Your first ever computer?

Lisnaholic · 02-17-2015, 04:47 AM

The first computer I ever used lived in its own special room - it was the cutting-edge pride of my college. Students only had access to a card-punching machine, with which you could type up a program of maybe a thousand cards and have them fed into the computer by the full-time computer expert/assistant. So this pic is very indicative of my experience:-

About thirty years later, I got something very similar to Ki´s, bought secondhand when the company I worked for went bust:-

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ki

This is almost exactly what my first computer looked like:

The most wonderful thing about this was getting a CD-ROM of a Yu-gi-Oh card game that my son could play; both of us were just transfixed by the quality of the sound and the graphics - and the fact that we could get it to work at all!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vanilla

^ What a sweet picture!

**Yac** · 02-17-2015, 05:02 AM

Not counting the awful Atari 2600 game console, my first computer was
the mighty Amiga 500 +!

The + meant 2 things: it had some more ram by default and a newer operating system (kickstart 2.0 instead of kickstart 1.3 iirc). This meant that roughly 40% of Amiga 500 games wouldn't run on it and at the same time, all the Amiga 1200 games that ran on that os, wouldn't run as the hardware was too weak.
Solution ? I found an ad in a gaming magazine, told my parents about it and on my birthday a man with a soldering iron and a special kickstart 1.3 circuit board came in. He spent 2 or so hours on my beloved Amiga and when he was done, it had an additional switch in the back, it let me choose which OS the computer would boot up with.
One of my greatest regrets is selling my Amiga, and for something like 30$ (it was 15 or so years ago, I guess it's worth a bit more now)...
I also had an original Commodore 14 inch monitor to go with it, with an almost inch thick "anti radiation screen".
Ah Amiga...

Trollheart · 02-17-2015, 05:49 AM

@innerspaceboy: I take all of what you're saying, but what about how slow your computer goes while all this is happening? I found my resources got quite limited, especially if I was downloading or doing any graphic work. It takes so long to upload and then you're in a position where your PC is crawling perhaps. And what happens if that company goes out of business (happens all the time)? What happens to your data then?

I would upload important data, like videos I made that could never be duplicated, but not all files: it would take forever.

innerspaceboy · 02-17-2015, 10:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trollheart

@innerspaceboy: I take all of what you're saying, but what about how slow your computer goes while all this is happening? I found my resources got quite limited, especially if I was downloading or doing any graphic work. It takes so long to upload and then you're in a position where your PC is crawling perhaps. And what happens if that company goes out of business (happens all the time)? What happens to your data then?

I would upload important data, like videos I made that could never be duplicated, but not all files: it would take forever.

The system is a 3.2 quad core AMD with 8GB DDR3 and the aforementioned fiber optic connection. Built it for just under $400 a few years ago. Nothing fantastic, but it gets the job done.

The 44GB/day 52-day transfer still left me enough bandwidth to surf, though I did have to curb my resouce-intensive tasks just a bit.

That aside, it was no big deal and now that I'm over the hump it's smooth sailing.

As for the "critical data only" comment, my situation is unique as 37% of the artist/label folders have 50-350 albums each, so it's all critical. (See my Top Archives link below).

And the out-of-business scenario is always a possibility, hence the local external.

It's all good, baby.

Neapolitan · 02-17-2015, 10:57 AM

I remember when we first got our Gateway. My brother's friend wanted to see it. His friend grew up working with computers in and end up fixing computers for a living. So he knew more about processing speed, and memory than I did at the time. When he saw it, he

to it, he was more impress with it than we were.

My dad would hunt for records at the Goodwill and sometimes buy things decades after it was first released. One time he found a Pong game in Goodwill store that actually worked.

He came across this, and bought it for my brother because of the game(s) that came with it. I had an old Algebra book with command line codes in appendix and fooled around with writing commands for lines, curves, and geometric shapes. That was my idea of having fun. I think it had something like 2K memory lol.

JennyOndioline · 02-17-2015, 10:59 AM

Macintosh G3.

TL;DR I'm a baby.

Plankton · 02-17-2015, 11:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neapolitan

He came across this, and bought it for my brother because of the game(s) that came with it. I had an old Algebra book with command line codes in appendix and fooled around with writing commands for lines, curves, and geometric shapes. That was my idea of having fun. I think it had something like 2K memory lol.

Your first experience with CAD. The platform for all CAD software is based off of the Cartesian Coordinate system, which is more than likely a form of what you were using.

Neapolitan · 02-17-2015, 07:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Plankton

Your first experience with CAD. The platform for all CAD software is based off of the Cartesian Coordinate system, which is more than likely a form of what you were using.

It's been so long I can't remember what the code was I used. I looked it up online. The Aquarius had a Zilog Z80 8-bit processor, which I'd read is still in production today. 4KB of RAM (expandable to 20 KB) I think I mixed up the two numbers. The OS was Microsoft BASIC. Math CAD was light-years ahead of what that could do with that.

innerspaceboy · 02-18-2015, 04:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neapolitan

...He came across this, and bought it for my brother because of the game(s) that came with it. I had an old Algebra book with command line codes in appendix and fooled around with writing commands for lines, curves, and geometric shapes. That was my idea of having fun. I think it had something like 2K memory lol.

Neapolitan - your post brought back forgotten memories of my VTech IQ Unlimited computer that hooked up to my TV! Thanks!

And last year I picked up 5 of the 10 cassettes released for the Atari Starpath Supercharger at a local thrift store. The Starpath added 6 KB to the Atari 2600's 128 bytes of RAM (increasing its RAM 49-fold) and ran data tape cassettes. Crazy!

02-17-2015, 05:49 AM	#73 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,970	@innerspaceboy: I take all of what you're saying, but what about how slow your computer goes while all this is happening? I found my resources got quite limited, especially if I was downloading or doing any graphic work. It takes so long to upload and then you're in a position where your PC is crawling perhaps. And what happens if that company goes out of business (happens all the time)? What happens to your data then? I would upload important data, like videos I made that could never be duplicated, but not all files: it would take forever. __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

02-17-2015, 05:02 AM	#72 (permalink)
Yac Super Moderator Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: It's a secret too. Posts: 1,363	Not counting the awful Atari 2600 game console, my first computer was the mighty Amiga 500 +! The + meant 2 things: it had some more ram by default and a newer operating system (kickstart 2.0 instead of kickstart 1.3 iirc). This meant that roughly 40% of Amiga 500 games wouldn't run on it and at the same time, all the Amiga 1200 games that ran on that os, wouldn't run as the hardware was too weak. Solution ? I found an ad in a gaming magazine, told my parents about it and on my birthday a man with a soldering iron and a special kickstart 1.3 circuit board came in. He spent 2 or so hours on my beloved Amiga and when he was done, it had an additional switch in the back, it let me choose which OS the computer would boot up with. One of my greatest regrets is selling my Amiga, and for something like 30$ (it was 15 or so years ago, I guess it's worth a bit more now)... I also had an original Commodore 14 inch monitor to go with it, with an almost inch thick "anti radiation screen". Ah Amiga...

02-17-2015, 10:59 AM	#76 (permalink)
JennyOndioline Music Addict Join Date: Jan 2015 Posts: 154	Macintosh G3. TL;DR I'm a baby.