Comments on: What was your first computer?

On the anniversary of the ENIAC unveiling, we asked industry pros to reminisce about their first computers. Tell us about yours.

[mf75]

My first computers

While I don't recall (did I ever know?) on which computer I ran my very first programs in Algol, way back in 1966, I started professionally programming an SDS Sigma 2, in 1971. While it had (only) 16 K words of 16-bit memory, it had vectored interrupts and DMA access, and worked like a charm for efficient real-time programming: we used it for interactive simulation on more than half a dozen independent (vectored-)graphic screens. The only hassle was loading the software through punched paper optical readers (there were no hard or soft disks), but once it was there, it stayed. The punched paper was produced on a loud and slow ASR33 Teletype (ASR stood for "Automatic Send/Receive"). Needless to say, when I had to write, many years later, a Unix-like monitor in 32K of memory (in a 68000 with a hard disk), I thought it was quite an easy job.

[mf75]

My first computers

While I don't recall (did I ever know?) on which computer I ran my very first programs in Algol, way back in 1966, I started professionally programming an SDS Sigma 2, in 1971. While it had (only) 16 K words of 16-bit memory, it had vectored interrupts and DMA access, and worked like a charm for efficient real-time programming: we used it for interactive simulation on more than half a dozen independent (vectored-)graphic screens. The only hassle was loading the software through punched paper optical readers (there were no hard or soft disks), but once it was there, it stayed. The punched paper was produced on a loud and slow ASR33 Teletype (ASR stood for "Automatic Send/Receive"). Needless to say, when I had to write, many years later, a Unix-like monitor in 32K of memory (in a 68000 with a hard disk), I thought it was quite an easy job.

[MrNougat]

Timex/Sinclair 1000

In 1983, these sold for US$50 at Sears. You needed a separate cassette player to save/load programs, and a separate TV for the display. It ran BASIC, and Timex had this thing where you didn't type the words letter by letter, but rather pressed a combination of keys to get the commands to come out. Alt-P was PRINT as I recall. I got pretty good at programming in basic that year. The following year, girls came around, so that was that.

[mrhorton]

TS1000

What a wonderful little machine. I had mine mounted on one of those metal soda serving trays. Complete with thermal printer and the "ram pack". I did a tremendous amoung of basic programming on that little box.

[MrNougat]

Timex/Sinclair 1000

In 1983, these sold for US$50 at Sears. You needed a separate cassette player to save/load programs, and a separate TV for the display. It ran BASIC, and Timex had this thing where you didn't type the words letter by letter, but rather pressed a combination of keys to get the commands to come out. Alt-P was PRINT as I recall. I got pretty good at programming in basic that year. The following year, girls came around, so that was that.

[mrhorton]

TS1000

What a wonderful little machine. I had mine mounted on one of those metal soda serving trays. Complete with thermal printer and the "ram pack". I did a tremendous amoung of basic programming on that little box.

[w1nr]

Honeywell 1648/Altair 8080

The first computer I used was a Honeywell mini (1648 I think) that was donated to our high school in 1974. It had a Teletype 33 ASR and a "high speed" paper tape reader. The first computer I owned was an Altair 8080 in 1976. It is mind boggling how far we have come...

[w1nr]

Honeywell 1648/Altair 8080

The first computer I used was a Honeywell mini (1648 I think) that was donated to our high school in 1974. It had a Teletype 33 ASR and a "high speed" paper tape reader. The first computer I owned was an Altair 8080 in 1976. It is mind boggling how far we have come...

[JCFlack]

First Computer: Atari 400

The first computer that I ever worked with was an IBM timeshare system in college. I was in a Fortran IV class, and we wrote our programs on punchcards. But the first one I owned was an Atari 400, membrane keyboard, 16KB RAM, cassette tape for I/O, TV for a screen. The year was 1980. It was my first birthday gift from my wife - we'd been married only a few months. She'd seen me with tongue hanging out at the computer store.

[JCFlack]

First Computer: Atari 400

The first computer that I ever worked with was an IBM timeshare system in college. I was in a Fortran IV class, and we wrote our programs on punchcards. But the first one I owned was an Atari 400, membrane keyboard, 16KB RAM, cassette tape for I/O, TV for a screen. The year was 1980. It was my first birthday gift from my wife - we'd been married only a few months. She'd seen me with tongue hanging out at the computer store.

[Kalvos]

Nobody mentioned the TRS-80?

It's hard to believe that one of the best-selling computers of its day, the TRS-80 (later called the 'Model I') hasn't been mentioned yet. Maybe folks are embarrassed, because I know people who claim their first machine was an Apple, but I saw that TRS-80 on their desks first!

Followed by a KIM-1 (2K piggybacked memory, yes!) just a few months later, the TRS-80 was my first machine. You could bash it, solder it, saw it, and it would still run. Hang on modifications, add chips, build attachments, change the software -- lots of fun, lots of learning. It also launched my tech writing career, as I wrote column after column of software and hardware pieces about the Radio Shack machines that stayed open and malleable long after others had closed up tight.

It was ultimately swept away, but it was the CB radio of its day (sometimes almost literally with its RF interference).

Dennis

[bluemist9999]

TRS-80 - First Computer I programmed on

Not the first one I owned, but I remember programming in BASIC on the TRS-80 (and Pascal in high school). Taking all day to load software from tape, then someone hit the red Reset button and the software had to be reloaded.

[sadchild]

trash80 =)

my first pc was the trash 80. a spectacle of graphics and sound! we loaded our programs (like taipan) from cassette and within (several) minutes i was dealing opium.

[Kalvos]

Nobody mentioned the TRS-80?

It's hard to believe that one of the best-selling computers of its day, the TRS-80 (later called the 'Model I') hasn't been mentioned yet. Maybe folks are embarrassed, because I know people who claim their first machine was an Apple, but I saw that TRS-80 on their desks first!

Followed by a KIM-1 (2K piggybacked memory, yes!) just a few months later, the TRS-80 was my first machine. You could bash it, solder it, saw it, and it would still run. Hang on modifications, add chips, build attachments, change the software -- lots of fun, lots of learning. It also launched my tech writing career, as I wrote column after column of software and hardware pieces about the Radio Shack machines that stayed open and malleable long after others had closed up tight.

It was ultimately swept away, but it was the CB radio of its day (sometimes almost literally with its RF interference).

Dennis

[bluemist9999]

TRS-80 - First Computer I programmed on

Not the first one I owned, but I remember programming in BASIC on the TRS-80 (and Pascal in high school). Taking all day to load software from tape, then someone hit the red Reset button and the software had to be reloaded.

[sadchild]

trash80 =)

my first pc was the trash 80. a spectacle of graphics and sound! we loaded our programs (like taipan) from cassette and within (several) minutes i was dealing opium.

[Mr.Heise]

A C64, a 1541 single floppy drive and an MPS-803 dot matrix printer

My first computer was a Commodore 64. My parents bought it as a Christmas present when I was in the sixth grade. It came with a 1541 single 5 1/4 floppy drive. Next Christmas, my parents bought me an MPS-803 dot matrix printer. I loved that computer. It came with a book on how to write simple programs in Basic. I spent hours designing sprites on graph paper and then writing programs to animate them. My love of programming started with that computer. I have a couple sitting on a shelf in my computer lab today just for old times sakes.

[Mr.Heise]

A C64, a 1541 single floppy drive and an MPS-803 dot matrix printer

My first computer was a Commodore 64. My parents bought it as a Christmas present when I was in the sixth grade. It came with a 1541 single 5 1/4 floppy drive. Next Christmas, my parents bought me an MPS-803 dot matrix printer. I loved that computer. It came with a book on how to write simple programs in Basic. I spent hours designing sprites on graph paper and then writing programs to animate them. My love of programming started with that computer. I have a couple sitting on a shelf in my computer lab today just for old times sakes.

[alborchers]

TI-99/4A

I bought it at my local Service Merchandise because the price was too good to be true. It turned out that was indeed the case because shortly thereafter TI dumped the PC market and support and peripherals disappeared. What I recall most was the graphics and sound capabilities, tediously programming character set graphics and tone and duration audio in TI BASIC.

[bluemist9999]

Another TI-99/4A User Here

That was my first computer. I had a cassette drive, remember programming (at the time, I was 8) pretty imaginative games using custom character set graphics and the TI BASIC.

For its time, it had amazing graphics capability. But my favorite computer was probably the Atari 800XL I got from my dad a few years later for Christmas.

[alborchers]

TI-99/4A

I bought it at my local Service Merchandise because the price was too good to be true. It turned out that was indeed the case because shortly thereafter TI dumped the PC market and support and peripherals disappeared. What I recall most was the graphics and sound capabilities, tediously programming character set graphics and tone and duration audio in TI BASIC.

[bluemist9999]

Another TI-99/4A User Here

That was my first computer. I had a cassette drive, remember programming (at the time, I was 8) pretty imaginative games using custom character set graphics and the TI BASIC.

For its time, it had amazing graphics capability. But my favorite computer was probably the Atari 800XL I got from my dad a few years later for Christmas.

[robford37]

First Computer: Atari 400

My first computer was the Atari 400. I got it back in 6th grade. It was amazing. I didn't have a printer, tape drive, anything. Just the BASIC cartridge. I taught myself to program by copying them out of magazines (remember CRC checks). If I liked what I wrote I had to write it down so I could retype it the next time I powered the computer on. Best program I every wrote...a HackySack game! Ah, the good ole days!

[Ilgaz]

800XL and why Atari BASIC shouldn't be good

Mine was 800XL with 1010 tape drive. I upgraded to 1050 disk
drive, threw tape drive out of window like spoiled kid. :)

Atari BASIC was excellent compared to Commodore 64 basic and
it even had "better upgrades".

Commodore 64 people were used to hacking with POKE
command and they became excellent ASM/C coders (and also
hackers,crackers) later.

[robford37]

First Computer: Atari 400

My first computer was the Atari 400. I got it back in 6th grade. It was amazing. I didn't have a printer, tape drive, anything. Just the BASIC cartridge. I taught myself to program by copying them out of magazines (remember CRC checks). If I liked what I wrote I had to write it down so I could retype it the next time I powered the computer on. Best program I every wrote...a HackySack game! Ah, the good ole days!

[Ilgaz]

800XL and why Atari BASIC shouldn't be good

Mine was 800XL with 1010 tape drive. I upgraded to 1050 disk
drive, threw tape drive out of window like spoiled kid. :)

Atari BASIC was excellent compared to Commodore 64 basic and
it even had "better upgrades".

Commodore 64 people were used to hacking with POKE
command and they became excellent ASM/C coders (and also
hackers,crackers) later.

[brianb23]

first computer... what fun...

well the first one i actually had in house was a Packard Bell 8088 with 64K or ram and 2 5 1/4" floppy drives. Plus an Epson Dot matrix printer. I remember someone giving us a huge 10MB hard drive with MSDOS configured to bring up a nifty little menu system , ahh the days of autoexec.bat and config.sys, ha ha ... I had used early computers the Apple, and then this mainframe , keyboard that i learned basic on, you would type it into this computer, type run and it would print your program , so if you had an infinite loop in the code it would continue printing, and printing... quite a waste of paper in the For Next loops, ha ha.. 10MB who could fill that!! And not too long ago working in a computer store, 1GB hard drives so for 1000 dollars. and this was in the mid 90s , 94-97!!! my my how times have changed.. I love it!!!

[J.A.M.B.]

MY First Computer :

HP a6130n 22"screen -I'm glad we found you-your a Cool Dude - I don't care what anyone says.

[brianb23]

first computer... what fun...

well the first one i actually had in house was a Packard Bell 8088 with 64K or ram and 2 5 1/4" floppy drives. Plus an Epson Dot matrix printer. I remember someone giving us a huge 10MB hard drive with MSDOS configured to bring up a nifty little menu system , ahh the days of autoexec.bat and config.sys, ha ha ... I had used early computers the Apple, and then this mainframe , keyboard that i learned basic on, you would type it into this computer, type run and it would print your program , so if you had an infinite loop in the code it would continue printing, and printing... quite a waste of paper in the For Next loops, ha ha.. 10MB who could fill that!! And not too long ago working in a computer store, 1GB hard drives so for 1000 dollars. and this was in the mid 90s , 94-97!!! my my how times have changed.. I love it!!!

[J.A.M.B.]

MY First Computer :

HP a6130n 22"screen -I'm glad we found you-your a Cool Dude - I don't care what anyone says.

[bartnj]

Commodore64 Piracy

I also received a C64 for christmas in the sixth grade. I was kind of impressed but had absolutely no idea what to do with it. I hooked it up to the TV and messed around on this blue screen for a few days. The I took it back to Sears and traded it in for a stereo with a dual cassette deck. I then began copying AC/DC and Judas Priest tapes that my friends owned. So the personal computer actually does lead to music piracy.

[bartnj]

Commodore64 Piracy

I also received a C64 for christmas in the sixth grade. I was kind of impressed but had absolutely no idea what to do with it. I hooked it up to the TV and messed around on this blue screen for a few days. The I took it back to Sears and traded it in for a stereo with a dual cassette deck. I then began copying AC/DC and Judas Priest tapes that my friends owned. So the personal computer actually does lead to music piracy.