What Was Your First Computer?

[Daniel Leuck]

The first computer I used was a TRS-80 back in grade school. They had a dozen of them at the local science center where I took classes after school. I learned to program in BASIC and store my inventions on a cassette tape.

The first machine I owned was an Apple IIe. I remember my neighbor was jealous because, unlike his Apple II, my computer could handle lower case letters :-) Fancy! I learned to do basic graphics programming using the Apple IIe's awesome palette of six colors, one of which was spandex magenta. I was also exposed to computer porn for the first time when my friend got his hands on an ultra secret copy of "sex olympics". In six colors, it was all very... abstract, but its easy to get excited when you are thirteen.

After a brief affair with an Apple IIGS, I moved on to the Amiga. The Amiga was absolutely amazing for the time. It could display 4096 colors and had advanced sound capabilities. The fact I could use the "SAY" command in AmigaBASIC to get the computer to talk was a never ending source of excitement. I used a program called Deluxe Paint to do everything from digital paintings to designing self contained ecosystems (a long running obsession dating back to junior high - I was a weird kid.) The Amiga was the first computer I used to compose music. I used a MIDI interface to connect my Korg T1 keyboard. I lost quite a few hours in the basement writing music with this setup. I convinced many of my friends and parent's friends to bet on the Amiga as the computing platform of the future. Oops! How was I to know? It was so friggen cool!

Here is the full progression of computers I've used going back to grade school:

TRS-80 -> Apple IIe -> Apple IIgs -> Amiga 2000 -> Amiga 3000 -> Various Macs -> PowerWave (Power Computing's Mac clone) -> Various Intel Boxes Running Windows -> MacBook Pro (today)

What was your first computer? How about your first programming language?

[Delon Tanaka]

My first computer was a Tandy 8088 with a 20MB hard drive, it locked up one too many times and it died in an act of excessive percussive maintenance. Now I work with a Macbook Pro that I'm much nicer to.

[Dan Starr]

I realize this is an old thread, but we had a couple 8080s at home. I liked the Corona Portable 8080, it had a handle for carrying it 40 lbs bulk around. The green screen was maybe 8 inches diagonal.

[Brian Bueza]

I can't go that far back, so mine will not be as interesting. I had a Mac Quadra 610 which I bought when I attended the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. It had cost me around $5k, and I had used it in conjunction with the old Syquest media discs (45 megs for a 6 inch diameter disc) and drives before Iomega Zip discs took off. Photoshop at the time wasn't as advanced I believe it was version 2.something, and when I digitally painted with it, the hourglass would come up after every operation, probably too much for the floating point math processor at the time, which was supposedly a "blazing fast" 25Mhz. It's interesting that, at that time, the school pushed Macs, but they had SGI machines for 3D, and after school, I found it was rare to work on a Mac since most places just bought PCs for the economics of it. I had this until Mac Clones like PowerPCs came out.

[Crystal Chen]

I only wish I could have the history that some of you have (anything before C64 breaks my brain). My first computer:

An Apple IIe with dual floppy drives.

Captain Copy helped us enjoy games like Gemstone Warrior, Ultima, Kareteka, Lode Runner, Castle Wolfenstein...and so many more...

[Ken Berkun]

Scelbi and Mark 8, I'm impressed! Hey did you know Jon Cirone at the Microsoft Museum?

[sally]

Scelbi & Mark-8 Altair & IBM 5100 Computers. Last time I saw this was at the Microsoft Muslim in Redmond, WA. I remember we used to play with the computer at Microsoft however all our computes at work were Apple 1 when we were shipping Windows 1.0. There were limited personal with a actual MS DOS system.

[Jim Thompson]

PDP-8? We used those at the newspaper in 'vegas. Pure assembly.

First computer ('real' computer) was a DEC-10, followed by an 11/780, followed by 3 11/750s, all in 'C'.

Started in 1978 on a Harris H800, so David beat me, but I'm still under 50. :-)

[Ken Berkun]

Hey I programmed (and was a sysop for) a B6700 (serial # 2, it started life as a B5500). This was at UC Davis. Those were great computers!

[Courtney Harrington]

My first computer was a Burroughs B500. Then B2500, B3500, B5500, IBM 360 and the list goes on.
First programming language was Machine Language. 14 bit and I still remember it.
I beat David. This started in 1967.

[GB Hajim]

The Altair. One of my friends and I pooled our money. Bought the kit and assembled our first home computer. I'll never forget when the LEDs came on. OMG, we actually made it work!