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Desktops: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer?
- 7/13/07 1:22 PM
First Computer: A Tandy
by dongurian - 7/15/07 5:43 AM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
With this first computer (a Tandy--made by...Radio Shack???) we were all thrilled when after typing in several lines of gobbledy **** code it printed a few words! THRILL!
js
The (once) powerful Atari 800 personal computer (1981)
by HawaiiMuskrat - 7/15/07 5:48 AM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I waited almost a year to decide between the Apple II and the Atari 800. Finally, it was the Atari's better graphics that won me over. I still have that machine and it STILL WORKS! Talk about reliability! It came with a fully loaded 48 KB of ram and I bought the Atari Basic cartridge. My programs were all stored on tape cassettes and, sadly, most of those are all dead now. It was a great machine for home use. It was purchased on a deep discount sale at SEARS for about $600 (regular price was $999), and this was 1981 dollars. Translated into current money, that $600 is about $1,415 for a machine running a CPU at 1.79 MHz and with a 320x192 maximum graphics resolution. Times have changed, but like I said, that old machine still works like new - though I don't dust it off much.
First computer
by fredwbrown - 7/15/07 6:34 AM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
It was an IBM PS/2 Model 4, if I remember correctly. I bought it in 1986 or 1987 because I was taking a graduate level course in Technical Writing and Editing at N.C. State University and, since I was working full time, I didn't want to have to rely on a computer being available in their lab for doing the coursework. It was fairly expensive, about $4,500. I had to buy an Apple Laserjet printer because no other laser printer was available at the time. The printer cost about $4,000 and weighed a ton. The salesperson had to write a macro for me to run each time I needed to turn the printer on so the Apple printer could talk to the IBM PC (they should put that in their commercial). I have neither the computer nor the printer now.
Old-Timer Here
by snocohn - 7/15/07 7:53 AM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I was hired as a COBOL mainframe programmer in 1978 and worked on an IBM 370 that was housed in a large data center in London. It was accessed through "dumb" terminals located in the bank I worked for in the Wall Street area, NYC.
My first PC was a Compaq portable purchased in the 80s. It had two floppy disk drives that subsequently burned out. It was heavy to carry and was known as the "sewing machine".
Snocohn
TI 99-4A
by JD Gann - 7/15/07 7:57 AM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
In 1967 10 people in Tarrant County (Ft. Worth, Arlington and other suburbs), Texas were offered a seat in a class on programming the new NCR Century 100 Series Computer. A test was given to anyone who showed up and lived in Tarrant County and the top ten scores were offered the seats. I was lucky enough to earn one of those seats. We saw one computer. It was at a steel company and filled the perimeter of a large room and we could walk around the room and follow the computer's computing progress (meaning it was pretty slow). In those days everything was done using desk debugging and a programmer had a time slot on one day each week. If their program was not ready to go, they had to wait until the next week.
Shortly after that, don't remember the exact date, Texas Instruments came out with the TI 99-4A which I immediately purchased. It had 4k memory and used a cassette tape for storage. Of course, it was programmed in basic. I wrote a program to calculate auto insurance rates in Texas, which was huge at the time, and would run out of memory frequently and would have to go back and rewrite some of the lines of code to gain more memory so I could finish the program. I would go into the study to work on the program for a couple of hours and suddenly realize I had been there 5 or 6 hours. In the end, the program served its purpose very well and was used for quite some time.
I loved that machine and have not gotten as much thrill working on any computer since as I did that one.
JD
My First time...;o)
by joethebear - 7/15/07 8:03 AM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
My first computer was an Atari ST and I believe that was in 1986.
first pc
by dan5548 - 7/15/07 9:36 AM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
My first pc was a used pentium computer I bought through short course I took in 2001. Needless to say I have gain both in knowledge and computers in my home since then. I currently own two desktop systems and there are numerous laptops in my home. I have also gained in knowledge through the courses I have taken on CNET, I just want to say thanks for providing them.
In the 1980's - What computer was it?
by LynneM - 7/15/07 10:20 AM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I started reading about and studying about computers before I ever got to use one. I took a test when I got out of high school and they said that I could be a programmer, nurse, or teacher. I liked the idea of programming.
When I was in my forties, I joined a programming class at Fort Brag. It was a Basic Computer class and I used one of their computers. It was an IBM (I think.) Anyway the next chance I go to get my hands on a computer was when I took another computer class (again in programming) at La Verne College in California. It was an Apple IIe. Finally I got my hands on a computer to use at work and learned about the programs. The company sent me to class to learn Access and they had mini classes in other Microsoft programs at work for all of us to learn to run the machines. I was put in charge of a program that monitored all the machines in the production floor. It was written in QNX (a cousin to Linux) and now it is run on Unix. I am still working with it and trained myself to run the program. Again I bought all kinds of books on Unix and Computers. A Co-worker teased me about spending my money on books when I could get a machine and start using it instead of reading about it. I said, yes, but if something went wrong with it I wouldn't know how to fix it. I eventually joined the NRI school to learn programming again. They sent me a machine, a 286 generic with 16 megs of memory. I went through the first part of the training and got anxious to complete it. (I never completed the course even though I paid the full $3,000.) I installed a CD rom and Sound Blaster card in that machine. I went on to build my own. I still have the one from the school even though I don't run it anymore. The one I built is an AMD 586. I bought the machine at a second hand store, brought it home and rebuilt it from the motherboard up. Since then I have bought several from the second hand store and got them up and running. I got my son interested to doing this and gave him several of the machines to see what he could do with them. He never completed school, but he can get a machine up and running.
Right now I am a 66 year old still learning how to make the machine do what I want it to. I still run the Unix system at work along with doing database management and spreadsheet reports. I have a lot of memories about the experiences I have had with all the machines I have, and I plan to have more in the future.
Computers
by contactman - 7/15/07 11:21 AM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
You will not believe my experience because I am a dinosaur!I first knew about "The Beast" in 1967 when I was part of a sales team using E.D.P (Electronic Data Processing) department coding every sale item,customer account number,delivery instructions,and cost pricing,together with technical data. Ironically I was made redundant due the upgrading and direct input.It never rained, but it poured, as I was offered a job with The International Reference Exchange on Data Entry Inputting.That ceased when Microsoft ME 2000 came in.However I bought Microsoft's "X P" soon afterwards, and an email allowed me to continue gathering information for business use.
College Years
by JorgeLF - 7/15/07 12:49 PM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
My first computer was a SONY VAIO V505. XP Home. That has been my system through most of college. Now a college graduate I still use that computer for everyday use although I am thinking of switching OSs into Linux. Interestingly enough, I knew nothing about computers when I first bought my computer and now close to 4 years later I'm an IT person. Who would have known? Certainly not I.
"Fingers will never be strong enough for a typewriter!"
by cfholton - 7/15/07 2:02 PM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
In about 1975, I started hunting and pecking on the terminals of a newspaper typesetting system. That's how I wrote my letters to Santa Claus. My father lamented that learning that way, my fingers would never be strong enough to operate a real typewriter. Of course it turned out that I never needed to use a manual typewriter, and my fingers were plenty strong for electrics. I made my last regular use of typewriters in the late 80s and in 1988 bought my first computer, a Mac. My college friends either used lab computers or had dedicated word processors and I was feeling way tech savvy when flipping disks between the floppy with the system and the floppy with the applications and data - no hard drive! Getting an external floppy drive a year later to end disk swapping put me over the moon.
First PC
by georgegt - 7/15/07 2:17 PM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I purchased a Atari computer which had the mother board in the keyboard. It booted with one 3 1/2" floppy and ran all it's programs from floppys. I bought a hard drive after a few months of having to swap floppys until my fingers fell off.
Get this ! A 30 MB hard drive set me back $300 and it was about 15" square and 3" high in size.
Don't we miss the good old days !!!
1998
by markerichannelly - 7/15/07 2:51 PM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I started using PC's in 1998. It was a desktop Gateway 433MHz Celeron with ATi Rage 128 graphics and a DVD Drive and a seperate Iomega Zip 650 CD Burner and a Zip 100 drive. It was a great workhorse for multimedia and music management. Windows 98(non second edition) never crashed on me. Not EVER! Win 98 is the most reliable OS Micrsoft has made upto now.
In 1986
by anahilda - 7/15/07 3:38 PM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
In 1986 I was introduced to the computer. The first day, I didn't known how to find the start button. Was in my second year in the university. I take computer class and also used to my paper work. Rainbow, IBM and Apple. Right know I can't imagine to work with out a computer at hand.
// job ibm360
by arnaldo48 - 7/15/07 3:41 PM In reply to: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
i started in 1969 with ibm360, ibm370, ibm1401 etc, but the oldest system i saw was a Remington with 90 round columns cards, programed in a tabloid with wires.-
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