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186
 
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Last Login: 01/11/2008 20:04:13
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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
m/board MSI P35 Neo2, Intel core2 duo E6750, Novatech Geforce 8800GT 512MB, Thermaltake Toughpower 650W, XMS6400 2x1GB 800Mhz, LG 20x GSA-H55NBAL, Caviar 250GB 16MB 7200 SataII. Akasa Zen case.
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186
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Last Login: 12/12/2007 17:31:44
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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.
CHILLMAN
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286
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Last Login: Today @ 15:38:51
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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 
Media PC 3700 64 @ 2.5GHz XP Home X1950Pro
Kitchen PC XP3000 @ 2.3GHz XP Reduced Media Ti4200
Advent laptop AMD64 3000 XP Home STOLEN!!
Dell laptop 1.66GHz CoreDuo Mandriva 2009 STOLEN!!
Mac Mini 1.66GHz CoreDuo OS10.4
'Drawer PC' E2140 @ 2.75GHz Ubuntu 7.10
24" iMac 2.4GHz Core2Duo OS10.5
Asus Eee 900 Xandros KDE 3.4
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186
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Last Login: 28/10/2008 21:28:47
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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
__________________________________________________________________________ We trained hard, but it seemed every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation.
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286
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Last Login: 2 days ago @ 20:02:54
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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 ).
Rig 1 - C2Q Q6600 with a Zalman CNPS9700 HSF, 8Gb DDR2 800, 4870 graphics, Asus P5Q Deluxe mobo, X-fi Fatality sound with a 7.1 speaker set up, 320GB Seagate 7200.10x2, 500GB Samsung x1, slot loading DVD-wr x2, Hiper Type-R 580 PSU, running XP home and XP Pro64.Rig 2 - XP2700, ASUS A7N8X Deluxe mobo, 3Gb RAM, X800GTO, 200Gb SATA system drive, 250Gb SATA storage drive
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186
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Last Login: 21/03/2008 16:27:50
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speccy +2 ))) played the orinal atari console but guess thats not really a computer 
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Pentium
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Last Login: 02/10/2008 12:39:04
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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)
Asus P5Q pro-E8400 @ 3.6Ghz-4Gb OCZ Reaper 800Mhz @ 4 4 4 15-Gigabyte 4850-500w OCZ Stealthextreem on XP.
Asus P5Q deluxe-Q9450 @ 3.2Ghz-4GB OCZ reaper 800Mhz @ 4 4 4 15-Sapphire 4870-600w OCZ Stealthextreem on XP.
Asus P5KC-E4500 @ 2.93Ghz-2Gb Crucial Ballistix 800Mhz @ 4 4 4 12-sapphire 3870-500w OCZ Stealthxtreem on XP.
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186
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Last Login: 27/04/2008 23:32:48
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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.
Main PC
|Core2 Duo E6750 (2.66GHz), 4GB DDR2 800, 1x80GB Maxtor drive (OS), 4x500GB Samsung drives, ATI Radeon HD3870 512MB, ATI Radeon X300SE 128MB, MSI P35 Neo2-FR, Antec 900, Winxp Pro|
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