the seventies I bought a Commodore Vic 20 for myself and kids. It ran on Basic and we all learned the language. I bought a $30. printer for it which had to be reset for each line but it was fun and rather exciting to actually use it to write notes.
The computer cost around $130. which I borrowed from a loan company I was so determined to get a computer. Having always been interested in science I told my children that computers were going to be the machine of the future and they should learn everything they could about them.
I bought several games for it. One was a mystery in which you had to find the pirate's gold. Directions were in text--no graphics. It started out with a description of 3 objects on a table from which you had to choose, a rope, a pen or a pair of old sneakers. The sneakers was the correct choice. They were needed because later as you progressed you were forced to climb out a window and walk on a slippery ledge and without the sneakers you'd fall to your death.
Except for my husband, who wasn't interested in computers, our older kids and I took turns playing it. The youngest of my children who was old enough to use it was my 10 yr old daughter and she was the first to find the treasure--much to her 3 brothers' chagrin.
A year or two later I bought a word processer and after than a 1985 IBM computer that ran DOS, had Word Perfect and the REAL "floppies." I bought a dandy little printer at a local thrift store for only ten bucks because the management didn't know a thing about it. It printed on paper rolls with holes on the sides to advance the pages.
I used that until the mid nineties when I bought a Gateway that ran Windows 95 and came with a mouse! I didn't think I could ever get used to a mouse after using DOS for so many years, but I finally managed. 
In 2002 I bought the computer I now use--another Gateway. It runs XP and has an 80 Gig HD which I thought HUGE back then but now that's SO obsolete! Ah, well....
My first computer was ORIC
by gunnsaj - 7/14/07 2:19 AM In reply to: IN the Seventies by 2dogdayI got my first computer in 1983, it was an ORIC. It had no hard drive and no screen so I had to use our TV to watch and and portable radio with tape recorder. The were not many programs available, mostly games but one could buy magazines and books with games to type in so my best fun these days were to type in the games and make them run. I loved it very much 
Now I have both PC and a laptop. I use both, the PC run 24 hours a day and the laptop goes with me when travelling and when I am lazy and want to use a computer in my stress-less-chair, f.i. for playing solitairies or Sudoku.
Grand-grandma in Iceland
First PC
by rkinkead - 7/14/07 2:05 AM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I got my first pc in 1993. It was an Intel 486 DX2-66, it had 16meg of RAM, a 512meg HD, a 15" monitor, I added a video card with 8meg VRAM and a 16k modem for internet access. It was a full tower case. I upgraded it several times before they quit making the AT format MBs. The last incarnation it went through was an AMD K6-2 500, with 64meg RAM and 30G HD, as well as an onboard DSL modem. I now have an AMD Sempron 2500+ with 1Gig of RAM and the video has 64meg which is ample at this time.
This answer really makes me feel old
by varun8 - 7/14/07 3:18 AM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I started using PC's in the seventies. In fact my first PC was not really what most people called a PC, it was an IBM system 34. I worked during the holiday at IBM in Amsterdam and I was given this system play with. I remember the first little program I wrote in Basic really excited me. We then moved on to a version of Pascal. Towards the end of the seventies I was given an early version of an Apple to work with in another job and bought my first PC, a TI99 (Texas Instruments). It was a great machine, but you could not really program to much yourself, so I replaced it with a BBC computer manufactured by Acorn. This was truly a PC and I have kept it until today. Its (at the time massive) memory of 64KB was a breakthrough. I don't really know what Microsoft and Intel have done to computers, but this old beasty still beats a Pentium 4 with Word in the area of processing. The wordprocessor loads instantly and there is no delays. Everything may have become prettier, but I am not always convinced it got better. Obviously you can't process video on these old 6502 processors, but these old machines were good.
1981(or so) Cybermax
by Saltylady66 - 7/14/07 4:02 AM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Ancient technology with DOS the only option! I used it primarily to link, by phone, to the Real Estate mainframe for work purposes only. I left the rest of it for my young sons to use for their games. DOS is beyond my mental abilities to grasp, although the concept is understandable, it never worked for me.
Thanks Bill Gates !! I am now better off and a puter geek at work!
It seems like eons ago
by jimpimms - 7/14/07 4:25 AM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
In 1982 I bought a Sinclair, which was somewhat similar to the TI99-4A. I screwed around with that for about a month, until I realized that it was merely an amusement and was never going to be of any use. I then bought a real computer, a transportable KayPro II, with 64Kb RAM, CP/M operating system, one 5-1/4" 190Kb floppy drive, and bundled Perfect Writer and Perfect Calc. A year later, I bought an OKIdata 92 printer, and a KayPro 4, with two 5-1/4" floppy drives, including dBASE II. After teaching myself how to program in dBASE, I bought a copy of FoxBASE+, and used the KayPro/OKIdata and those software packages to run a contract builders hardware department for the next four years, until I finally enticed my boss to purchase a generic MS-DOS "lunchbox" computer with a hard drive. It was a lot of work, and a lot of fun.
1970's or early 80's
by alvajean - 7/14/07 4:59 AM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
First computer was a "Kapro", at a lumber yard, who ever sold the unit to the company for estimating purposes didn't know lumber, so they assigned numbers to the sizes, when the sizes themselves were numbers, always needed 6 digits, 2x4x8 could have been 000248, but instead it was an off the wall number. The time the computer saved was more than used up by the need not only to memorize, but to have someone go over work carefully. Company also had an IBM mainframe, it had it's own "very large office", people did shifts because it was so cold in that room.
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