Your first computer

[Amaris]

My high school typing class used those. I actually rather liked them.

They looked nice for that era, I seem to recall that they were also quite light and they worked fine if they worked at all.

They were rather light, particularly compared to the computers of the day. I remember my Zenith 286 weighing a metric ton, and I dreaded having to take it anywhere.

 

[ares93]

Its probably an urban myth, but some say the average PC has more storage capacity than Nasa did when they went to the moon!

And an average graphical calculator has more processing power than the computers in the apollo spacecraft's.

IIRC, Apollo 11 topped out at 64K.

Hmm, its been a while, but that sounds about right.

EDIT: I knew I had the info somewhere. I'd say this has a way to go until 64k...

Apollo Guidance Computer
CPU: Discrete IC RTL based @ 2.048 MHz
Memory: 16-bit wordlength, 2048 words RAM, 36,864 words ROM

 

[Santaman]

I still have most of my computers..

This one is my first, I actually bought two of those, both are IBM PS/2 Model 30 machines, 8086, 640 Kb RAM 2x 720Kb floppy drives and no harddrive, I later on found one which had a 21Mb ESDI drive and an external 5.25" drive..

I've installed repaired and thrown away dozens of those things. If I recall correctly we got them because you could get a japanese keyboard with more keys on it. Mean time to failure negative time. Soooo many of them were fritzed straight out of the box.

My experience with the Model 30 is the other way around, I've seen heaps and heaps of them still functioning and being thrown out only because they were obsolete, I've got three of them and they run all fine.

 

[Amaris]

I still have most of my computers..

This one is my first, I actually bought two of those, both are IBM PS/2 Model 30 machines, 8086, 640 Kb RAM 2x 720Kb floppy drives and no harddrive, I later on found one which had a 21Mb ESDI drive and an external 5.25" drive..

I've installed repaired and thrown away dozens of those things. If I recall correctly we got them because you could get a japanese keyboard with more keys on it. Mean time to failure negative time. Soooo many of them were fritzed straight out of the box.

My experience with the Model 30 is the other way around, I've seen heaps and heaps of them still functioning and being thrown out only because they were obsolete, I've got three of them and they run all fine.

I love those machines. I can't help it. They were the best part of my day back in high school (this was around 1994/95), because I just loved futzing around on them. Loved the look of them too, from the core system to the monitor and keyboard. Classic all the way.

 

[Tora Ziyal]

Oh, that brings back memories... I got it later of course, but its probably the computer i used the most.

Of course? Ares, are you trying to flaunt the fact that you are younger than I?

Not at all, mate. That was not my intention. But I'd never pass to be old enough to use that thing when it came out. I was born in '92 after all... And I think it stupid that people act like they're older on the internet, just to give themselves more "adult-points".

I agree. To me, one of the neat things about the internet is that it doesn't matter how old people are (or where they're from or...), if you have interests in common.

 

[Fang66]

I still have most of my computers..

This one is my first, I actually bought two of those, both are IBM PS/2 Model 30 machines, 8086, 640 Kb RAM 2x 720Kb floppy drives and no harddrive, I later on found one which had a 21Mb ESDI drive and an external 5.25" drive..

I've installed repaired and thrown away dozens of those things. If I recall correctly we got them because you could get a japanese keyboard with more keys on it. Mean time to failure negative time. Soooo many of them were fritzed straight out of the box.

My experience with the Model 30 is the other way around, I've seen heaps and heaps of them still functioning and being thrown out only because they were obsolete, I've got three of them and they run all fine.

Could have been a poor batch, it's almost 20 years ago but I think they all showed up on the loading dock on pallets.

 

[Santaman]

I love those machines. I can't help it. They were the best part of my day back in high school (this was around 1994/95), because I just loved futzing around on them. Loved the look of them too, from the core system to the monitor and keyboard. Classic all the way.

The model M keyboards... those are something special, never had a better keyboard than those, I've got two of them bit loud but easy to clean, also useful to clobber someone with... they've got a thick steel plate in the back.

 

[Amaris]

I love those machines. I can't help it. They were the best part of my day back in high school (this was around 1994/95), because I just loved futzing around on them. Loved the look of them too, from the core system to the monitor and keyboard. Classic all the way.

The model M keyboards... those are something special, never had a better keyboard than those, I've got two of them bit loud but easy to clean, also useful to clobber someone with... they've got a thick steel plate in the back.

I managed to get a hold of an IBM keyboard a few months ago for my mom. She has trouble typing on these newer keyboards, and so I went about finding something more fitting. As you mentioned, they have a steel plate in the back, so they're heavy, the keys spring back quickly and they make a satisfying clickety clack noise, which she loves. She wouldn't trade that keyboard for a brand new modern one if you begged her (not that I've tried ).

I don't have the space to have the collection you do, Santaman, but I wish I did. I love old computers. I've made plans to visit the official computer museum in California, should I ever get out that way. Some people see these antiquated systems as curiosities, but they're much more than that. At one time, these old computers were the technological marvels of their day, and they deserve respect (except for any and every Packard Bell system which can DIAF).

 

[Trekker4747]

Its probably an urban myth, but some say the average PC has more storage capacity than Nasa did when they went to the moon!

It's not a myth. The "computer" on the Apollo ships were little more than calculators and machines that could just hold some data. Keep in mind that in 1969 the most complicated computer on the planet still occupied an entire room.

The computer that controls my car is vastly more complicated than the computers that went to the moon.

Apollo Guidance Computer
CPU: Discrete IC RTL based @ 2.048 MHz
Memory: 16-bit wordlength, 2048 words RAM, 36,864 words ROM

So it had, what about 5k of RAM?

 

[Chaos Descending]

Occurred to me...My phone has a microSD card with 8 times the storage capacity of my first computer....wow.

RAMA

You think that's bad, my phone has two hundred and fifty THOUSAND times more storage capacity than my first computer!

Its probably an urban myth, but some say the average PC has more storage capacity than Nasa did when they went to the moon!

No myth. The "average" computer has 500GB+ these days.

I think the entire world's aggregated computer storage hit the 1GB mark in the late 70's.

 

[Trekker4747]

Well, I don't think he was just talking about capacity but also computing power. As noted above the computer on Apollo ran at around 2 Mhz; computers today are about 1500 times faster, it's RAM was also only a few kilobytes, computers today -on average- have 10,000 times the RAM.

Storage capacity means pretty much nothing, especially on the Apollo missions when all they were storing -albeit critical- numbers. Even if 500GB existed back then they wouldn't have needed it for the computer to remember the rocket's position in 3-dimensional space.

Granted, the same arguments could be made for all of the other computer aspects because all it was doing was just remembering the ship's orientation and trying to maintain that in some fashion while mostly being augmented by manual controls.

The Apollo "computer" wasn't much more than a big calculator but that's all it had to be. As someone said above, what it was is probably comparable to what is in a cheap graphing calculator today.

 

[Santaman]

I love those machines. I can't help it. They were the best part of my day back in high school (this was around 1994/95), because I just loved futzing around on them. Loved the look of them too, from the core system to the monitor and keyboard. Classic all the way.

The model M keyboards... those are something special, never had a better keyboard than those, I've got two of them bit loud but easy to clean, also useful to clobber someone with... they've got a thick steel plate in the back.

I managed to get a hold of an IBM keyboard a few months ago for my mom. She has trouble typing on these newer keyboards, and so I went about finding something more fitting. As you mentioned, they have a steel plate in the back, so they're heavy, the keys spring back quickly and they make a satisfying clickety clack noise, which she loves. She wouldn't trade that keyboard for a brand new modern one if you begged her (not that I've tried ).

I don't have the space to have the collection you do, Santaman, but I wish I did. I love old computers. I've made plans to visit the official computer museum in California, should I ever get out that way. Some people see these antiquated systems as curiosities, but they're much more than that. At one time, these old computers were the technological marvels of their day, and they deserve respect (except for any and every Packard Bell system which can DIAF).

I have stored most in the attic else I'd not be able to move around, the last few years "modern"tech (P I, II, III, IV) has become the brunt if my pile of obsoleteness.

As for the old ones.. they're disappearing fast and not many people understand that when they're gone, they're really gone, hardware wise its possibe to keep old computers going if you know what you're doing but software wise its a nightmare, programs are often saved on tape or floppy and most in unusual formats, retrieving and storing those is hard to do..

 

[Tom Hendricks]

I kinda wish I had my first few computers still. Just for nostalgic sake, I actually miss them.

 

[SPCTRE]

I <3 this thread.

 

[Trekker4747]

I sort-of miss that old Tandy EX computer and the Ghostbusters game. I've played the NES and other versions of the Ghostbusters game and, really the "PC Version" is the best, certainly better than the NES version. Oy!

I still have that disk, along with countless other old games, somewhere in my parents garage but given the instabilities of that type of media -and my parent's garage- it's unlikely that disk works very well if at all.

 

[Santaman]

Seagate ST4096 81Mb, 5.25" full hight, this drive is spectacular, it has the most wonderful spin-up sound of any drive, the spindle has a two step engine, its heads are voice coil driven and its pretty fast for its day.
Its a very heavy drive, also one that uses a heck of a lot power at start up...

I've got one of these so I'm very careful with it, it used to power a very early 386 machine which I also still own.

That card below is the actual controller, drives like these don't have the controller mounted on the underside like modern drives but on a card, there are two cables going from the controller to the drive, a 34 pin one for controller signals and a 20 pin one for the data transfer.

 

[Lonemagpie]

First? 'twere a TI-99 back in about 1981...

 

[RobertVA]

1. Commodore Pet with 9K RAM. The manufacturer didn't claim the K that was used to map the display. The keys looked like something from one of their calculators with the markings (letters/numbers/graphic emblems) in little aluminum inserts. I wrote a program that used the machine's ability to start and stop its internal tape drive to store multiple programs on a standard audio cassette.
2. Apple ][ that I modified into a ][+ by swapping the motherboard ROMs with ROMs on the Applesoft card. I bought it with 32K RAM, but promptly upgraded it to 48K. Since it had less control than the Pet over the external audio cassette recorder used for data and program storage I acquired a floppy disk drive as soon as they were available. I accessed bulletin boards and a commercial "information service" with a modem that was part on a board inside the computer and part in an external case. Initially used an RF modulator and a black and white TV for a display, but eventually bought a 12" yellow phosphor monitor that featured composite input. The first computer I owned that I used with a printer.
3. Apple //e. That machine offered twice the 40 column text display ability of the ][+. Wanting to add color capability without sacrificing the eighty column capability I bought Apple's RGB monitor (with power tilt!). That was the first computer I bought a hard drive for.
4. Apple //c in a period that overlapped the period when I was using the //e and the newer Apple "desktop". It was basically a portable version of the //e. Instead of the nine inch green phosphor monitor most people used with their //c, I had one of their LCD add ons, which required the right amount of light at the right angle to use effectively. Sometimes I connected the //c to a portable TV to enjoy the color.
5. Apple //GS with a newer model RGB display. It featured a GUI similar to the then black and white only Macintosh. It was very slow printing from any of the GUI based programs, as it sent even text as individual pixels (a tedious process to a 300 dpi laser printer at the //GS's 7 Mhz clock speed).
6. An Intel 286 based laptop with a removable black and white LCD. At home I used a standard keyboard and an EGA display. Works for Windows was supposed to work on a 286, but it failed if I tried to use the drawing module. Was much faster printing than the Apple //gs.
7. A generic 386 based desktop running Windows 3.1
8. A 486 based laptop running Windows 95. Had a CD reader, but an inadequate 3/4 MB hard drive. The optional CD drive had to be docked in the laptop whike the flopy was shifted to an external enclosure.
9. A generic Pentium tower running Windows 98. Higher clock speed with a CD writer.
10. Another generic tower with a Pentium 4. Moved up to a DVD reader with the CD writer in another drive bay.
11. Still another generic tower, this time with a Pentium 5, Windows XP and a DVD writer.

 

[Captain Shaw]

Commodore 16.
My dad picked it up second hand.

 

[Chaos Descending]

Still another generic tower, this time with a Pentium 5, Windows XP and a DVD writer.

What's a Pentium 5?