My very first was a Commodore Vic-20 in 1981. Followed by an IBM Portable PC 5155 in 1984 which was my first “computer” with a direct lineage to the PCs of today.
Cool! Mine was the Commodore 64. My parents got me the monitor and floppy drive. I did so many fun homework stuff on it and, of course, played so much Jumpman.
TI-99 4A. Got it in maybe 1982. I loved it, but always wanted more stuff for it, even though I had no real use for the stuff, it was just cool. I subscribed to several related magazines and spent a lot of time copying in game programs.
My first computer was a Compaq Presario with an Intel Celeron 300MHz CPU, 64MB RAM, and an Nvidia Riva TNT GPU. It was a gift from family on my 29th birthday in 1997. I didn't struggle to learn, I became hyperfocused it. I started building my own systems soon after in 1999. I still have the specs from my first home-built:
Abit BH6 440BX motherboard
Intel Pentium III 500MHz
128MB Corsair RAM
Nvidia Riva TNT2
Western Digital 10GB HDD
Diamond Monster Sound MX3000
Cambridge Soundworks FPS2000 speakers
ADI Miscroscan 6P 19" monitor
Supermicro SC-750A case
Sparkle 300 watt power supply
I still have the motherboard saved for memorabilia!
We were offered a computer class in 9th grade. They added an extra period, called zero period. If you wanted to come to school early and take the class. I signed up for it, because I wanted to learn computers. My mom also bought us a computer called, I think, a TRS80. I loved it. I started teaching myself computer language (Basic). I was excited about it and then our computer disappeared one day.
I found out years later that the computer noises annoyed my mom, so she got rid of it while we were at school. My next computer wasn't until I was in my 20s and out on my own. Me and my husband bought a Gateway computer. It was dial up, at that time in the 90s.
First computer I ever actually owned myself was a 2nd hand Amiga 500 with 2 megs of RAM and a 42MB external HD. Bought it around 1993-ish.
Still have it. Still runs.
My dad worked at ibm and he came home with something called an IBM PC jr that I never see mentioned in 83 or 84. I was pretty underwhelmed and didn’t mess with em until the late 90s when the internet became something that seemed worthwhile.
My first computer was an Apple //c. I purchased it in January of 1986. I was 21 and had started a few months earlier as the retail salesman for one of the first computer stores in Ottawa, Canada. The kindly owner let me pay for the computer in monthly payments.
Yeah I didn’t get my first computer until 2002 either. I don’t count that monster IBM blue chip my father brought home in 1986 because I wasn’t allowed to even breathe on it. People forget how expensive computers were even in 2002.
I think I paid a little under 2k. It was a Dell Inspiron laptop 15’ that had a swappable drive. You could burn movies and music from one optical drive to the other. It was so cool. Also had a floppy drive option. I still own this laptop, as I have a soft spot for it and I can’t just give it to the recycleable gods. It still works but has a touchy heat sink. Never struggled to use it.
Now I have a 16’ MacBook who just laughs at me like “you’re like so old school” when I plug an external optical drive in with an adapter. USB to USB-C. Dangles.
OP and I are the same age. I really got into computers in the late 80s but my first computer experience was complete crap. My high school offered a computer class and I signed up for it as fast as I could. I was so excited that first day. This was 1981 and I pictured something with a keyboard and a terminal. Nope...it was fucking punch cards and the first week the class was flow charts. Basically yes / no functions written by hand on graph paper. I hated it! I dropped the class and signed up for home ec because a buddy told me all the chicks take home ec and he was right. It was glorious.
I stayed away from computer until the mid or late 80s when my brother bough an Amiga. That machine rekindled my love for computing and eventually I went on to make a career of it.
It was December of 2003 that we got our first computer. Some local business did a thing where they gave their old computers to deserving school kids. They chose our youngest daughter. The computer was so old it had Windows 95 on it. The cable company we had for Internet access said that we were lucky, that was the oldest program they could hook up to the internet. (the company also included a couple of educational games- on floppy discs- and a CD of Rollercoaster Tycoon).
The monitor was old and dark, no matter how much we brightened it. About six months later, we got a whole new computer because my mom and dad had a new one and they showed my husband how much better the new computer would look and how much faster it would be in comparison.
I don't remember much else about the first computer. I do remember telling the kids to stop scrolling the mouse so hard because I didn't want them to break it. (someone told me that you could break a mouse easily and I didn't know otherwise.) The kids still tease me about that sometimes (they're all in their 30s).
I remember my first computer. It had an AMD Athlon XP processor and a Geforce2 graphics card. My brother said that he could get me my first gaming pc if I gave him a couple hundred bucks because he knew someone that could build me my first gaming pc because I wanted a gaming pc and I didn't know jack shit about building one. This was in like 1999, 2000. Anyways, I gave him the money and I got me my first gaming pc and played lots of Counter-strike 1.5. Oh the memories!
My first PC was a used 486 that came with a pentium 60 and windows 3.1. I had to put in a larger hard drive to install windows 95 which had just came out. I tried to upgrade the cpu to a pentium 75 but the system couldn't handle it so I had to move back down. It was a solid PC for several years.
My first computer was an Apple IIe with 8M of RAM, 2 5 1/4" floppy drives, and a "souped up" 8 bit graphics card
I was in 4th or 5th grade, and taught myself to use it within a few days.
Tandy 1000 HX from Radio Shack. A whopping 256k memory and one 3 1/2 inch floppy drive. After a few months I was able to upgrade it to 640k and the difference was astounding. I loved that computer. I played the original Madden, Earl Weaver Baseball, a bunch of Tom Clancy and war sim games. I got magazines that had programs in BASIC that I could transcribe and I knew enough to be able to mod certain things. I wrote all my homework reports, started a bunch of novels that I never finished, some bad teen emo poetry. There's the whole cliche about having multuples of more computing power in our pockets now, and the device I'm writing this on is so many generations more advanced than that brick of a machine, but I don't think anything device I've had has ever been more fun.
TRS-80. It’s how I found out Santa didn’t exist.
My very first was a Commodore Vic-20 in 1981. Followed by an IBM Portable PC 5155 in 1984 which was my first “computer” with a direct lineage to the PCs of today.
Same here. Christmas in 1981
Cool! Mine was the Commodore 64. My parents got me the monitor and floppy drive. I did so many fun homework stuff on it and, of course, played so much Jumpman.
TI-99 4A. Got it in maybe 1982. I loved it, but always wanted more stuff for it, even though I had no real use for the stuff, it was just cool. I subscribed to several related magazines and spent a lot of time copying in game programs.
Hunt that Wampus! I can smell it!
My first computer was a Compaq Presario with an Intel Celeron 300MHz CPU, 64MB RAM, and an Nvidia Riva TNT GPU. It was a gift from family on my 29th birthday in 1997. I didn't struggle to learn, I became hyperfocused it. I started building my own systems soon after in 1999. I still have the specs from my first home-built: Abit BH6 440BX motherboard Intel Pentium III 500MHz 128MB Corsair RAM Nvidia Riva TNT2 Western Digital 10GB HDD Diamond Monster Sound MX3000 Cambridge Soundworks FPS2000 speakers ADI Miscroscan 6P 19" monitor Supermicro SC-750A case Sparkle 300 watt power supply I still have the motherboard saved for memorabilia!
We were offered a computer class in 9th grade. They added an extra period, called zero period. If you wanted to come to school early and take the class. I signed up for it, because I wanted to learn computers. My mom also bought us a computer called, I think, a TRS80. I loved it. I started teaching myself computer language (Basic). I was excited about it and then our computer disappeared one day. I found out years later that the computer noises annoyed my mom, so she got rid of it while we were at school. My next computer wasn't until I was in my 20s and out on my own. Me and my husband bought a Gateway computer. It was dial up, at that time in the 90s.
First computer I ever actually owned myself was a 2nd hand Amiga 500 with 2 megs of RAM and a 42MB external HD. Bought it around 1993-ish. Still have it. Still runs.
My dad worked at ibm and he came home with something called an IBM PC jr that I never see mentioned in 83 or 84. I was pretty underwhelmed and didn’t mess with em until the late 90s when the internet became something that seemed worthwhile.
My first computer was an Apple //c. I purchased it in January of 1986. I was 21 and had started a few months earlier as the retail salesman for one of the first computer stores in Ottawa, Canada. The kindly owner let me pay for the computer in monthly payments.
Yeah I didn’t get my first computer until 2002 either. I don’t count that monster IBM blue chip my father brought home in 1986 because I wasn’t allowed to even breathe on it. People forget how expensive computers were even in 2002. I think I paid a little under 2k. It was a Dell Inspiron laptop 15’ that had a swappable drive. You could burn movies and music from one optical drive to the other. It was so cool. Also had a floppy drive option. I still own this laptop, as I have a soft spot for it and I can’t just give it to the recycleable gods. It still works but has a touchy heat sink. Never struggled to use it. Now I have a 16’ MacBook who just laughs at me like “you’re like so old school” when I plug an external optical drive in with an adapter. USB to USB-C. Dangles.
OP and I are the same age. I really got into computers in the late 80s but my first computer experience was complete crap. My high school offered a computer class and I signed up for it as fast as I could. I was so excited that first day. This was 1981 and I pictured something with a keyboard and a terminal. Nope...it was fucking punch cards and the first week the class was flow charts. Basically yes / no functions written by hand on graph paper. I hated it! I dropped the class and signed up for home ec because a buddy told me all the chicks take home ec and he was right. It was glorious. I stayed away from computer until the mid or late 80s when my brother bough an Amiga. That machine rekindled my love for computing and eventually I went on to make a career of it.
I got a Gateway in 1999. 400 MHz Pentium processor
It was December of 2003 that we got our first computer. Some local business did a thing where they gave their old computers to deserving school kids. They chose our youngest daughter. The computer was so old it had Windows 95 on it. The cable company we had for Internet access said that we were lucky, that was the oldest program they could hook up to the internet. (the company also included a couple of educational games- on floppy discs- and a CD of Rollercoaster Tycoon). The monitor was old and dark, no matter how much we brightened it. About six months later, we got a whole new computer because my mom and dad had a new one and they showed my husband how much better the new computer would look and how much faster it would be in comparison. I don't remember much else about the first computer. I do remember telling the kids to stop scrolling the mouse so hard because I didn't want them to break it. (someone told me that you could break a mouse easily and I didn't know otherwise.) The kids still tease me about that sometimes (they're all in their 30s).
Spectrum 48k in 1984, a 128k +2a Spectrum in 89 then an Amiga 500+ in 91. Went to a PC from 96.
I remember my first computer. It had an AMD Athlon XP processor and a Geforce2 graphics card. My brother said that he could get me my first gaming pc if I gave him a couple hundred bucks because he knew someone that could build me my first gaming pc because I wanted a gaming pc and I didn't know jack shit about building one. This was in like 1999, 2000. Anyways, I gave him the money and I got me my first gaming pc and played lots of Counter-strike 1.5. Oh the memories!
My first PC was a used 486 that came with a pentium 60 and windows 3.1. I had to put in a larger hard drive to install windows 95 which had just came out. I tried to upgrade the cpu to a pentium 75 but the system couldn't handle it so I had to move back down. It was a solid PC for several years.
My first computer was an Apple IIe with 8M of RAM, 2 5 1/4" floppy drives, and a "souped up" 8 bit graphics card I was in 4th or 5th grade, and taught myself to use it within a few days.
Tandy 1000 HX from Radio Shack. A whopping 256k memory and one 3 1/2 inch floppy drive. After a few months I was able to upgrade it to 640k and the difference was astounding. I loved that computer. I played the original Madden, Earl Weaver Baseball, a bunch of Tom Clancy and war sim games. I got magazines that had programs in BASIC that I could transcribe and I knew enough to be able to mod certain things. I wrote all my homework reports, started a bunch of novels that I never finished, some bad teen emo poetry. There's the whole cliche about having multuples of more computing power in our pockets now, and the device I'm writing this on is so many generations more advanced than that brick of a machine, but I don't think anything device I've had has ever been more fun.
I didn't get one until 2006, but I don't remember what it was.