First Computers

theodp writes "You never forget your first love. Or your first computer. Good Morning Silicon Valley readers share fond memories of their first computers, including SuperELFs with 256 bytes of RAM, $99 Timex Sinclairs, 26-pound 'portable' Osbornes, 'high-speed' 300 baud modems, Apple IIs running COBOL, and even a Mattel Aquarius (complete with Microsoft Aquarius-BASIC 1.0!)."

First kiss?

[AtariAmarok]

Some remember their first kiss. However, for the 43 year old virgin still living with mother (and who salivates over Galactica remakes), this question will do instead.

Oh yea...

[JawFunk]

I'll never forget playing Leisure Suit Larry on an orange screen computer, God knows the specs, I was too young. But the PG-13 content kicked ass.

Microsoft and Mattel..

[fanatic]

now that makes sense...

My first computer...

[petesmart]

A commodore+4, I think (correct me if I'm wrong please), this was released in the states as the vic 20. The plus 4 reffered to the MASSIVE 4Kb of extra RAM, this made it ideal for "Business Applications". It's currently in a loft in Scotland in my mothers house, but still works with the original tape deck and everything!
...Sorry, got carried away.... god I miss her.(the Commodore, not my mother!)

The Anti-CoCo conspiracy

[RevMike]

No TRS-80 pics, though... odd...

I sometime get the feeling that the computer industry is trying to deny that the TRS-80 Color Computer ever even existed.

Re:Ti-99 4/a

[kenjib]

I see your Ti-99 4/a and raise you a voice modulator. "Fuelling station ahead" in a lusty female voice... Who needs to remember your first kiss, anyway, when your first computer sounds totally hot?

P4

[WordUpCousin]

"My first computer is a P4 3.2 GHz, 1 Gig Ram, 2 120 gig HDs, a 20 inch LCD monitor, ATI Radeon 9800 XT and a 8x DVD-R Burner"

If a 10 year old kid said this to me I'd give him a high-five for having a nice computer, and then punch him in the nuts for being spoiled. (Mine was a 8086) =)

Re:Trash-80

[Anonymous Coward]

Boy, wasn't I styling once I got the 64K upgrade and the floppy!

No, you weren't.

Sincerely,
The girl who never wanted to go out with you in school

Re:The Anti-CoCo conspiracy

[telekon]

My uncle has two of them!! The evidence cannot be silenced!! I will show the world, there WAS a CoCo.

I'm scared. Do you think their assassins are coming now? Go, my friends, find the CoCos. Trust no one. The truth is out there.

Re:First kiss?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello AtariAmarok, this is your mother. You spend far too much time posting to Slashdot ! Now leave the computer alone and come and watch a nice episode of Galatica.

Two Strings are Enough for Everyone

[AtariAmarok]

"I'm sure somewhere Bill Gates was crowing about how two strings ought to be enough for anyone

You are misquoting Bill Gates from when he was talking about telephony. He mentioned 2 strings and 4 tin cans as being enough to handle telephone needs.

my first pc

[erikdotla]

Since this thread is likely to degenerate into a "my first PC is older than yours" competition, I'll try to win right away:

My first PC was a block of wood with keys etched into it using a sharp rock. We had to press the keys and draw pictures really fast into the dirt with sticks.

We were very poor.

Re:Timex Sinclair

[magarity]

A friend of mine had one of those. When he first got it I went to his house and he asked if I wanted to play a game.
"Sure," I said.
"Hang on," he replied, "I have to program it."
So the next 10 minutes were taken up by him typing in a racer-type game in basic.

Basement?

[Atario]

Seems the bad-geek stereotype always involves a basement. Good thing our family didn't have a basement. There but for the grace of slab foundations went I, I s'pose. It made me go out and be halfway-normal...

Atari 1200XL, early eighties. Remember to hit F2 to disable video during CPU-intensive operations for improved speed! Oh -- and death to cassette drives.

signed
ATARIO
fer cryin' out loud

P.S. Key-clicks and I/O noises kick ass; disk-notching tools are for wimps (what'sa matter, you too clumsy for a one-hole paper punch?); a program that just prints "Hi" over and over should never be over two lines long, ya hump.

Slashdot Diversity Foul

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone with a Slashdot user ID number of 300,000 or higher should probably just keep quiet on this one; we don't want to hear about your wimpy first PC being a lousy 386SX.

Let the old timers speak of the early days in computing, and how the moth got caught in their relay contacts...

The only BASIC commands I used on the C64...

[Jugalator]

LOAD "$", 8

LIST

*checks list*

LOAD "GIANA", 8, 1

RUN

* the message 'CRACKED BY MR Z' appears *
* screen starts to flicker in all sorts of colors *
* voila! *

That's all I cared to learn, except for the occasional '10 PRINT "HELLO!" : GOTO 10' program.

Re:The "Home Computer Museum"...

[jvagner]

They need more pictures.

I can remember lusting after the Atari ST. There was an Apple vendor and an Atari vendor a few doors apart near where I lived. I never could quite get the Apple lust back then, but the Atari ST really excited me.

I made do with a Sinclair QL, instead. It was all I could afford. Those little tape drives were an utter nightmare and completed failed to sustain the machine, but the QL came with really nice software and had a great word processing application. They keyboard was quirky enough to sustain charm.

When I was still into CP/M the Commodore 128 caught my eye. I think it even got good reviews.. it was such a clever move, but totally failed to sustain them. Who would have thought to ship two entirely different, incompatible CPUs in one box?

Re:The Anti-CoCo conspiracy

[AndroidCat]

Strange since with the later versions of the Coco and Microware OS-9, you had a pretty kick-ass little Unix-clone for its day.

I guess Darl had all history of it silenced. (Their ctypes.h was almost certainly in violation.)

key to Commodore 64 success

[Mantorp]

All the pirated games.

I think I bought roughly 1% of the games I played. Copies of tapes full of games spread faster than chicken pox through my middle school.

Re:Atari!

[gobbo]

Hey man, it's no mystery, the Woz was a zen master of simplicity and efficiency. He saw the straightest path to the solution, and found the fewest chips to get in the way.

Re:I used to have a laser 128k...

[drakaan]

nope. Disables the "RUN STOP" key. Try this on 50 or so CBMs in a computer lab (circa 1984-85):

10 POKE 144,88
20 PRINT CHR(RND(255)+1)
GOTO 20

The nice thing is that the program is really quick to type...

Re:And Bill Gates once said: NOT!

[geoffspear]

And Bill Gates couldn't possibly have lied in that interview.

Re:Trash-80 anyone?

[NanoGator]

" I wrote a 10k line Tangrams program! And I was 8 years old. Beat that!"

I was on girlfriend no. 2 at the age of 8.

Timex Sinclair

[RoadChris]

10 PRINT "I Learned To Program On A Timex Sinclair 1000"

20 GOTO 10

Re:First kiss?

[TaGirl_Keri]

I kid you not. my first kiss :) I was 15 and getting my first kiss. Except my mind was on his very cool P2 with 16MB ram on his desk. I only had an Amiga500. Ah memories. It was a sweet computer. My Amiga still runs. The P2 is probably landfill. The Kiss? I can't remember :)

Re:The Anti-CoCo conspiracy

[Luigi30]

Well *I* have 2 of them! I have a CoCo1 and a Coco2! And pictures! And cartridges! AND THE ENTIRE BASIC MANUAL! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

Re:Atari!

[Atario]

Hmm. Interesting.

(Holy crap but we're geeks.)