A Leading Edge steaming pile. Didn't have Windows, so my father had to buy/write (I forget which) a DOS front-end. That was... probably 15-20 years ago, actually.
As for the first comp that was all mine, K62-450 (I think)-based self-built comp right before heading off to college in 1999.
First computer owned by the family was an Apple IIgs. My dad picked it up for a lot of money (probably more than any computer we've bought since then). And he got a teacher's discount! Fun boxy thing with the loudest dot matrix printer on the planet.
First one I owned myself was given to me by my Uncle, who used to bring home fun stuff from his work all the time. It was an IBM PC 5150 (en.wikipedia.org), and was pretty useless, yet fun for me to play with.
I inherited a bunch of computers from my mom's work for a few years until I saved up and bought a Packard Bell Pentium 75 from Circuit City. I thought it was the fastest thing on the planet, until 6 months later, when it was obsolete and falling apart.
CRZ and I share the first family computer (although I bet he counts the computer he used at school) which was (I believe) and Apple ][. Was ][e+ a model? We had the expanded RAM and a CP/M module, plus a mockingboard (which was really, really cool for the time).
At one point I tried to figure out the exact list of machines my parnets had but I kind of gave up. I think it goes
Apple ][ Apple ][e Apple ][c Macintosh (original, upgraded to 512k) Macintosh LC Macintosh Performa (something) Macintosh LC2 iMac blueberry iMac (grape? purple) iLamp
There was a mac laptop in there as well, but I don't recall the model number.
Personally, my computers (since college)
Clone 486 DX2 66 Cyrix pentium clone Athlon k62 450 IBM Aptiva Athlon 550 old Toshiba laptop from cable company surplus (pentium 200) Generic Athlon XP 1800+ Various Dell models (Sparky I - IV) Old the-w.com server some cheap laptop from work surplus (Celeron proc) Current Dell machine Mac iBook G3 (hand-me down from Lise when I bought her a new MacBook)
Would a Brother Word Processor count? This was an electronic keyboard with a tiny viewscreen capable of displaying six lines of text at a time. I had it in college, around 1994.
"To be the man, you gotta beat demands." -- The Lovely Mrs. Tracker
When I started college, I bought a Cyrix 486 Clone that ran at 66 mhz and had a 40Mb hard-drive and 64Mb of RAM. A fast dial-up connection would cause it to reboot, so Internet access was fun until I figured out to throttle down the maximum connection speed.
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." --Rick Cook
Originally posted by rinbergWhen I started college.....
When I started college, I had a Smith & Corona typewriter with removable cartridge for erasing!
They HAD typewriters back then? I woulda thought that was during a time of feathers and jars of ink.
On-topic, my family's first computer was a Vic-20. It got plenty of play (I learned to type on it as a wee-lad), but when my grapndfather gave us his IntelliVision, the Vic-20 got put away for good.
"You know what you need? Some new quotes in your sig. Yeah, I said it." -- DJFrostyFreeze
Originally posted by rinbergWhen I started college.....
When I started college, I had a Smith & Corona typewriter with removable cartridge for erasing!
They HAD typewriters back then? I woulda thought that was during a time of feathers and jars of ink.
On-topic, my family's first computer was a Vic-20. It got plenty of play (I learned to type on it as a wee-lad), but when my grapndfather gave us his IntelliVision, the Vic-20 got put away for good.
Actually, the other day I stumbled upon what appears to be a page from Pieman's journal from his freshman year of college.
And to at least pretend to stay on topic: I don't really remember my family's first computer. An Apple II I think it was? Don't really know the specifics, though I have glorious memories of conquering Number Munchers on it. The first computer I ever bought myself was an iMac.
Originally posted by spfThe first computer that I had was a TI-99. I remember typing out the long-ass programs in BASIC and putting them on tapes so that I could play Grizzly Quest or something like that. I also remember the games that you could buy for it, set up like cartridges for the Atari. You could customize things like the name of the teams in Football. I loved that computer.
My brother and I had the same one. I remember spending nearly a whole weekend typing in a huge program from Compute magazine that was a Pitfall rip-off.
My brother upgraded it from the 16k memory it came with to a whopping 32k. :)
I used TRS-80s in school, but at home I was a Commodore guy all the way. Vic-20, 64, 128, Amiga. When Commodore went poof, I switched over to Mac, from Performa to iMac to my current eMac.
I'm starting to feel the ol' "I need a new computer" blues, but to be honest the eMac still works fine for my purposes. Still, I covet one of those Boot Camp Intel chip jobs so I can play City of Heroes without having to hog time on Mrs. Shem's Windows machine. Maybe next year...
(edited by Shem the Penman on 8.8.06 1236) "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." -- George W. Bush, Good Morning America, September 1, 2005
"President Washington, President Lincoln, President Wilson, President Roosevelt have all authorized electronic surveillance on a far broader scale." -- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, February 6, 2006
Our first family computer was a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I with the cassette drive, 5.25 350k(?) drive, and a portable radio next to the hand-built CPU case set to around 1500 AM to hear the "sounds" for the games.
We still have it.
From there, we upgraded to the Model III/IV with dual drives, and then onto the various Tandy models of personal computers.
My first PC I paid with my own money was a 486 DX-4 100MHz back in 1990.
"I enjoy cocaine because it's a fun thing to do. I enjoy the company of prostitutes because it's a fun thing to do. If you combine the two together, it's probably even more fun." -- Representative Robert Wexler (D - FL)
We finally got one at the end of 1996. Compaq 200mhz with usb 1.0 ,which I didn't relize until I was actually throwing it away, 16megabye graphics card, 2megabye hard drive, 32 megabytes of memory. Infact it had a child board in it where it didn't have the PCI slots on the acutal motherboard. Amazing where we've gone in TEN years.
I get 310 miles, used to only get 260, on 3/4 a tank of gas. Please go ahead and try it. I've seen a major improvement in my mileage
I had the Vic 20 with the tape drive, then I saved up my pennies and bought the Commodore 64 with the separate floppy drive. I played a lot of Epyx "games" (California Games, Winter Games, Summer Games, etc) and a lot of Dungeons and Dragons games.
ChessNetwork Personal Computer, an IBM XT compatible, purchased in the Fall of 1987 from the U.S. Chess Federation (to this day I'm still not sure who the manufacturer was). Among its features:
- ran at the XT-standard 4.77 MHz, but also had a turbo mode that ran at 10 MHz;
- 360-kbyte floppy disk drive
- 20 megabyte internal hard disk
- 1200-baud, Hayes-compatible modem with communication software
- MS DOS 3.2 and GW BASIC
- LINCWARE for autodialing and graphic display
The list price for the above was $2000; U.S. Chess Federation members paid $1495.
In addition, there was the following optional equipment:
- 14 inch Samsung RGB color monitor (list price $325; USCF members paid $289)
- 80 column dot-matrix printer, which printed at a speed of 100 characters per second (20 characters per second at near-letter-quality mode) (list price $295; USCF members paid $229)
So the total cost for computer, monitor and printer for USCF members was $2,013.00.
"Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless. Give clothes to those who need them, and do not hide from relatives who need your help." - Isaiah 58:7 (New Living Translation)
I guess it would have been like 1988 and my dad got the family a Tandy 1000 HX. I remember that for the longest time, we didn't have a hard drive for it. I spent the first 3-4 months learning Basic and also homework on it.
For games, we had The Black Cauldron, Earl Weaver Baseball (my fave) and Indianapolis 500 simulator. I actually still play the Indy 500 game with the helpful assistance of DOSBox.
Chuck Norris drives an ice cream truck covered in human skulls.
I can't really remember, we had an Atari 800 XL and a Sinclair Spectrum (I don't remember the number, but it was the one with the built in tape drive) around the same time. I think the Atari just edged it by a few months. We later got an Atari ST520.
As far as PCs go, Pentium 75, 850mb HDD, 8Mb RAM. This would have to be around '95 or '96. Those were the days...
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Slinging chicken at Boston Market. You do not know incompetence until you work the drive-thru, during the dinner rush, when the assistant manager on duty neglects to make enough chicken. And turkey. Oh, and ham and meatloaf.