Your first computer

[Amaris]

I remember my first actual computer that I purchased brand new and retail. It was an HP Pavilion 8650. It had a 533 Mhz Celeron processor, 64MB of RAM, a 10GB hard drive, a DVD-Reader, a 15" CRT monitor, and an HP deskjet printer, and came with Windows 98. I accessed my first po-, er, news site on that computer.

 

[Amaris]

I remember my first actual modern computer that I purchased brand new and retail. It was an HP Pavilion 8650, and I spent a year paying it on layaway. It had a 533 Mhz Celeron processor, 64MB of RAM, a 10GB hard drive, a DVD-Reader, a 15" CRT monitor, and an HP deskjet printer, and came with Windows 98. I accessed my first po-, er, news site on that computer.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Speaking of porn, I remember this weird program called 'Hot Apples' that managed to cause the Apple ][ diskdrive to make, uh, noises.

And it had a Trek theme.

 

[Pingfah]

^ Had one of those, too! the 64, not the 32.

Show off

Did you have any Eddie games?

 

[CorporalClegg]

Welsh computing at its finest.

That's actually ... kinda shmexy.

 

[ITL]

^ Had one of those, too! the 64, not the 32.

Show off

Did you have any Eddie games?

Not that I recall - what sort of games were they?

 

[Tom Hendricks]

Here is a listing of my first computers:

Commodore Pet

Commodore 64

Apple II

Atari ST 1040

Packard Bell -
75 MHz Pentium CPU
8 MB FPM DRAM
1 GB hard drive
1 MB integrated Cirrus Logic GD5430 PCI video card
Some funky combo SoundBlaster 16-compatible sound card and 14.4 Kbps modem
CD-ROM drives
One ubiquitous 3.5" floppy disk drive
14" XGA (1024x768) monitor with some pretty fly bolt-on speakers

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Mine is an A3000, then - single unit with red function keys, so it's not an A3020.

That was a nice classic model, from what I read - it paved the way for the later generation of Arcs. And, I guess, the advertisers did have a point - from a physical point of view it really did look like the second coming of the BBC Micro.

 

[Pingfah]

^ Had one of those, too! the 64, not the 32.

Show off

Did you have any Eddie games?

Not that I recall - what sort of games were they?

Platform games, he was a head attached to a boot.

 

[ITL]

Mine is an A3000, then - single unit with red function keys, so it's not an A3020.

That was a nice classic model, from what I read - it paved the way for the later generation of Arcs. And, I guess, the advertisers did have a point - from a physical point of view it really did look like the second coming of the BBC Micro.

Yep, it was definitely a Bigger Brother of the BBC.

Show off

Did you have any Eddie games?

Not that I recall - what sort of games were they?

Platform games, he was a head attached to a boot.

That does ring a bell...

I do remember the Dragon version of Manic Miner - in black and white! But with two extra levels.

 

[Miss Chicken]

I am almost embarrassed to mention how, back in about 1994, I was absolutely amazed how good the graphics were on the Apogee game Hocus Pocus. I remember raving to my sister about them.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Mine is an A3000, then - single unit with red function keys, so it's not an A3020.

That was a nice classic model, from what I read - it paved the way for the later generation of Arcs. And, I guess, the advertisers did have a point - from a physical point of view it really did look like the second coming of the BBC Micro.

Yep, it was definitely a Bigger Brother of the BBC.

I also seem to remember that the 32-bit A3000 was designed and marketed to take on the next-generation 16-bit home computer giants in the UK, namely the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga - perhaps much in the same way that the Electron attempted to take on the ZX Spectrum. Clearly it was the more advanced computer, but in the family and games markets it didn't make a dent. Then of course the PCs and games consoles took over things and the rest is history.

 

[ITL]

I also seem to remember that the 32-bit A3000 was designed and marketed to take on the next-generation 16-bit home computer giants in the UK, namely the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga - perhaps much in the same way that the Electron attempted to take on the ZX Spectrum. Clearly it was the more advanced computer, but in the family and games markets it didn't make a dent. Then of course the PCs and games consoles took over things and the rest is history.

As I remember, Atari and Commodore had too much of a huge slice of the games market for the Archie to compete. Acorn's forte was the educational side of things. There was the "coolness" factor, too - for gaming kids, the Amiga was the one to have.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Speaking of 16-bits, our secondary school's music department used to have two Atari STs for synth music. I seem to recall they were excellent music-making machines. (Of course, they were later replaced with PCs, like everything else.)

 

[ITL]

Speaking of 16-bits, our secondary school's music department used to have two Atari STs for synth music. I seem to recall they were excellent music-making machines. (Of course, they were later replaced with PCs, like everything else.)

STs were great for MIDI, but had the same onboard sound chip as the Amstrad 8-bits. Amigas had a much better sound chip - Commodore machines always did.

 

[Amaris]

*SCREAMS*

HOW DID IT FIND ME?! WHY IS IT THERE MOCKING ME!?!?!

*RUNS AWAY*

 

[Starbreaker]

Some old POS Packard Bell. It had 65 MBs.

 

[nevermore]

IBM PC Jr., given to me for xmas when I was 8 or 9, so 1984 or 1985. Never used it because I couldn' be bothered to learn DOS - it sat in the basement for about 6 years and I have no idea what we did with it when we moved. my friends had a Tandy, which was way more fun.

We had Apple IIs and Apple IIe's in middle school, when we were taught to plot points on a graph to draw a flower. That was the sum total of my formal computer education.

In 1990, I was handed down a Macintosh Plus, which I had through 1995.

Then I got a second-hand Gateway 2000, then a couple of other hand-me-downs which I cobbled together to get something useable. Bought my first laptop (a Compaq, I think) in 2004 off the shelf at Best Buy while in an election day daze. Got a Dell XPS from work in 2006, and a hand-me-down Macbook Pro this year, also circa 2006 or 2007; still have and use both of those, primarily the Mac.

 

[Amaris]

^ Mac Plus. Now THERE was a great computer.

 

[Lindley]

Everyone remember the Mac Plus in the antiques store in BTTF2?

Keep in mind that machine was only 3 years old when the movie came out. The producers probably thought they were being funny.

Not so funny now....