What was your first home computer?

[kilted]

Novelties like Wizball usually end up on xbla or psn network nowadays

As for Speedball I can never work out which one I liked best - 1 or 2...

I still play number 2 on me 360 but my fave game on Amiga had to be Dino Dini's Goal!

Fantastic

Interesting - will have a look and see if I can find Wizball for the PS.

 

I think Speedball 2 was my preference although I could lose hours on either!

 

Commodore 64 - Jet Set Willy was the biz!

See below

 

Good game,but too bloody difficult!

Preferred Monty on the Run,bit easier and played better.good sound also!

Monty was brilliant!

[ColinD]

Mine was a Texas Instruments TI99

 

But it wasn't the first in the house, the first one I remember was in a open wooden frame, hardboard if I recall. I have no idea what it was, but I remember it very clearly for it's wooden steam punk design. Maybe John can recall...

 

If you like this era of computing, checkout halt and catch fire on amazon prime. It has a few bits bytes and bums, but an interesting journey otherwise.

 

A bit drier, and just as many bad words... but still enlightening is micro men, visionary people speaking then of what we still think of as future today.  i.e. Sinclair on battery cars. His C5 today would be a kickstarter phenomenon.

[Guest]

Twas a nascom1 kit 3 months delivery from south Wales! was rubbish but a lot of soldering!

Actually intro to Computing was via an English Electric Leo MkIII - vast machine with some superb mechanical tape drives 25mm thick ali mounting plates

and the Power supply cabinets the size of a portaloo - but if I recall needed at least two of them - Then became ICL!!!

Whilst at college was asked to design and build a rudimentary teaching computer, but not in the true sense of word - but it got me a decent degree.

After nascom a locally built 4meg 10mb with 64k memory 2 x 51/4 floppy drives (circa 1982) still works and ran an entire accounting suite.

Trip to science museum is sobering as some displays were red hot tech back in the day and even large co could not afford them. We had mechanical tabulator which was trundled from department to department after being reserved.

Last place `i worked in was still producing Burroughs F machines (1949 Mechanical design) and even the electronic machine had a mechanical keyboard!

[Kenny R]

Thanks to Colin's post above, I've just remembered our first was a Texas Instruments with the speech pack, ( bought from Asda) that sounded like Steven Hawking, not the Atari ST1040 as I previously posted.

[V5-Steve]

Mine was a Toshiba msx 64. It had cartridges for games and also a seperate tape player. Fruity frank was the best game ever, one of the 118 guys eating fruit being chased by bugs.

[mac11irl]

My dad bought an XT for his accountancy practice when they reached affordable price. I learned fo type ish, on that and some otber stuff. Dos basic, 3.5" and 5.25" floppy drives and was a 486 - with the math coprocessor . Had an Amiga 500 too for me and my sister for gaming. What a machine! Me and my dad soent about 3hrs one saturday installimg a RAM expansion paxk in it - from .5mb ram up to an enormous 2! That was myfirst computer upgrading experience

I still remember Gremlin sending me an "official Lotus License" - a cert with my name on it - after i completed the hard level on Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge 2. Last Ninja ii - what a pain in the face of a game! i got passed level one about 12 times ever! And was always killed instantlt by a ***** on a motorbike while crossing the street! And the time tken to load and render each "rom while moving around... jesus it was an all day event playing that game really!

I should never have let my dad put either of those machines into the big charity van.... they were both

[mbames]

Acorn Electron with a Sloggers Rombox+, tape & 3.5inch floppy  [still have at parents]

A310M (originally running Arthur, but upgraded to RiscOS)  [sold]

486DX33, 4MB, 250MB HDD  [sold]

486DX4-120 (Cyrix)  [sold]

P2-333  [sold]

Dual p3-350, UW SCSI  [still have]

P4 (can't remember speed)  [father has]

Dual Xeon [still have]

P4/D 3.2Ghz + SSD  [still have]

 

current: core i7 3.6Ghz, 16GB, SSD  & surface Pro 2 & 2 x rpi

Edited 9 May, 2015 by mbames

[Fab Estate]

My first computer was an Oric 1. I wish I would have bought a Sinclair Spectrum instead.

[Dr Zoidberg]

Just got this working again.

[adfabia1]

Compaq 386, 40MEG hard drive, mono video card, 1 meg memory, oh and the price...................................£5000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[dazz600]

Just got this working again.

Omg Bubble Bobble

Must have bought that for every console I've owned

Once had a similar cabinet to that one

Mine was 'xevious' tho,won it in a video games magazine some years ago

[Dr Zoidberg]

It's actually a MAME cab, so there's hundreds of games on there.

[swordstoke]

Had to scratch head a little as it was so long ago..

 

First was an Epson HX20 approx 1982.

Had a succession after including, Northstar Advantage,Apricot,Future and Sanyo.

 

Even remember the Mainframe and Mini's of the time which got me into the world of computing. 

[mbames]

Had to scratch head a little as it was so long ago..

 

First was an Epson HX20 approx 1982.

 

 

Dual CPU.  Good man ;-)

[kilted]

Just got this working again.

Jealous - hell yes.

 

Bubble Bobble was one of my favourite games - my mates and I still talk about it to this day!. The tune was in a different league!

[RMurphy195]

Evesham Micros, think it was called an SX40 or similar, woth dot-matrix printer and Win 3.1 or somesuch.

[DoktorLorenz]

Can't actually remember at top of my head right now all the specs of all the machines but here goes.....

First computer was a:

Vic20 dad didn't keep this long and only remember it briefly being only 4-5yr old at time.

dragon 32 (loved that machine and I remember dad and Allan playing madness & Minotaur for 25hrs straight in my bedroom and power pack was so hot it took 2-3hrs too cool down)

spectrum 48k (rubber keys) dad brought it cheap off my uncle

spectrum 128k (toast rack) wish I'd have kept it and should never have got rid of it

spectrum 128k +3

Amiga 500 (512k exp ram with clock and extra floppy)

Dad brought an Amstrad 3286 (1MB RAM, 40MB HDD,VGA)with MS-DOS 3.3 Windows 3.0

Amiga 1200 (kept the external floppy from a500) but standard confit, was later stolen only 2 yrs ago so had to buy another.

Dad brought this as well giving me the Doom 1-2 bug

486DX2/66 8MB then16MB, 500MB HDD Multimedia MPC1 spec with a black widow scanner on a SCSI

Dad and I clubbed together to build Pentium 200MX

My first own build PC way back in 2000-01 was

AMD K6-3/400 brought our first scsi CD burner which was a Yamaha 4x

AMD T-bird 1GHz

AMD 2GHz

AMD 3200 Barton was very proud of this machine as I got two 74GB WD raptors and used raid 0, brought two plextor optical drives one for ripping CD's and other for DVD's. Wish I'd have kept them. The razor mouse I brought for this PC back in 2003 still works now.

My present machines are

Intel E4300 1.8GHz 2GB ram later upgraded to Q6600 2.4 then Q9550 2.83 with 8GB and still working despite it being built in 2007

My main rig is Intel i7-3930K 32GB, GTX Titan, samsung 256GB sad, 3TB HDD, BD-R and 3x23" monitors.

My laptop (but gf steals it loads) Alienware R17 i7-4980, 16GB ram, GTX980M 4GB 128SSD & 1TB HDD

I had to buy this on eBay to replace the stolen A1200Amiga A1200 with 68030/40 16mb, in-division board, 4GB CF card, laptop CD-ROM with ribbon connector.

Edited 21 September, 2015 by DoktorLorenz

[Gromle]

My first was an Amiga 500.

Ahh the memories, having to swap between 11 floppys to play Monkey Island 2.

[gac]

First PC would have been an Amstrad PC1512, single floppy disk. First computer was a Sinclair something. Pretty sure I had a ZX Spectrum, also had a +3 and I think I had a Quantum Leap at some point, but I'm not sure whether that was the order I had them, was very young at the time.

[softscoop]

Our first was an Amiga 500, but that only got used for gaming really.

 

Our first real "PC" was an AMD K6-2 266Mhz from these guys

 

[domhnall]

Atari 400

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_8-bit_family#/media/File:Atari-400-Comp.jpg

[Aspman]

Home computers -

 

Acorn Electron + expansion

Spectrum 128 +2A (inc light gun and Operation Wolf :clap: )

Amiga 500 (added ram pack later)

 

PCs -

 

PC Pentium 1 200Mhz MMX (from Simply Computers)

Dell Pentium 3 700Mhz (128Mb Ram)

Home built AMD Athlon 2500+

Home built Intel i3

 

Laptops -

 

Dell 486 laptop running Win3.1

HP laptop AMD Turion 64 (now running Mint Linux with an SSD)

Dell laptop Intel i5

 

Handhelds -

 

Psion 5

HP Jornada 520

Nexus 7 2012

HP Linx 7

Amazon Fire 7 HD

 

Various smartphones and consoles.

 

I've got two Palm Vs  and a HP iPaq HX2790 kicking around now as well.

Also an HP iPaq DataMessenger which work was throwing out despite it being boxed and mint.

 

It's amzing to see just how crap Windows Mobile was before Apple forced everyone to up their game.

WM6.3 with a Resistive screen oh the joys.

Edited 23 September, 2015 by Aspman

[io1901]

I've got two Palm Vs  and a HP iPaq HX2790 kicking around now as well.

Also an HP iPaq DataMessenger which work was throwing out despite it being boxed and mint.

 

It's amzing to see just how crap Windows Mobile was before Apple forced everyone to up their game.

WM6.3 with a Resistive screen oh the joys.

 

Somebody with more PCs than me.  I've only got:

 

Acorn A7000

 

4 PIs (2 B, B+, Pi2)

 

A celeron M Laptop (running win 7)

MSI Atom netbook  (win 7 -can't run win 10)

Intel g3240 desktop (win 10)

Intel e3300 desktop (win 10)

Intel 1037u desktop (Firewall Sophos UTM)

 

2 Sharp  PC 1500 pocket PC (with tape inferface/plotter)

1 Sharp PC 1360 Pocket PC

1 Casio FX730p pocket PC (with tape interface)

and a Ti-84 calculator (i'm including this as it has a z80 cpu and can run BBC basic!)

Sharp Mobilon HC-4000

Psion 3a

Hewlett Packard 300LX

Psion Teklogix Netbook Pro

 

(I did have a couple of HP Journada 720 with docking stations but I had a clear out as they weren't working very well.)

 

 

LinX 10 Tablet (win 10),

 

IPAD2, Nexus 7 (2012) a Asus 7" Tablet

[Naths vRS]

Mine was a Time computer - oh the joys i had with that.  Used to paly a game called Recoil that's all I used it for really along with the odd bit of home work.  Had it all set up so you could talk to it rather than type.

 

[Aspman]

Somebody with more PCs than me.  I've only got:

 

 

Lol I've not kept them all.

 

Just the current PC, two of the laptops and a few handhelds... and the tablets

 

I think the P1 is still in my parents attic, I think I could probably get that going again.

I kept the Athon for a while even offered it for free here but no one wanted it so it went to the skip. Plus the 20Kg Chieftec case it was in.

I've got boxes of P2s and some P2 motherboards somewhere as well.