Reply to: First computers

[NickFitz]

School had one of these:

If you were first in the computer room (used to often happen to me in the holidays, as I lived nearby) you loaded the language tape into the high-speed paper tape reader, then entered the bootstrap code in binary using the toggle switches on the front. Then set it running and, after the tape had loaded, the Teletypes would suddenly chatter into life. I can still hear them now

Around 1978 the school allocated a grand or two to purchase an additional 8K of core, but the savvy CompSci teacher hung on for a few months and was able instead to purchase two fully-loaded SWTPC 6800s for the same money:

After schooldays, a mate had an Acorn Atom and then a Model B. Then of course in the mid-80s I became a full-time games developer, and we had at least one of everything in the office

[darmstadt]

ZX80, ZX81, Spectrum, ORIC, also an very old Sinclair programmable calculator and still have my Psion Organiser and Psion Series 5. The next thing was a 386 with a massive 80mb disk and 1 mb of memory running Geoworks, whoo...

[original PM]

Acorn Electron - Commodore 64 - Atari ST

Started on the Electron - also using Input mag \O/

oh they were the days

[Scrag Meister]

Commodore 64. Ahhh Basic, still programming Basic now after 32 years. :-)

PEEK POKE SYS

Way of the Exploding Fist, Pitstop 2 and impossible Mission.

Dr Watson assembler, 1541 disk drive, Kempston Pro joystick and a backup Atari one.

I don't know what I would be doing now if my parents hadn't been forward thinking when the home computer came on the scene.

Paid half each and then paid £140 for my 1541, you could house 2 families in the case and power supply for one of those.

[DirtyDog]

BBC B -> A3000 -> RISC PC -> PC

I played Elite on my Raspberry Pi at the weekend, though, which reminded me of how bad I was at Elite once it moved from keyboard on the BBC to mouse-based on the A3000

[NotAllThere]

...
I remember them wheeling this huge white contraption that looked like a washing machine in on a trolley. They guy twiddled a few knobs, pressed a few buttons and then came the piece de resistance. It spat out 3 feet of ticket tape. Bearing in mind we'd all just seen 2001 where the computer talked, I wasn't impressed and didn't really think being a computer programmer was going to be the thing for me....

Arrrr. All you had in them day was gurt big steam-powered computers.

The first computer I paid money for was a Jupiter Ace

May the forth be with you.

[Contreras]

I had one of those. The school told us we were not allowed to program them, and when we entered the exam hall we had to surrender our calculators so they could press the reset buttons on the back using a pin.

I calculated that it was quicker to re-enter the program than actually do the quadratics. So the first 5 minutes of the exam was programming my calculator, then off we went.

I replaced the [DEL], [Ans] & [EXE] keys with [C], [=] & [M+] from another Casio. Admittedly it was the non-graphics version. Looking back, I reckon if I had the aptitude to design a program to factor quadratics then it wasn't cheating... or maybe it was but it doesn't matter being so long ago now.

[petergriffin]

you kids and your shop-bought computers. Microtan 65, soldering iron, hours of work. 1k RAM, no storage at all.

Mine was an Oric-1 which was based on the Tangerine.

What a sh***y computer it was.

[suityou01]

The first computer I paid money for was a Jupiter Ace.

To which I added a 16k rampack (kit from ETI), and keyboard interface that never actually worked at all.

This was followed by a couple of Tatung Einsteins, and eventually a 286.

The 40Mb HD for which cost £155.

Yup I remember my old mans 30mb hdd, bloody great thing with about a yard of copper sheeting over it, presumably to screen it.

[suityou01]

I had one of these bad boys. Actually I still have it

I had one of those. The school told us we were not allowed to program them, and when we entered the exam hall we had to surrender our calculators so they could press the reset buttons on the back using a pin.

I calculated that it was quicker to re-enter the program than actually do the quadratics. So the first 5 minutes of the exam was programming my calculator, then off we went.

[sbakoola]

Vic 20 -> C64 -> Amiga -> PC

Surprised at how popular the VIC-20 was on these boards, I owned one and I think it had 3.5K addressable for programming in the BASIC that was etched into the operating system hardware, I think it has a total of 5K though which is a funny number for available memory. I got myself a 16K RAM pack for it I remember, those were the days. I remember my first game on it was some Dracula text based adventure game named The Count or something which was fun. Then it was Commodore 64 and Commodore Amiga which were classic home computers, got into programming in assembly language and C with those two, then it was the evil PC with 40MB hard disk !! (which weighed a tonne). Then on the PC it was Pascal (Uni forced me to do it) and then C++, C#, Java (some), SQL etc.

And I still love programming to this day, but hated programming for moron middle managers / IT team leaders on tulip systems in investment banks in London for years and years on end, still it has made me wealthy and I have to be thankful for that.

[socialworker]

Couldn't agree more. Samsung is now my hardware of choice.

My virtual BIL is a Mac geek and was recently showing off the fingerprint recognition security feature on his IPhone.
I thought to myself, yes, that's very clever but why the hell would I want it? And would it work when I've worn my fingers down to the bone after a good brass rubbing session in one of the local churches?

Is that a euphemism?

[Bacchus]

I had one of these bad boys. Actually I still have it

I had a very similar device - I wrote my first "commercial" software on it! A programme for converting polar to rectangular co-ordinates (and vice versa) for surveying. I was paid a week's money to go away and "do the calcs", took me a couple of hours to write the programme, a couple of hours to do the calcs, then four and a half days in the pub on a full daily rate and I sold a copy of the programme to another engineer, hand written on a fag packet for the equivalent of another day's money happy days (and the time that I realised the way forward was to get it right once and then sell it a hundred times )

[Gittins Gal]

Architect partner in 82 had a Macintosh. Remember working for a solicitor in 93 whose secretary had a 65 year old partner who managed to persuade him that Windows would never catch on so the office bought Word for ms dos despite my pleas. Later had an Atari with Cubase for music stuff but the novelty wore off. Have another husband now who is also an Apple fan but I refuse to be seduced and like my Samsung tablet and my trusty ancient HP pc.

Couldn't agree more. Samsung is now my hardware of choice.

My virtual BIL is a Mac geek and was recently showing off the fingerprint recognition security feature on his IPhone.
I thought to myself, yes, that's very clever but why the hell would I want it? And would it work when I've worn my fingers down to the bone after a good brass rubbing session in one of the local churches?

[socialworker]

Architect partner in 82 had a Macintosh. Remember working for a solicitor in 93 whose secretary had a 65 year old partner who managed to persuade him that Windows would never catch on so the office bought Word for ms dos despite my pleas. Later had an Atari with Cubase for music stuff but the novelty wore off. Have another husband now who is also an Apple fan but I refuse to be seduced and like my Samsung tablet and my trusty ancient HP pc.