LQ Poll: What was your first computer?
 

The LQ Poll Series continues. Inspired by a recent episode of Bad Voltage, we want to know: What was your first computing device?

--jeremy

An i386 was the first computer I personally owned. In those days I did work with VAXs, IBM 360s and HPs on the job.

Sinclair ZX80 was the first I owned, before that at school I had used an IBM360 owned by the Town Hall.

It was a Timex Sinclair TS 1000, but that was really a worthless piece of junk. My first "real" computer was a Commodore 64. I had it for several years and it basically got me started in the IT arena.

My first computer was built by me from a kit of parts. The CPU was a Motorola 6800. I modified an old TV as a monitor. I built a printer from a kit. Several tape decks for data storage (cassette, 8-track, hybrid). Speech synthesizer. It's a long story.

My first computer
 

The first computer I bought with my own money was a Commodore VIC-20. The first computer I ever used, and the one I first started learning to program on, was a Digital PDP-11/780 minicomputer. It was the "base" computer at NAS Oceana, in Virginia Beach, VA. I was friends with the DP (Data Processing) Chief Petty Officer, and he set my serial terminal up to work at 19,200 baud, and my login account had access to BASIC. I had a blast! :D

first computer
 

I didn't see a place to specify in the poll, but: Hyundai 8086 that looked a bit like this: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...c7xWnD3tgAKsNg

My first computer was a second-hand PC with Win95 and MS Office, which I bought so that I could work on translating a cache of family letters in German that I found after my mother's death in 1999. No network card or modem, but that wasn't unusual in those days. You can read the story of the project here.

First computer
 

Don't see a place to specify other. My first computer was a Kaypro.

That looks to be an IBM compatible PC.

--jeremy

It's the last option in the poll.

--jeremy

An Apple II.

The first computer I owned was a Commodore PC-10. It actually had a CGA card inside to be able to create documents containing the Greek alphabet. It had two floppy drives and I think 128K RAM. Quite an investment I tell you.

I have a Commodore 64C, the powerpack, Manual and Basic book but need the cable and monitor.

I hooked it up to my CRT TV with the cord from an NES so it does work.

An IBM compatible PC --an 8088 XT that I bought from Compu-Add in '86. 640K memory, two 5.25 drives, and a 10Mb HD. When I finally let the thing go in '94, a colleague sent it to a school he was affiliated with in Haiti. It put in several more years of service down there.

My first was the Sinclair Spectrum in 1982, but my first real computer was the Sinclair QL in 1985 — so much nicer than my IBM at work, whose only real asset was the lovely clicky keyboard.

It's nice to see two started with the TI-99/4A — they don't make names like that anymore. I once bought one for fun, complete with the massive expansion box. The Extended Basic was great fun, and I remember a Space Invaders program implemented in one multi-statement line!

Trs-80

Hi Jeremy,

My last post there only saying TRS-80. I posted it, and "D'Oh!" forgot to capitalize it all.

Edited 2-3 times and it didn't stick.

So ... in one of my edits I shared my frustration ... and then it stuck!

But when I removed my added comments and left only the model ... back to not retaining the caps.

Interesting

(And would have to add that my trusty TRS-80 would never screw that up ... OK since it always used all CAPS :D )

My first computer was an abacus.

My first computer that I owned was a KayPro II with 2 single sided 5.25" floppy drives.

What was my first computer
 

a Tandy TRS-80 Model 1

When I was doing my doctorate at Bedford College, we had a couple of chaps in the lab who were doing work on the physics of gases and they used slide rules. We also had a Chinese boy (I think from Singapore) who had an abacus. Just for fun we set up a timing trial, abacus versus slide rule. The abacus won easily!

The first computer I used was a Honeywell-Bull Unix back in 1977,

The first computer I used was an ICL mainframe with all of 96k of core memory. It ran a proprietary OS called GEORGE 2.

I thought this thread was about the first computer you owned.

Given the choices for the poll, I would say this assumption is valid, and also shared by me.

Yes I used several models made by Wang, DEC, Raytheon, and Prime.

First I owned was a Sinclair ZX81.
I'd already had hands on experience with a Vax 11, an Apple II and a ZX80.

The first computer I owned was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum.
An especially nice feature was that the keys on the keyboard besides letters, also had the keywords of the Basic programming language. A real programmers computer!
I remember it was always interesting whether you succeeded loading your games and programs, as they were loaded from a cassette recorder, if anyone remembers what a cassette

First computer was
 

My first computer was an Ohio Scientific, a metal case with wooden side and two large floppy drives connected to the main body by ribbon cable, 6502 processor. It was prior to the introduction of the IBM PC 8088 processor.

My own first computer was a 1960's manually-operated Digi-Comp--constructed out of plastic, metal, and cardboard...plus rubberbands! Built from a kit purchased at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, it had mechanical flip-flops and could be programmed to do basic arithmetic operations.

My first "recognizable" programming experience was hosted on an IBM System/360 mainframe at the Illinois Institute of Technology, time-shared from my high school (Lane Tech) about 1968 using the IITRAN language. However, affording my next self-owned computer didn't happen until a number of years (and technology versions) later: a desktop PC I assembled out of boards from various now-long-defunct OEMs.

--mhl

First PC
 

My first computer was a UNIVAC 9200 mainframe at a component school of SUNY where I worked as a programmer, complete with card reader and 4 tape drives.
I used assembler, Fortran and COBOL languages using 16K bytes of memory!

My first PC was a SAGE computer. Motorola MC68000 with (I think) 0.5 MByte memory. And storage was a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drive.
I paid $3600 in 1983 ! That's about $9600 today. OS was CP/M-68K. And it had "C" and BASIC languages (others for purchase).

First Computer
 

Timex 1000

BBC model B that I only sold ten years ago. Brilliant machine, wish I still had it.

First Computer
 

I had (and still have it with all manuals, case, etc...) a Kaypro 2X.

2nd hand custom job
 

I bought a home-built IBM PC-AT clone with i286 overclocked to 12 Mhz (up from 8) from a co-worker who was a quintessential nerd and needed a little cash to complete his new 386 build. It was surprisingly stable and reasonably fast. I think it had a 40 MB HD, which was an expensive bit of kit in the day. Running just some flavor of MS-DOS 3.x with an external modem to get on to Compuserve (mostly).

Dell Inspiron that came shipped with a Superfish-like root kit cause I have good luck.

My first computer was Commodore 128-D (with built-in floppy drive), compatible with Commodore 64. The next was an IBM compatible PC: i386.

Not until 2001
 

I didn't own my own computer until 2001 when I purchased a Blueberry iBook from EBay. A year later I built my first Linux box on which I installed Mandrake. Now I use openSUSE Tumbleweed.

I bought the Commodore VIC-20 as my very first computer while stationed in Germany. Learned some Commodore basic and grew from there.

It Depends
 

The first computer I ever got to sit in front of was a Pet CBM. The first one I ever programmed was a Sinclair ZX81 (that my brother purchased before they re-vamped it as the Timex-Sinclair 1000). The first one I ever owned myself was a Commodore 64

Can't remember the name of the first computer running CP/M as I didn't really do much with it. First one I really used was a Leading Edge 8088 with 512 KB RAM, 10 MB hard drive, 1-360 floppy and a green TTL monitor running DOS 2.? or an early 3.?, can't remember. Good machine, did a lot of work and rarely got shut off.
Also taught a few classes at a community college using the same basic machine except it had 2 floppies and no hard drive.
Simpler days.....

Ibm 650
 

IBM 650, then IBM 1620, Univac 1108, IBM 360/67 (CP/67 hypervisor). For me, these were the personal computers of the time, at least during 3rd shift. My first home computer was an s100 using parts from Southwest Technical Products and Cromemco. I did some contract programming with the Intel 4004.

Compaq 1540DM. My 1st Linux tutorial was done on it.

http://yatsite.blogspot.com/2008/09/...indows-95.html

http://yatsite.blogspot.com/2008/10/...on-compaq.html

what can i say...its in my signature

PC/AT clone, 80286 CPU, 1MB DRAM, 20 MB HDD, 5.25" floppy, 300 baud modem, Hercules graphics, DOS and BASIC.

Must have been around 1985. It seemed clear to me at the time that Sun would put IBM out of business given how much better their stuff worked.

I remember it well. It was back in the PC v. Mac wars of the late '80's. I was a graduate student and got my hands on a DTK branded 8088 clone with a pair of 5 1/4 inch floppy drives. Held on to that machine for six years. Upgraded it with a 2400 baud internal modem and eventually added a Tandy 40 megabyte hard drive.

Replaced it with a Pentium-based system from Dell in 1995. I've still got the 8088 in a box on a shelf.

First Computer
 

It was an Apricot Computer (British) It used a version of MS DOS. It would handle share ware programs, but not commercial USA programs. The keyboard snapped on to the CPU and had a carrying handle. The 9" monitor had to be carried separately. It used the Apple hard cased 3" disks. Support was limited and it disappeared shortly. I

Commodore VIC-20
 

That was the system I cut my teeth on programming. If Commodore was still around today, I'd be a hardcore Commodore user.

My 1st computer was an Altair 8800 ordered Dec 1973
 

Of course, I had been working on other computers before that, but they belonged to other people, not to me.

The first computer I ever used was an IBM 1620.

Then on to IBM System/360 and /370 mainframes, Burroughs 5500 and 6500.

- Leigh

Commodore Pet was my first
 

... with 8k of memory, a chicklet keyboard, and a cassette drive for storage. My friends would always ask what I was going to do with all that memory, because no one could write a program that big. (We were all assembly geeks back then.)

First computer
 

An Amstrad CPC 464 followed by an Acorn Archimedes A3000. Both of which I still have and are usable.