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RE: First experience with computers

Rad68 — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 00:41:40 GMT

My brother got a ZX Spectrum for Christmas in 1982 - I think I spent more time on it than he ever did. :D I have vivid memories of squinting at the keyboard trying to locate the command I needed, none of which seemed to have any logical ordering... One of my dad's mates was into programming games and he used to make tapes for us. Ah the joys of listening to them loading! I remember that it came with Hungry Horace and a 'sports pack' which included 'tennis' and 'racing cars'. Hmmm - might have to dig it out when I next visit my mother and see if it still works!

Rad :cool:

RE: First experience with computers

Bruce R — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 12:34:28 GMT

Like Bill Gates, using a Teletype terminal, to prepare punched paper tape for submission to the acolytes serving the valve-based Elliot computer in its special low dust environment, air-conditioned room, only to find from the next days line printer output that lack of fundamental error-trap code prevented my programs from working !
(eg is the printer connected and switched on before PRINT 'Hullo World') :crazy:

RE: First experience with computers

Shuffle Bottom — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 12:17:06 GMT

I Rest My Case

:w00t:

RE: First experience with computers

Shuffle Bottom — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 11:52:28 GMT

My first Computer : Around 1982 I bought a second hand ZX81 from a student but it had no sound and was black and white display, but I was keen to learn basic and play games. But soon realized that it was hard work entering code as the keyboard had no feel to it and no sound when the keys were pressed this meant looking up at the screen on every press of a key : ( and it would over heat in about 2 hours so it had to be left turned off to cool down. I was always amazed at the game packaging pictures of detailed space craft and galaxy’s in colour, but all would be on the screen was black and white dots and still no sound. Was fun though?

RE: First experience with computers

RRich — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:11:40 GMT

My brother got a commodore 64 one year, I got a bike. We spent hours typing in programs from a weekly called INPUT, none of which worked so I went for a ride and left him to de bug it :-) Later on we shared an Amiga. . . que awesome multiplayer fun, broken joysticks, joypads, noses etc. . . Happy happy days :-)

RE: First experience with computers

snakelegsoup — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 04:33:44 GMT

Started out working with time share on an IBM 1100 with a high speed printer and plotter then...

Ah, a ZX80. Then a Spectrum, you know, the big one, with 16K of memory.

Actually, I shouldn't knock the Speccy in any way coz I actually ended up owning 16 of them. I took them out of the plastic cases and put them into 1 unit high rack mounts along with a serial interface and a turnkey eprom board, a couple of buttons on the front. They were rented out as equipment monitors and repeaters in navigation systems for ships.

Then PC's and Mac's

Allan.....

RE: First experience with computers

wyliecoyoteuk — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:27:01 GMT

First used a HP something or other, basically a circuit bord with a 4 digit led display, a keyboard and a till-type printer, then moved onto a PET, then bought a Spectrum for the kids.

RE: First experience with computers

mog wilson — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:16:01 GMT

saved my paper round money for an atari st,id have been better off with an s.t.d.

RE: First experience with computers

Slipstreem — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:05:28 GMT

I thought the Mac was just a fashion accessory to most owners. :P

...hides under a stone until it's safe to come out again...

Cheers, Slipstreem. :cool:

RE: First experience with computers

Shaun.Bebbington — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:23:13 GMT

[quote][b]Jason (03/04/2008)[/b][hr][quote]then it was all macs up until 2004 when i got my first computer (a second hand Pentium 3[/quote]

I'm sure all those Apple lovers will be interested to hear that a Mac isn't a computer. ;)[/quote]
That is just Apple trying to be clever ;-)

Regards,

Shaun.

RE: First experience with computers

Jason — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 03:25:36 GMT

[quote]then it was all macs up until 2004 when i got my first computer (a second hand Pentium 3[/quote]

I'm sure all those Apple lovers will be interested to hear that a Mac isn't a computer. ;)

RE: First experience with computers

order-sol — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 02:14:14 GMT

my first experience with computers isn't as epic/fun/interesting as other peoples...since i was a late adopter

It was with an iMac G3 back when i was in primary school, it scared me a lot...and i didn't use computers again for another year, then it was all macs up until 2004 when i got my first computer (a second hand Pentium 3 given to me by a friend for free). All the macs that i used however make me always want a G3 when i see one...as they remind me of my first steps ^^'

i was scared a lot by computers/windows...especially since i'd been using macs at school.

RE: First experience with computers

mog wilson — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:50:56 GMT

jetset willy and manic minor on the spectrum,it was my first and only foray in piracy,i had to make the colour code myself and use my dads twin tape deck.the theme to jetset willy has got to be the best for any game(moonlight sonata) and correct me if im wrong but wasnt jetset willy the first game to have anti piracy on it?(colour card)

RE: First experience with computers

richards — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:15:57 GMT

speccy +2 :)))) played the orinal atari console but guess thats not really a computer :P

RE: First experience with computers

Alpha Channel — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 11:17:07 GMT

First experience with a computer was with the Acorn Electron in 1983-ish (it's still sitting up in the Attic somewhere), loved Codename SAM and Spacedrifter, then it was the Spectrum +2 (and quickly followed by an Amiga 500, CD32 -and SX1 expansion-, two A1200's, both working but had to try and find a motherboard that would actually work with my PPC card, they lasted till '99 when I got my first PC, a 450MHz K6-2 with 64MB of RAM, then a 1GHz Athlon, an XP2700, an e6600 which was upgraded to my q6600 within the space of five months :D ).

RE: First experience with computers

Geof_i — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 21:22:38 GMT

Very similar to the above really re. computers. Dad got me a Vic-20 for Christmas but couldn't afford the dedicated commodore tape player. So for about the first three months of my computing life computing was an all day family event type a programme and play it or mod it for a day then turn of the computer.

Eventally we got the tape player and by now I was quite proficient at programming BASIC. By the following christmas I had worked out how to do simple machine code programming; Write the code convert to hex and then input massive strings of hex data.

Eventually I wrote a very rudimentary word processor for the VIC (no spell check as only 3.5k memory, although I did eventually upgrade to 3+16K), which my dad was amazed at.

This little VIC also holds acclaim as my first case mod also. Because machine code programming was sometimes prone to crashing the commodore beast I opened the case and put a simple reset switch on the reset line of the mobo and drilled and set the switch in the case.

Eventually got hold of the Commodore VIC-20 Programmers Reference Guide and then things really took off, wrote simple oscillascope programs, and found the joys of accessing the external ports and reading and controlling multiple things hooked up to them. Meant to eventually set the Vic up as a multi channell controller for out major train set layout but never quite got round to hooking it up although somewhere at my parents is the machine tape deck and all the tapes of the programmes I wrote.

Oh the halcyon days of youth......

Now I just do ASP and wouldn't know where to start accessing ports directly on a PC. In fact I think I would rather use the vic for that sort of controlly , ready type thing. Nice and easy and no bloatwear.

What did the vic gain me .... Fast track entry into the RAF as a technician when thier recruting office found out what I did, both programming and electronics wise.. 21 years later I'm still waiting for the programming job they promised me that everyone who's never touched a computer seems to get before me!!!!

Oh before the vic I had a binatone pong type games console - two controllers 10 games in glorious monochrome. That's still sat at dad's probably gathering dust and value.

Enjoy

GI

RE: First experience with computers

nitrowing — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 09:40:29 GMT

My mother bought me a Spectrum 48K about a year or so after they had come out. With no tape recorder.
She bought a couple of magazines, so I sat down and copied the program on to the screen and had to learn debugging straight away (as there was a typo in the mag!!).
I could only use the Spectrum when my mum didn't want to watch the soaps and most of that time was typing!
After a couple of weeks, she bought me a tape recorder and Tranz Am. We sat amazed as the noises from the loading were displayed on the screen!
By then I had a grasp of BASIC and started to write little programs that would play music and stuff - I even entered a program that displayed different weather icons as part of my art GCSE - half the teachers in the school came to see it :)
Then I discovered motorbikes, beer and women...
I bought an AMD 600 Duron about 6 years ago and everything went downhill from there :D

RE: First experience with computers

Mr COOLMAN3000 — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 22:02:32 GMT

My first experience was with space invaders in the pub in 1980 81 as I was in the snooker team and darts at the time, and they could never get me away from the space invaders. but it was a long time before I got a home PC in fact not until 2001 before that I had a Amstrad PCw word processor, the very last they made that was in 1999 from Dixsons they were selling them cheap £165. But then the following year they were selling for 65 pounds or their abouts. That got me through some tough exam's when I was retraining at college.

RE: First experience with computers

Adam D. — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 21:32:35 GMT

The first one I owned (in 1986) was an Amstrad PCW. Yes, I know, all PC users were sniffy about it because it was nothing but a word processor with non-standard discs. Rubbish!! Yes, the 3" discs were non-standard but they were very strong and double sided and anyway the later models used "standard" discs. Much more important, using CP/M, it ran very acceptable spreadsheets which I used at work and you could do quite hefty programs in Basic. There were available at least two very good games, neither of which I ever managed to complete. All that as well as the word processor and if you didn't like the standard printer (which wasn't bad for its day) with additional software you could run any commercial printer you fancied.

It didn't deserve any of the nonsense which is written about it by those who never used it. My only criticism would be that Amstrad didn't help its reputation by continuing to make and try to sell ever-more tarted-up versions long after it really was obsolete. Mine is still in the loft in working order so far as I know!

Adam

RE: First experience with computers

retro — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 22:47:24 GMT

i have played many games consoles over the years (im only 22 but it must be about 15 consoles) i remember going to my uncles and thinking he was rich because he had a c64 with the terminator cartridge game, not long after my dad bought one it still works today (except for the cassette) we then got a commodore amiga 1200 used that until i went to college writing homework with wordsworth was fun and had a few games for it (not a clue what they are called)

retro

RE: First experience with computers

andydods — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 23:52:58 GMT

Don't know if it counts as a computer, but as a toddler my father oversaw the installation of the traffic lights in the Tyne Tunnel for the now defunct Plessey (god bless them), and used to let me press the buttons which changed the switching sequence while testing. How I would love to do that now, and send those Geordies crashing into each other :D (not really, I love Ant & Dec)

I remember playing with some reels of punched tape, god knows what it was for, but i enjoyed ripping it up. I also remember an oscilloscope, and excitedly twisting knobs so these wave patterns stretched across the screen.

Other than that it was the usual ZX-81, Spectrum and then nothing for 10 years until a PC.

RE: First experience with computers

Jason — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 20:07:14 GMT

[quote]I have been frustrated, angry, woeful and even contemplated giving up the hobby on occasions!![/quote]

I feel like that at least once a week. :)

RE: First experience with computers

stuartpb — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 18:33:57 GMT

I received my first computer in 1982, as a christmas present. I was given the ZX81, and wondered what the hell I was supposed to do with it:) I was 9yrs old and they were just starting to introduce the BBC micros into our school, so my knowledge of computers was nil!

My Dad bought some magazines with the program listings in them for me and I set to work typing the programs, which took forever and a day due to the 'original' keyboard design! I ended up playing dumb with some of the longer listings to try and get my Dad to finish them. Then there was the inevitable debugging phase, trying to find every tiny litlle typo error.

Obviously the games features were limited by the ZX81's meagre specification - 1kb of RAM (upgradeable to 16kb), B&W output and no audio. But the pride in completing the program listing and finally playing the game was tremendous! This was the start of a lifelong hobby. I was hooked!

I have owned computers from nearly every generation since and I would dread to tally up the total cost of my hobby, but it has given me two decades of enjoyment. It hasn't all been sweetness and light though, I have been frustrated, angry, woeful and even contemplated giving up the hobby on occasions!! But computing has had such a large part in my life now, that I could never give it up, even if I wanted to.

Cheers,

Stuart

RE: First experience with computers

MartenReed — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 14:17:13 GMT

Well, when my mum met my step dad when I was around 2, and he moved in, he brought his Amigas with him. And that's pretty much how I got into computers. I never did programming until this year, but for me, it started with an Amiga. Or was it a Commodore....? Or both!

RE: First experience with computers

Old Engr — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 00:51:28 GMT

Well in my case it was a Commodore Pet, at my sons school when they ran a short evening course for parents.

Little did I realise that I would be using one a few years later to learn basic, and re-input a stores database!

First PC I bought (from an advert in Micro Mart) was a Commodore PC1, it was an XT, had a single floppy drive, and a socket on the side you could plug an external Amiga 3.125 drive in. (I was given one by my son who no longer needed it) A memory increase to 640K and an internal speaker were the only other upgrades. With no HD, it was very difficult to unpack programs from the free mag discs, but I managed to evolve a method! How I loved that little silent PC, I used Galaxy, a shareware WordStar compatable wordprocessor, even ran Cad software using the Hercules graphic emulator:D

Old Engr

RE: First experience with computers

cocorico — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 18:13:27 GMT

I've had an interest in amateur electronics since being a tiny kid. In the mid to late 60's there wasn't much chance to get exposure to home build opportunities.

I built my first diode and POW[prisoner of war] radio aged 5, and a slightly more advanced radio, which powered a speaker, and was driven by a power transistor and a mosfat, aged 6. By the time I was 9, myself and my cousin David, who is 3 days younger than me, used to hang around an electronics repair man's house, who also repaired computers. The boards, and the chips on them were enormous.

No 'firing' out defective cards, and 'firing' in replacements in those days, they were too valuable. Technicians had to isolate individual faults within a card, identify the offending component, and replace it. One IC chip in those days, was more expensive than many cutting edge cards today.

For IC's with intermittent faults, he had an occilliscope, and he used to compare the waves on the screen with those printed in reference manuals which were so thick and numerous, the place looked like the research library for Encyclopaedia Britannica! To us, the cool factor of the occiliscope was 110%

He designed a circuit from surplus parts, for which he had to lay down the printed circuit tracks on blank board himself. We got to solder in the sockets for about 6 IC's and resistors, capacitors and other components. 5 of the IC's were rectangular in shape, and they had either Siemens or Mitsubishi printed on them. The other one was a large square one, and I can't remember much about that. He had wires which needed to be soldered on to the board in various places and these went to connections to a powersupply, a 6" b/w monitor, a keyboard, and a jack socket that took input from a tape. He had lots of these tapes. When it was finished it played some games that were programmed in Basic. Nothing like space invaders, not even the most basic of sprites, any graphic designs were produced by the arrangement of ordinary keyboard characters on the screen.

Much later, I had an Atari 1040 STE which I expanded to 4mb ram and added a hard drive .. wow!

The first x86 machine I got exposure to was an Opus 086, followed in 6 months later by an Elonex 386.

My first self build should have been an intel 386 sx for which I luckily picked up a maths co-processor brand new and boxed in a boot sale. Unfortunately, 3/4 of the way through the build, a friend, Patrick, who was a trainee technician, blew a similar machine he was building for a customer on the side, and I agreed to let him take mine to solve an immediate career difficulty! It was 2 am in the morning, and I was just after being delighted by the appearance of a post screen. 30 mins later, I parted company with it!

The first one that got all the way completed [ including OS and apps. installation ] was AMD 486 DX2 80 based, had 4 meg or ram [wow] and a Conner 20mb hdd [wow again]. CD [read] drives were out, but they were only 2x at the time, and expensive. I also got a free 5 and1/4 drive from Patrick and a shed load of ex corporate 5 and 1/4 floppies, which was useful, because 3.5 floppies, the removable media of choice of the time, were quite expensive.

Thanks John

RE: First experience with computers

compaq — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 17:16:27 GMT

1982 i was 13 an acorn electron my dad got me it as christmas present cost £299 i believe

still have it the one thing i remember about them the power supplys where crap and hard to find used a 19v adaptor.

i used the bbc micros a lot at school i remember finding the speech program for the bbc and setting the computer into a loop with swear words and we left 3 of the computers doing that :)

those where good days.....ive always loved computers i guess.

RE: First experience with computers

-Wiz!- — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 19:59:04 GMT

Sinclair Spectrum 128k....half an hour of screeching and loading and the R: Tape loding error (or something)...GRRRRRRR....no wonder it was a good time later before i tried again! :D

RE: First experience with computers

bombus — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 19:43:44 GMT

It must have been around 1980 and a Sinclair ZX80. Robin O'Leary brough one in to school near the end of term and about 20 people watched him programme it to perform a graphical display entitled 'mouse eating cheese' or something. It was so crap I wasn't at all impressed!

Then I changed schools around 1983 and learnt how to use a Commodore PET (8K of Ram!), and then got a Speccy!

RE: First experience with computers

hansonlee — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 17:45:07 GMT

1984 i think was the year i got my amstrad 48k,i loved that machine,i also got an atari 2600 at the same time.

RE: First experience with computers

Shaun.Bebbington — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 09:51:10 GMT

My first experience of a computer would be about 1981 or 82 when we had a mightly impressive 16-bit machine called the Texas TI99/4a in our household. I remember typing in some programs as best I could at such a young age, and also playing games, though I don't remember the names of them. I seem to recall that there was one in which you had to fix robots but you couldn't go back on your steps... something like that anyway.

After that, it was on to the Commodore 64, but not until much later.

Regards,

Shaun.

RE: First experience with computers

oldphart — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 23:47:19 GMT

Not a lot of peeps know this (but you do now).

British Airways were going to fit their aircraft out with Beebs - the company I then worked for did the metalwork for the prototype, but rate of change killed it.

RE: First experience with computers

ExGeordie — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 23:35:23 GMT

First used Acorn Electrons - We were taught BASIC programming in the top class of primary school, so glad we did!

ZX81 was the first I owned - I thought it was one of those computer-style pencil cases at first - then I saw the PSU... £5 in a charity shop in about 1989, soon upgraded to a BBC B which was a great machine, got some cheap speccys for gaming... (needed a few because the keyboards kept failing). Then Amigas lasted me until 1999.

Simon

RE: First experience with computers

-Wiz!- — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 22:31:04 GMT

Went to PC Weird....need i say more? :(

RE: First experience with computers

GNC — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 22:25:45 GMT

Owned almost main computers at one time or another,here goes...

first EVER> commadore16...the true definition of pain.That comment applies to EVERY tape-based machine!!!

Then in no order:bbc-electron,commadoreVIC-20,spectrum48k,commadore64,atari64,atariST,commadoreAmiga500,amd k-600 PC,AmdAthelon700mhz,intelCeleron700mhz,IntelPentinum3-1000mhz,AmdAthelon1.2mhz.And then to skt939

then onto core2 as in sig...no mention is made of BASTRODEISED pc hybrids(amigaCD32,c64console ect...).

Or the many dozens of consoles and add-ons which must run into the thousands:P

The best machine? the PC for its pure adaptibility!

RE: First experience with computers

Slipstreem — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 22:50:13 GMT

When I were a lad of 16 (in 1981), a colleague in my first job lent me his Sinclair ZX80 to play with for a week and I was hooked! :w00t:

A few weeks later when the Sinclair assembly staff went out on strike, Sir Clive started selling the ZX81 in kit form for £50. Sinclair User magazine had a £20 discount voucher which put the kit just within my financial reach.

They weren't kidding about it being a kit either. The was a bare circuit board and a bag of components along with a circuit diagram. Four hours later, I switched it on and it worked. Woohoo!

Much fun was had building my own peripherals over the next year or so until the launch of the rubber-keyed 48K ZX Spectrum. I sold my ZX81 along with all of the custom bits and pieces and bought one.

A BBC Model-B motherboard and keyboard (minus case and power supply) came my way shortly after and the building frenzy started all over again. LOL

My first PC was a secondhand 4.77MHz Philips-badged 8086 with a [i]MASSIVE[/i] 640KB of RAM and a 20MB (yes, MegaByte) MFM hard drive in 1986(?).

Etc, etc... :P

Happy days!

Cheers, Slipstreem. :cool:

RE: First experience with computers

Muttzcuttz — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 23:45:10 GMT

Mine would be using a BBC (not sure which one) back in 1988 - 89?? Cant remember really. I remember it having two 5 1/2 inch floppy drives and a tape drive, and playing games like Citadel, chuckie egg etc on it. Not too long after I had an Acorn A1000, then an A4000. Then after that my first desktop PC, some 100MHz thing.

:)

RE: First experience with computers

maticus — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 22:22:36 GMT

....:)

RE: First experience with computers

oldphart — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 00:14:22 GMT

Trying to build the equivalent of a Halda "Speed Pilot" from electronics rather than gears. As operational amplifiers were not available cheaply at the time ( '62 ish) I failed.

Next thing many years later, build a calculator. (It worked)

Then I had a brilliant idea - I bought an Atari 2600, spent days trying to outfox it at pontoon - failed there too.;)

RE: First experience with computers

wasbit — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 23:36:05 GMT

Got nagged into buying a computer by my daughter, (rig 3) in Nov 2001.

Up until that time I didn't know where the on/off switch was.