Desktops forum: Poll: When did you first start using a personal computer?

I bought my TI99-4A in 1983. It was SO cool! 32K (yes K) of RAM, built in OS and Basic plus a color display. (Well it was color if you hooked it up to a color television) In all honesty, it was pretty darn cool for 1983. At first I only had cassette tape for storage. But soon I got a single sided single density 5.25 in floppy drive. I had a Multiplan spreadsheet cartridge and actually tracked financial information with it. I used the TI99-4A for several years for entertainment and real work. I finally replaced it with a 286 that ran DOS in 1988.

In 1984 I was working in a structural engineer's office, and they had me use an IBM for typing client documents. The screen looked like DOS (no gui) and had a: and b: drives. I had to code in text attributes the same way we do in html today (<b></b> or <i></i>, etc.). One day the boss brought in a brand new Apple computer with the funny model name of Macintosh, and he let me play around on it. That's when the computer bug bit me, and I've been happily PCing ever since in both Windows and Mac OSes! :o)

As I posted later in the forum, my first three computers were an Apple IIe, a DOS-based Tandy 2500SX/20 built in 1992 and a 1996 Panasonic ToughBook CF-25. The cheapest cell phone available today has more available brainpower than all three computers combined!!!

Also, I played around with BASIC for some things, but have never really needed it since my first experience with Windows 9x/Me (which was in High School, in 1999, a full four years after Windows 95 launched).

That was my first computer, too. Got it in jr. high, and learned to program in BASIC. Saved my lawn mowing and birthday money to upgrade to 64k, and buy a PASCAL compiler!

Had its own strange set of games -- does anyone else remember "Dungeons of Daggoreth?" Awesome game

sorry... that wasn't a PC was it? Never mind.

When I worked for a law firm the summer of my 2nd year of law school (1981) the firm had a WANG room. Climate controlled; you had to put things to be typed through a little window. They let me do part of my law review article on it. (I'd started with the law schools TRS-80). You had to climb up onto a little platform with a special seat.

My very first computer was a nameless little thing that had a cassette tape drive and used the TV as a screen. In 1985 we got a IBM, whichever model was before the AT. I too learned BASIC and told my young son that if he ever typed "format" lightning would strike him dead.

But my very first computer experience, indirectly, was in 1967 while my then husband was in grad school. He typed his programs (in Fortan, I think) onto little punch cards and submitted them to what I faultily recall as robed priests at the Stanford Computer Center. I used to go over with him in the middle of the night; there was a priestless reader available where you could run your punch cards through and it would print out whatever was on them. So I would type out letters home on punchcards and then print them. So cool to send letters on wide lined computer paper.

Wang, I fixed some monitors for them way back. Alot of users really had a Wang following, but then Wang sold out or was brought out. Our co. brought out Data 100, so you know we had some old equipment. Does that feel any better? -----Willy

My first was the 128K Macintosh released in 1984. Yes, the First Mac, one of the more reliable computers I have used. I still have it and will turn it on just to turn it on and see how much has changed from the 1st mac to the iMac and OSX.

Technically the first computer I remember using was the Apple 2 in elementary school in the early 1990's. In 94 my uncle gave my family his commodore 64 setup with everything he had. Then in 1999 I got my first internet PC. I believe it was a cyrix 2 366mhz eMachines.

The year is 1986 my first computer mmm forgot its name... something z80 then to the comodore8 or was it 16 nightmare stuff, then the amiga 500 and finally the xt with a 10mb hard disk.
Computers have come a long way, so have I, at the age of mid thirties, I cried when I first had to use an windows environment to type a letter... think I knew something... of the trials and tribulations of windows... save us from bad microsoft programming.
I had left the country town of Griffith to the big city of Sydney to learn about computers I could see they were the future way... I wanted to become a programmer, but soon learned my maths was sorely learned and a major handicap to becoming a good programmer so decided to paint instead, and set up an online gallery at www.ArtisticAussieArtists.com.au.
have fun Jenny

I recall paying $4200 Canadian for it including free delivery and setup in December 1983. Plus another grand for a dot matrix printer that never worked. But that computer was built like a tank and WordPerfect 3.0 worked just fine on that green monochrome monitor. AND it never broke! If only I'd waited a month I would have been first in line for the first Mac. I suffered through several Windows incarnations on a perpetually upgraded Pentium PC until dumping everything for Mac's in 2002 and I feel I've gotten my original non-breaking PC productivity back.

Early 70's I think... I had been a programmer since 1964, and read as much computer stuff as I could get a hold of, so when the Imsai kit was announced I had to have it. My wife was a programmer also which made it easier to justify the high cost of my hobby. I had been a Design Engineer in the design labs at NCR working on their early mainframe computers in 1960, so the idea of assembling a kit computer didn't bother me at all.

My IMSAI 8080 (serial # 17) was a S100 bus machine with an Intel 8080 processor. It initially used front panel switches to load a boot up program in binary form (a real pain), that in turn could access THE only I/O device I had at first, a Teletype KSR unit. The kit had 1 memory board with 4 K of RAM originally, that I eventually maxed out at 64 K.

I eventually added 4 of the 8" double sided floppy disk drives as well as a kit built keyboard, a monochrome monitor, 1200 baud modem, and an Anadex dot matrix printer. This all became a good little machine including Digital Research's CPM for it's operating system.

I finally built my 1st "PC style" machine with MS DOS in 1985, and am still reluctantly in the camp of M$. Every once in a while I'll dip my toe into the linux pond, but I've avoided jumping in, and at 70, I doubt I will.

Hey, a fellow Nimitz man. I was on the Nimitz from '80-'84. I hear now they have the Internet and telephones. I guess that kind of takes the excitement out of hearing those words "mail call".

and it was only for items i was picking-up for our branch, so very little per time spent overall...(unless you can count hands of solitare). but i got my 1 st home pc end 2001. bought it used & it was a compaq w/ 8gb hd, and 64k memory..it had win98, and i upgraded to 98se,but i learned alot from trial and mostly error. and when i got my new hp in 2003 i turned around and sold it to someone who was also was their 1st home pc.

My wife's brokered generic 486 with Windows 3.1, 360 MB HDD which the broker set up as compressed. Do you know how long it takes to defrag a compressed C: drive? I wasted lots of Saturday mornings in the basement doing just that. And I was backing up My Documents on 3.5 inch floppies. Including AOL's download folders which included FOUR copies of PowerTools!
When I had to install a replacement FDD three years later, I bought a Dummies book to get through it. And then had to install a modem card and that was an adventure. Now I am retired and doing pro bono computer repair for elderly (older than me!!) folks!!
Desktop? Wasn't any such animal then!