Ah, fond memories. I owned a ZX Spectrum (the heavy one with rubber keys) years ago and have fond memories of the old BBC Micro at my first school.

DOS for me, and then the first GUI based OS I came across was Apple THEN Windows 98. I never found out about Linux until a year or later.

First computer I used was a Xerox Sigma IV mainframe, 1975. Still own the programmer's manual for that, somewhere, I think. Then there were a bunch of computers I used all around the same time: Osborne II, Commodore PET, VIC-20, Apple II, Radio Shack 100, a couple of single-board Z80 trainer computers, and a couple of industrial style S-100 & Multibus computers with proprietary OS's. The Osborne was the first I ever owned. That thing was awesome; 64K RAM, 50 column 4" monitor, CP/M, Wordstar, 2 (count 'em, 2) 92K floppies, portable! Did a lot of BBS surfing with my 300 baud modem on that baby. Almost cried the day its power supply gave up its magic smoke. Never could part with the carcasse, which is resting peacefully in the 'museum' under a workbench in my workshop, I think.

--- rod.

Commodore Vic 20. I remember writing a program in it's native Basic "shell" that subsequently filled up the memory reserved for program listings in Basic and caused the computer to crash.

The processor and gfx chip in the Commodore 64 makes it the most fun environment I've ever done programming in (assembler, of course). Pairing it with the external disk drive with it's own internal chip made for some early parallel processing...

Formula Too Complex!, anybody?

Apple II+. Great little ePROM OS. turn the box on and you wer up and running. Also had a Radio Crap cassette for loading programs. Ya had to be careful for the trble/base settings or the program wouldn't load. A 5 1/2" floppy drive was a real dream! I bumped the memory up to a whopping 64k. All this for about $2000 Canadian! hahahaha

Then a Tandy 1000 and I upgraded that machine to DOS 5.0 Awful, man! Just awful.

apple IIC, great os for those days, i have no regrets

My friends had vic-20's and Commodore 64's.
My first one was 286, with MS-DOS, I was probably 8-9 years old then (That puter had some weird "Turbo button") lol.

The Machines I've bought:
- VIC-20
- Apple //e
- Mac +
- IBM PS/2
- Pentium MMX/90 No-name (Linux began here for me with RedHat 6.0, then Mandrake)
- IBM Net Vista (Mandrake, Debian, MEPIS, Ubuntu)
- Dell Inspiron 4100 (Debian, MEPIS, Ubuntu)

I'v also had assortment of used equipment (I still use an old Dell office machine as my server). I used DPD-10 and 11, and VAX-VMS.

I also tried many other distros, the ones I've listed are the ones I used for an extensive period of time.

jer

Well.. I started with Windows 98 (started learning DOS after a year of using Windows 98!), Windows NT, 2000, Windows XP Home (that came with a PC I bought), Windows XP Pro, and now, using Windows 2003 Server + Ubuntu 6.10 EdgyEft and few other Live CD based distros.

The very first computer I ever used was a BBC Microcomputer at my primary school. Can anyone tell me which category this belongs in please?

The first computers I spent nay lenght of time on were running Windows 3.1 at my secondary school. These were all heavily restricted with a password lock.

The first computer I got to play with with full admin rights was running Windows 95.

PS - Why are th poll options checkboxes? As there can by definition only be one first computer anyone has used, radio buttons would be more suitable.

my very first computer was a 80286 NCR i think it was !!!
there was dos 5.0 running on it i think!!! can remember was a kiddo that time!!!

The First computer I had the miss fortune of my father purchasing was a pre 95 Dell dimension Xps 2000M Which was a dos based rig.

I olayed alot of wolf 3d and some other vintage 16 bit games.

I was first introduced to to the apple world by neighbors who moved into my East capitol hill stomping grounds in Seatle. The father was a die hard Macintosh fan but due to the high cost and other reasons my father opted for the Gates Balmer windows rig instead of a mac.

Very first computer I ever used was a Commodore Vic-20, later on a Commodore 64. Had some great times with those computers learning how to program in basic. Than in high school I took computer class and we used a IBM. Don't ask me what model it was, but I know we used dos on it. That was back in 1985-86 anyways it was long time ago.

Commodore 64. That was a fine computer! We had the old brown "breadbox"-model and tapedrive but dad bought a new superfast disc-drive for it too. That was the faster, cooler model. We had so many games that C64 was in regular use all the way 'till 1994 if I remember correctly.. Then it got sold because daddy bought a PC. With Windows 95.



Shit, I just realized that I could write some BASIC at the age of 4...

bye bye all. 8)