Your first computer

[Trekker4747]

It was probably a cross between "being funny" and just realizing what would become of old technology in the future. In 1985 I'm sure you could go into an antique store and find 1950s TVs, like the one Marty's maternal grandparents were so excited over.

In grade school we learned typing on a cache of Apple IIe computers. I was always disappointed that those machines had green/black display while the computer I had at home was "full color." (Actually 8 or 16 bit color.)

Anyone ever have the Apple "If It Acts Up Pick it Up and Drop It" III debacle?

 

[Captain Ice]

^I thought that was an SE in the window there.


Looking at that movie now, I roll my eyes more at the Dustbuster than the Mac.

 

[Trekker4747]

^I thought that was an SE in the window there.


Looking at that movie now, I roll my eyes more at the Dustbuster than the Mac.

Indeed. Even now in 2011 a Dustbuster would be more at home in a museum than in an antique store.

The pointing out of the dust jacket around the almanac strikes me as clumsy exposition too. And what paper-back book that thin has a dust jacket?!

I know it was a decade or more beyond their idea of such a thing existing but it would've made more sense if the almanac was a e-reader or something a bit more significant than the stuff religious recruiters used to shove at you at the airport.

I know in an early draft of the script the book was supposed to be something more the size of an unabridged dictionary but for plot reasons they obviously made it tiny book it became. A book that contained 50 years worth of sports statistics for every major sport, including "future" ones. (Like Slamball.)

 

[B.J.]

^ I still laugh at the Cubs winning the World Series against, as Marty says, "Miami?!??" At the time, Florida didn't have *any* pro baseball teams, and as of 2012, the Florida Marlins will be the Miami Marlins.

 

[Trekker4747]

I wonder what back then was more unlikely; Florida getting a pro team or the Cubs winning a series?

 

[Chaos Descending]

Heathkit WH89. Zilog Z-80 based running CP/M.

 

[ed629]

It was 12mhz Packard Bell with a 40mb hard drive, 256 megs of RAM (I think) and a 14,400 baud modem with VGA.

 

[Itisnotlogical]

Some kind of Gateway running Windows XP. Thing crashed all the bloody time, it'd seize up if you looked at it wrong and you'd have to do a hard reset, probably losing all of whatever you were working on. It finally died and is now sitting in my shed, in the hope that one day I might take it to some kind of repair shop.

 

[Brolan]

Radio Shack TRS-80, otherwise known as the Trash-80. It came complete with black-and-white monitor and cassette drive to save and load programs on. Damn it was slow.

 

[Warped9]

I loved my Indigo iMac. My eMac was a very dependable machine even if I didn't have the same affection for it as my Indigo Mac. I'm really liking my current iMac.

 

[RAMA]

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

RAMA

 

[Santaman]

My 286 has a drive like this: A Seagate ST4026, highly modern at the time because it had a voice coil actuator instead of a stepper motor, its 5.25" full hight so twice as high as a CD-ROM drive and it has 21 Megabyte of space..

 

[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!

 

[Tora Ziyal]

Early 1980's. Tandy 2000. 256K. MS-DOS.

 

[John Clark]

My first computer was an Oric 1 (48k version). Later I got various Spectrums, an Amiga 500+ before moving on to a PC.

First PC was an Escom 486-DX2-66 with Win3.11

 

[Count Zero]

I got my first computer for my 18th birthday in 1998. It had a Pentium II MMX @ 350 MHz, either 64 or 128 k RAM (can't quite remember) and a 10 GB hard drive which I thought was really big at the time. It ran Win 98. It never really broke but I gave most components away at some point as I was inheriting newer, better stuff from my brother and father and replaced nearly everything over time. I think the only component I still have of that computer is the system hard drive of my desktop computer that I don't use anymore. Except right now because my laptop is at the repair shop.

If you take a look at the development regarding computers even in the relatively short time span I've owned one, it's really breathtaking.

 

[Nurse Marmalade]

My first computer was a Sony VAIO with Windows 95...purchased around 1997 or so.

Nowadays I use an iMac which I bought last year. Love it!

 

[Avon]

my first and only computer is this laptop im using now. dont know the inside numbers

 

[Amaris]

I just remembered my AMD K6-2 350Mhz system. I got it around 2000/2001, and was an old, beat up Compaq that I bought from my old job for $50. Got it up to speed and purring like a kitten in a half an hour (replaced the power supply). That's also the first time I had RoadRunner and it was amazing.

 

[ares93]

Early 1980's. Tandy 2000. 256K. MS-DOS.

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

Rama and Santaman: My phone has 32gb memory. And my oldest machine has 19540bytes(!). Meaning i can write 19540 letters before the harddrive is full. I think i take the trekbbs record, yeah?