What was your first home computer?


Recommended Posts

When I was a kid, I think the very first one was a TRS-80 "Color Computer", replaced by a Tandy 1000A as the first PC compatible machine. I loved that Tandy 1000...

The CoCo's were fun... had one running OS/9, a Unix-like OS.. was pretty neat considering the hardware.

My first PC was a Tandy From RadioShack in the late 80's or early 90's, Second PC, 386SX for years til Windows 95 came out,  Then upgrade to a Packard Bell Desktop 75mhz,  then a P3 700 HP machine til 2000, then an AMD Machine, think Athlon back then, til 2003, then another AMD based processor (can't remember exactly if it was another Athlon or not at that point) then last year newest System AMD A6-3620 Quad Core System

Compaq 5253,

AMD-K62 350 Mhz,

64Mb RAM

6gb Hard Drive

Ati Radeon LT Pro (4mb, integrated)

DVD ROM 4x.

 Win98->2000->XP

Worked for more than 6 years and I blew its parallel port on a experiment.

 

The memories... I even played playstation and mario64 on it.

An IBM Aptiva S series with 200megherz processor, 16 meg of ram (later upgraded to 64), 33.6 modem, ATI Rage 128 2meg video card and 4x cd drive. 15in monitor and a wireless mouse.

 

 The modem was later upgraded to a 56k model  after a lightning storm fried the 33.6 modem and I remember how awsome it was moving to 56k it was so much faster.

Mine was a Amstrad PC1640,  CPU = XT 8086),  running cp/m and msdos 2 and 3

was also using GEM gui ontop of cp/m, had 640k of ram, no harddrive.  

i remember changing one of the 5 1/4 drives to a 3.5...  was fun, CGA monitor

 

 

memories ....

My first PC :

 

-Commodore 64 with a Dataset (yep, tape!), upgraded to a 1541 floppy.

 

Moved to :

 

- Atari 520STE, at the time, much better than anything from the PC side, better games with better Gfx/sound.

 

But then Atari when nowhere fast and everybody was going to PC... So moved to :

 

- Tandy 1000TL/2, blazing 286/8Mhz with 768megs of ram and a BIG Conner 20Mb HDD.

 

Then, moved on to school and got a loan to buy a better PC, upgraded to my first 386/33Mhz !!!

 

Wow... I'm old...

The first one I actually bought was in 1995. AST Advantage.

Had a 133mhz processor, 28k modem, probably not much for ram and hard drive space.

Was quite expensive, around 3 grand.

At least by then computers were starting to be affordable.

In the early 90s my dad had computers and they had barely any power at all ranging in prices from 10 grand, 8 grand, etc. etc.

First two computers were hand-me-downs. First one is some unknown Zenith DOS machine from 1988. Had a 6 MHz processor that went up to 12 MHz with a turbo boost button.

Second one was an IBM Aptiva 2168-A50. It's this tower pictured in the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Aptiva

Came with Windows 95, 150 MHz Pentium CPU, 32 MB of RAM, and a 1.6 GB hard drive. Got it in 1999, and replaced it with an XP machine in 2003. The bundled software collection in that machine is impressive - leagues beyond the crapware bundled on today's computers. Full games, encyclopedias, kids edutainment titles, catalogs...

To think 18 years later we're typing away on small tablets with specs way beyond these towers is astounding.

  • Like 1
  • 3 weeks later...

PC w/ 486DX2 running at 66MHz. I think that sometime after I got it I managed to find extra RAM and upgrade it all the way to 16 MB. Mind you the computer was already very old when I got it, but that probably made me play with it even more (for instance, figuring out how to put Windows 95 on it).

 

I sill have the processor in one of the drawers, I'll take a look and see if I can find it.

 

EDIT:

 

Here it is:

 

UUJPRgZ.jpg

 

There's something yellow-ish in one of the corners, not sure if it's the drawer it was in :|

 

FheoaDL.jpg

Texas Instruments TI-99/4A, I had everything with this, Game Controllers, speech synthesizer, every game and app cartridge, Peripheral Expansion Box,  32K ram card, RS2600px-TI99-IMG_1680.jpg3250px-TI99expansion.jpg2 Card, Disc control card, 2x 360k 5 1/4 Floppy drives, 512k Ram disc, gram cracker and pretty much every game and app ever released for it

This was mine as well.

  • 5 months later...

First computer was an Apple IIGS that my parents bought for me just before starting high school.  I taught myself how to program on that thing (AppleSoft BASIC), which got me hooked enough to go to college for Computer Science.

 

First PC was a Laser Pal 386SX.  It ran the GeoWorks OS and had 1 MB RAM.  Eventually I got exposed to the world of Windows 3.1, so I upgraded the RAM in that PC and loaded Win 3.1 on it. It ran horribly slow, but got me through school until I could buy something better.

 

Things seemed so much simpler in those days.  Or maybe ignorance truly is bliss!

 

I had that exact computer!  I also used Geos (OS in the picture below) and DOS 4.01 before upgrading the RAM and loading DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 on it.  I tried to cram Windows 95 on it at one point just to see if I could do it but could never get it to install.  Was really a crappy computer but I have so many fond memories with it.  It's the computer that really got me started.

 

010119_0003_zps234b329c.jpg

The IBM PS/1 included with the Microsoft Windows 3.1 operating system.
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/vintage/vintage_4506VV4023.html
4506VV4023.jpg

I no longer have the computer as it sustained damage after a house fire. However, I managed to salvage the hard drive, which to my surprise still works.

First IBM PC clone i ever used was a Schneider (can't remember the model), with a 5.25" floppy; it had installed some scientific and educational software that i proceed to add Space Invaders and play it until i pass the game. Yep, that nerdy and i wasn't even 10.

 

Then i had a Timex, a Sinclair 48K...

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Posts

    • A 13 billion year old secret about our Universe's origin was revealed by Sayan Sen Image by Pascal Küffer via Pexels Researchers at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik (MPIK) in Heidelberg had recreated a key chemical reaction from the early universe, producing results that could change scientists' understanding of how the first stars formed. The study focused on the helium hydride ion (HeH⁺), which is widely regarded as the first molecule to form in the universe. Scientists believe HeH⁺ appeared around 380,000 years after the Big Bang, when the universe had cooled enough for electrons and atomic nuclei to combine into neutral atoms in a period known as recombination. This marked the beginning of chemistry in the cosmos. Immediately after the Big Bang about 13.8 billion years ago, the universe was extremely hot and dense. As it expanded and cooled, hydrogen and helium became the dominant elements. Once neutral helium atoms formed, they could react with ionised hydrogen nuclei, or protons, to create helium hydride ions. Although simple in structure, HeH⁺ played an important role in the young universe. It was the first step in a chain of reactions that eventually produced molecular hydrogen (H₂), a molecule made up of two hydrogen atoms and now the most abundant molecule in the universe. Molecular hydrogen later became a key ingredient in the formation of the first stars. At the time, the universe had entered a phase often called the cosmological "dark age." Matter had become transparent to light following recombination, but there were still no stars or galaxies producing visible light. Several hundred million years would pass before the first stars appeared. For those first stars to form, large clouds of gas had to collapse under their own gravity. To do that, the gas needed to cool by releasing energy. While hydrogen atoms can help with this process at high temperatures, they become less effective below about 10,000 degrees Celsius. Molecules can continue the cooling process by releasing energy through rotational and vibrational motions. Scientists have long considered HeH⁺ a potentially important coolant because of its comparatively large dipole moment, a property that describes how electric charge is distributed within a molecule and allows it to release energy efficiently. The amount of helium hydride present in the early universe may therefore have influenced how easily the first stars could form. At the same time, HeH⁺ was constantly being destroyed. Under primordial conditions, its main destruction mechanisms were recombination with free electrons and chemical reactions with hydrogen atoms. These reactions ultimately helped produce molecular hydrogen, linking the formation and destruction of HeH⁺ to the chemistry that shaped the early universe. For many years, theoretical studies suggested that reactions between HeH⁺ and hydrogen atoms would become much slower at low temperatures. Scientists believed there was an energy barrier along the reaction pathway that reduced the chances of the reaction taking place in the cold conditions of the early universe. The new study suggests otherwise. To investigate the process, researchers recreated a closely related reaction using deuterium, a naturally occurring isotope of hydrogen that contains one proton and one neutron in its nucleus. When HeH⁺ collides with deuterium, it forms an HD⁺ ion and a neutral helium atom. This allows scientists to study the reaction in a controlled way while closely mimicking the behaviour of the original reaction involving hydrogen. The experiments were carried out at the Cryogenic Storage Ring (CSR) at MPIK, a specialised facility designed to recreate conditions similar to those found in space. Researchers stored HeH⁺ ions in the 35-metre storage ring for up to 60 seconds at temperatures just a few kelvins above absolute zero and merged them with a beam of neutral deuterium atoms. By adjusting the speeds of the two particle beams, the team measured how the reaction rate changed with collision energy, which is directly related to temperature. The researchers found that the reaction rate remains almost constant as temperatures decrease. In other words, the reaction does not slow down at low temperatures as earlier models predicted. “Previous theories predicted a significant decrease in the reaction probability at low temperatures, but we were unable to verify this in either the experiment or new theoretical calculations by our colleagues,” explained Dr Holger Kreckel of MPIK. “The reactions of HeH⁺ with neutral hydrogen and deuterium therefore appear to have been far more important for chemistry in the early universe than previously assumed,” he continued. According to the researchers, the reaction appears to be barrierless, meaning there is no energy obstacle preventing it from taking place efficiently even at very low temperatures. The findings support recent theoretical work led by physicist Yohann Scribano, whose group identified an error in a widely used potential energy surface, a mathematical model used to describe how the energy of a system changes during a chemical reaction. The error appears to have caused previous studies to significantly underestimate reaction rates under primordial conditions. The new calculations closely match the experimental results. Together, they suggest that helium chemistry in the early universe may need to be re-evaluated. Because molecules such as HeH⁺ and molecular hydrogen played an important role in cooling primordial gas clouds, the findings could help scientists build more accurate models of how the first stars formed. By showing that helium hydride was likely destroyed more efficiently than previously thought, the study offers new insight into the chemical processes that shaped the universe during its earliest stages and helped set the conditions for the emergence of the first stars. Source: Max-Planck Institute, EDP Sciences This article was generated with some help from AI and reviewed by an editor. Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, this material is used for the purpose of news reporting. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.
    • "What an interesting smell you've discovered"
    • It could EASILY be 70 for the base game BUT + lots of FOMO to make it up to 100-120, like a few days Early Access, online money, pre-order bonus cars, weapons, missions, clothing, avatars or profile stuff, etc... And still WAY TOO MANY people would buy those and make Rockstar insane money.
    • Just to understand: your solution to getting rid of an online password manager is...another online password manager?
    • Cjam 2.5.0.0 by Razvan Serea Cjam is a lightweight and fast MP3 editor for Windows that lets you cut, join, and edit MP3 files without re-encoding. This means your audio quality remains untouched, and edits happen instantly. Cjam is ideal for quick, lossless edits—whether you're trimming music, combining tracks, or preparing audio for learning tools or podcasts. It features batch processing, scripting support, cue and playlist file handling, and a simple interface. Cjam is perfect for anyone who needs efficient MP3 editing without the complexity of full audio suites. Cjam requires a PC running Windows 10 or later and Microsoft .NET 6.0 or later. Key features for Cjam: No Re-encoding: Edit MP3 files without losing quality. Cut and Join MP3: Easily cut, trim, and combine MP3 tracks. Batch Processing: Edit multiple files at once for faster workflows. Scriptable Interface: Automate tasks with a custom command language. Cue and Playlist Support: Handle CUE and playlist files for seamless audio management. Fast and Lightweight: Quick processing with minimal system resources. Lossless Audio Editing: Ensure your edits don't affect audio quality. Simple User Interface: Clean, intuitive design for easy navigation. File Format Support: Works with MP3, Cjam-specific file formats (CJAMC, CJAMJ, CJAM). Cjam 2.5.0.0 changelog: Added clipboard-based import/export support for mp3DirectCut Added clipboard-based export support for REAPER Added support for naming IMP3 elements Changed the Reset behavior to preserve Undo/Redo history; use Shift key + Reset button to clear it Added a new command parameter (qcp) Added 8 new entries to lang.txt (main_c124-126, main_d150-151, main_m082, vme_c014, vme_d005) Fixed a bug where the il parameter was incorrectly applied when pasting VMP3s into the main list Fixed several other minor bugs Download: Cjam 2.5.0.0 | 1.4 MB (Freeware) Links: Cjam Home Page | Cjam Manual | Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
  • Recent Achievements

    • Dedicated
      JuvenileDelinquent earned a badge
      Dedicated
    • First Post
      DrWankel earned a badge
      First Post
    • Reacting Well
      DrWankel earned a badge
      Reacting Well
    • Week One Done
      Supreme Spray LV earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Week One Done
      Genuinetonerink- Dubai earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      504
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      163
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      91
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      75
    5. 5
      Michael Scrip
      72
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!