What was the first computer that you owned?
This question might make some of us feel pretty damn old but here goes. My first computer was a Commodore Vic 20, the little feeble brother of the Commodore 64. And in my day if you wanted a game for the Vic 20 you had to write the program yourself (Or at least type in the code that you got from a magazine). And until you bought the tape drive, there was no way to back it up so you would have to type it every time you wanted to play it. And we loved it!
The only store that sold game cartidges for the Vic 20 where I lived had the same two games, The Count and Voodoo Castle, both of which I played so many times that I still have the solution memorized (OPEN COFFIN, TAKE RING, W, ENTER FIREPLACE, GET IDOL, S, CLEAN IDOL, etc. etc)
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Apple IIe! I learned some Basic on it, but mostly played Infocom games. Good times.
What I find interesting about the respondents is how neatly we all seem to break down into a fairly tight bracketed age group. There is a clustering of computers with the Vic 20/Commodore groupoing and the Apple II family and assorted other bits, but they’re all pretty very late 70s early 80s model.
No one has shown up to say “Dell” or “HP” or any of the more modern iterations.
Guess we’re all roughly 35 plus minus?
Radio Shack – TRS 80. Lots of late nights copying code from the back of second hand computer magazines…
Atari 400. I still have it and it still plays Moon Patrol without a hitch.
Well, Critic, you’re right on the money in my case. I’m 34 and my first was a Commodore 64.
this is my first computer, a macbook.
Talk ‘n’ Play.
The first one I remember was a 386, 33 MHz, 1 Meg Ram and a 50ish meg hard drive. I was so excited when I re-chipped it to 90 MHz. I always had franken-puters that were pieced together out of whatever parts I could get my hands on. Usually hand downs from my friends when they would upgrade.
A SpectraVideo 318. Could’ve been a 328 though, don’t remember it that clearly. All my friends had a Vic 20 or C64 so even though I was glad to have a computer I hated that I couldn’t play the games my firends could and had immense problems finding new ones.
colecovision’s expansion, ADAM.
a zx spectrum from sinclair!
i’ve never learned to use basic, so i used it just for playing and drawing with logo, haha.
I had a PET with the funny “chiclet” keyboard that a freind of the family let me use for a couple of years,then a Commodore 64.
Well, my very first computer was a Sinclair ZX80 – not to be confused either with the Z80 processor (while it had one) nor the ZX81. It was the predecessor of the ZX81 (which had less chips) in it, to be recognized by a bulge behind the keyboard (if you could call that keyboard). One KB RAM; enough for machine code, not enough for basic.
Then came a ZX81 kit, and then a Jupiter Ace – Forth included, until today one of the best languages ever.
After that the usual: VC 20 (in germany not on the market as ‘VIC’, due to phonetic association to ‘fick’ (german for ‘fuck’).
Then a C64; then an IBM PC (the shittiest computer on earth, then; IBM changed it without cost to a XT, if I remember correctly. Then AT, and then a lot of boring computers.
But I will never forget the ZX80, and the Jupiter Ace.
Greetings, Christian
Commodore Amiga
wow, what a system…
when i finally switched to a Pentium1 PC, many years later, it actually felt like a downgrade.
I did my college term papers on an Apple IIe that my boyfriend’s family owned. However, the first computer that I bought for myself was a Mac SE/30. It was used but still very, very expensive.
I still miss my ol’ Commodore 64 and the thousands of (mostly bootleg) games for it. Even though I’ve got a spiffy homebrew PC now that runs all manner of high-powered programs with spiffy graphics, I still miss the gameplay of Ultima IV. That game rawked!
My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81, with 1K of RAM, which I still have. I eventually got the 16K cartridge for it. I had a lot of fun with it. Then I upgraded to a Commodore Vic20, then a C64, then a C128, and then to an IBM PC.
How about this one – a KODAK PC that I got for free. I never knew that they even made computers! It had ONE program on it – MS Works 1.0 – and it was really nothing more than a glorified typewriter. No color monitor either. At work I had a crappy IBM clone. Needless to say, when I finally could afford a real one of my own I went all-out!