Your first computer?
 

What was your first computer, and approximate date you started using it? Also please state your age for reference purposes. :)

I'm 21, and the first computer I used was a Commodore 64, in late 1986. The games for that were awesome!

They've certainly come a long way since then. ;)

Ah come on, you can't count playing games as using a computer! Especially not at the age of 4.

I too am 21.

Although I was also probably playing on a Commodore64 at the same time as you were, I'll say the first time I really *used* a computer was the age of 6 or 7. I believe it was a 286 IBM PC.

I sure did crash that thing a lot, but in the same rite I learned to recover my crashes so that my parents wouldn't kill me.

Ah, those were the days.

My first computer was a Commodore 64. First computer I actually owned was a Pentium 166. I'm 24.

antagony:
What do you consider "using" them? I think a lot of gamers wouldn't appreciate your opinion. :)

The truth is I really did play games on a C64 when I was about 4. They were mostly educational games, like Carmen Sandiego. Some action games and stuff like that.

But if you want something that's more "real", I programmed my first QBASIC game in DOS 5.0 in 1988-1989 ... it was a weird version of Hangman, I think. This was on an IBM PS/2 with a 386sx/15 or something like that. :)

Those computers never crashed for me...

And yeah, those were the days...

I guess I'm a cookie-cutter person just like everyone else. I started with a C64. Then a handful of years later moved up to a 386/20 ... I think with 4M of RAM.

I'm almost 21, and the first one I remember owning was a 386-16 that cost 3000.

Amstrad CPC 464 - Loading games off a tape since 1990

im 17 and started with a p166 64megs of ram(alot back then) and windows 95

i dont think i found porn on the internet till i got my K6/2 500

My first Computer was one of the first 133mhz, im 18 know (19 in 2 weeks :D)

My first computer was a Commodore 64 w/1541 floppy drive & dotmatrix printer. The deal set my parents back $1200 @ the federated group. The promise my sister and I made to my parents was "it'll improve our grades, honest" I don't know about our grades, but I did teach myself BASIC, and learned very quickly that I wasn't born to be a programmer.
I did become a lifelong fan of Microprose & Sid Meier (Acrojet, Gunship, Airborne Ranger, etc....)

Ah, those were the days. BTW, I'm 32

1980, was 9 years old, dad bought an Atari 400, loading games off a tape deck, who thought it could get any better.

Apple ]['s in Kindergarden. Educational game and typing and stuff.

First hand-me-down was a LC III, but my first bought computer was a PowerMac dual 450 back in 2000.

I remember in elementary school, we used to play oregon trail on some macs: I don't even remember what they where.

It was "advanced" as graphics went back then.

my first one that i owned is one i'm using now.

yes, it's shitty

1989, I was 11 and my dad brought home a 1986 IBM 286 from his job, they got brand new machines so they let him have it. All steel case that weighed at least 50lbs, orange monochrome monitor, 5 1/4" drive, 5 mhz (or was it 10, too long ago :) ) processor, DOS 3.2...oh yeah...it's sitting in a closet at my parent's house, and it still worked last time I checked.

Best thing about it was the Model M "clicky" keyboard that came with it, which I am STILL USING TO THIS DAY.

Ohh hell ya.. Those where the days Oregon Trail on our Schools first computers, Apple ][e's

My first home computer was probably a Tandy 386 if i remember correcly

First computer I used was an Apple IIGs...color screen man...no hard drive...everything ran off of 3.5 of 5.25 floppys. Then my parents "rented" a 386 that had dos 6.22 on it....they joys of command prompt :) then we bought a packard bell with a 486 dx processor and 64mb of ram and a 2 gig hard drive with windows 3.1 that was the shit.....and then eventually upgraded it to windows 95 :D

I'm 21, too. Didn't have a C64, though--my buddy had one, and I was always insanely jealous. We'd play on it for hours. My first computer was even older (I think), it was an IBM XT compatible with QD-DOS. My dad took it from his work in '84 or '85, when I was 2 or 3. I must have started being a nerd very young, because I wrote BASIC programs on it even back then.

i'm 35 now. i was about 12 and my first computer was a vax, well not really, i had a vt52 terminal and a 300baud coupler modem and dialed into a vax.

my first pc was a 286 clone i think i was about 16

My first was a Commodore Plus 4 in 1985. At the time, I thought it was an upgraded C-64. It turned out to be nothing more than a glorified word processor that wouldn't run C-64 apps. I finally got the C-64 in 1986 though and loved it.

TRS-80 CoCo Model 1. I wish I still had it :( I learned to program on that thing.

I'm 34.

I started on an Apple II+, 48k base with a 16k upgrade.. started with tape player and a 5 1/4. Had friends with Atari 400/800 and we all learned different things with programming from sprites to player missle graphics. My mentor was the guy who wrote Buck Rodgers for the Apple.

I went on to make games for Disney in the late 80's. Working with the guy who did the arcade stand up Star Trek, on his team we made.Dick Tracy, Aracnophobia, Ducktales, Mickey's ABC's, Donald's Alphabet chase and a few others.

im 13 so i have the luck to have a windows 95 pc and i started to use it the night i got it. it was a extremely fast 33mhz computer (sarcasm), 100mb and 16 mb of memory not bad comparing to some of yours.

I'm 20 and I think my first was an Apple II when I was in elementary school. Pretty much the Oregon Trail and Silent Service were the only things I could run on that thing.

My first unit was a C-64...must have been nine or ten when we got it. I'm 25 now. First PC was a 486-DX2/50MHz with 4MB RAM, and a 420MB hard drive. Had Windows for Workgroups 3.11. My main rig now is an Athlon 1200 with 512MB PC2100 DDR, and a 20GB hard drive all running WinXP. I've had it for about two years now.

Comodore VIC-20
It had a 6502A processor running at 1.0227 MHz and 5KB of RAM.
I remember typing out games in BASIC and saving them on a cassette tape.

I'm 30, and the first computer I used was an Apple ][ that my elementary school had. I did programing on it, learning from that wonderful magazine Home Computing.

The first one I bought, I bought used, and totally got ripped off. When I was 19 (1992) I bought a 286 from some guy at my mom's work. Paid something like 1100 for it. Man was it a piece of shit.

Hmm.. first computer I used was probably in 1989... but I cannot remember what the heck it was! I was 5 years old at the time. Yep! 5!

First computer of any kind I owned was an Apple IIc compatible called the Laser 128. This would have been around 1987 or so (I was 16 at the time). First PC was in January 1994, a 486-DX2 66MHz w/8MB RAM, 400MB HDD, and a Diamond Viper VLB video card. All for just $2940. :)

Doesn't anybody else see a problem here? :rolleyes:

I'm 20, any my first computer was a Mac LC-II. It was pretty cool for the time (~1992) and it cost my mom almost a grand. I remember it had 256 colors, and about a year after I got it I upgraded it with a 1x external cd-rom and speakers. It was the shit.

A new in the box MATTEL AQUARIUS 2


When the Keyboard Component project was canceled, Mattel searched in a hurry to produce a small and cheap computer. They contacted Radofin Electronics Far East, based in Honk-Kong, who was manufacturing most of the Intellivision products. Radofin had just developped a line of three Z80 based computers. Mattel decided to sell the two first under their brand. The Aquarius 1 and 2 were born.

The Mattel Aquarius uses a special version of the Microsoft Basic. When it is used with basic, only 1.7 KB are available.

There were no redefinable characters, but 256 predefined were available : 128 ASCII (numerals, upper and lower case alphabet, punctuation, symbols) and 128 graphic patterns. That was the only "graphical" features of the Aquarius !

Unfortunately the specifications were so poor for a 1983 computer, that the Aquarius "1" litteraly bombed. Three months after its release, Mattel decided to cancel the project and to sell back the rights and stocks to Radofin.

Radofin continued to sell Aquarius 1 & 2 under its own name, but without success...

Cool addons were developped for the Aquarius, but never made it to the shelves (apparently). There were a Master Expansion Module equiped with disk-drives and expansion slots for future addons. It even offered the CP/M compatibility !

Another sympathetic extension was the Home Computer System Command Console which allowed the Aquarius to directly control up to 255 electric devices. But when the computers is used with this extension, it can't be used for anything else !

There were also a Modem planned and Mattel even announced network services for games and programs downloads...




NAME AQUARIUS
MANUFACTURER Mattel Electronics
TYPE Home Computer
ORIGIN U.S.A.
YEAR 1983
BUILT IN LANGUAGE Specific Microsoft Basic interpreter
KEYBOARD Rubber type. 49 keys
CPU Zilog Z80A
SPEED 3.5 mHz
RAM 4 kb (up to 16 kb), 1,7k free for user
ROM 8 kb
TEXT MODES 40 x 25
GRAPHIC MODES 80 x 72, 320 x 192
COLORS 16
SOUND 1 voice
SIZE / WEIGHT 34,5(W) x 15(D) x 5,5(H) cm.
I/O PORTS Tape, Printer, Bus
POWER SUPPLY External power supply (12v)
PERIPHERALS Thermic printer and plotter (1200 bauds)
Tape-recorder (600 bauds)
Mini-expander addon
RAM expansions (4k & 16k)
Master expansion module & disk-drives (vaporware)
Home Computer System

Mine was a PC-xt or something.

Wow, we have come a long way!

C64, it was all decked out. Tape drive, disk drive, printer, burned through several joysticks.

Then next computer was a Macintosh SE/30

Then the first computer I actually bought myself was a P2 300 HP.

Now I got one I built with an ASUS mobo, 512megs of ram, 50x cd, 4x4x24 cdrw (haha yeh its slow), 12x DVD, 30 gig, 60 gig, 80gig, all 7200 rpm 80 gig is ATA 133, the others are ATA100. Old GF2MX classic 32meg. 19" crappy mag monitor, epson stylus 760 printer. think thats about it.

My first one was a C64 which I hardly ever used except to use some crude painting program and play some fishing game. I'm kicking myself now for getting rid of it as a teenager. (I still have the mouse from it, oddly enough) My next one back in '98 was an HP 8485z... 450 Pentium 3 cpu, 96 mb RAM, 12 gig hard drive, integrated ATI rage video card. Served me well for about a year then everything went to hell... I'm still using the keyboard from it though. Built my own after that.

i know its a problem im wasting my life away but i dont care and sorry about the other username my stupid cousin made it.

Apple IIc, but I don't remember the year. Anybody remember playing Karateka?

IBM PS1

Thats not what hes talking about

First computer I USED was a 486 around the time I was in 6th grade (94/95) - it had a dot matrix printer :p

First computer I OWNED is this one I'm using right now. Started using it after I built it in August of 2001.

I am 20.

First *computer* was an Atari.

I don't know the model because I was far to young to remember. It was cartridge based, and I had an 8-inch floppy drive hooked up to it. Ran it off a 10 inch sharp television, to which I still use today.

I then moved onto a 2mhz (!) 286. Not sure how much memory it had. Standard floppy, as well as an 8-inch. Not sure what kind of video it had either.

Upgraded that to a 33mhz 386, CD-Rom (!), VGA video card, and all the goodies. Eventually plugged a sound card in, and it was good to go.

After that came a steady stream of Intel, with a 486, VESA, etc.

Since them I've had a plethora of processors, including (regretably) a Cyrix (which was short lived), and numerous Intel and AMD procs.

oh, and i'm 21

A Tandy 5000. Thats where it all started. I took it apart one day and I was hooked on PCs. The HD on that thing was a double tall 5 1/4 and held less than ten megs(?). I actually own two double tall 5 1/4 HDs now but they hold 23gigs each and are external scsi's. Ahh, the simple days.

My next computer was a 486DX 66 from my brother. He had given it to my parents for some money that they loned him (about $1500). I still have the case from it. Thats when a CDROM ran off the sound card. Man, was that rough to work on. I remember installing a Norton product and it had all these gauges to monitor your computer with. It bogged it down so much that I cried to my father about it. I was only about 10 years old when I got that thing!

TI 99/4A I was about 7 years old. That thing had a smoking 16k under the hood.

00

Tandy 1000 TL, 16 color video, 3 voice sound, and the gui (cannot remember the name) was loaded by pushing the F12 key and it was on an EEPROM, talk about speed.

I was in the 6th grade, it was 1988.

2 3.5" floppy drives and a 300 baud modem, a local BBS run by the guys at Radio Shack.

Memories.

I am 25 and my first computer was an Apple IIGS, it was even a Wozniak edition. I remember upgrading it to half a mb or RAM or something so I could run the new Print Shop. The first computer I actually bought was a P166 with 16MB of RAM. I spent $2000.

TI99/4a & an Apple IIe, and of course a Laser 128. I was in fourth grade when I really started going computer crazy. Dad was a Computer Science teacher. Oh, I'm 25

First was an Atari 800 with the fully upgraded 48k of RAM plus a floppy drive. Cost around $1000 if I remember right. I was about 12 (1980) and wanted it mainly to play Star Raiders. Still have it somewhere...

1st computer ever owned was an IBM PS/2 Model 25 8086 w/512Kb Ram and a 30MB HDD. I upgraded the RAM with an actual IC chip and bumped it 128Kb to 640K

Mine was a C64 - With all these posts wonder why Commodore went out of Biz (Discounting Satan Gates)...

Next PC was a PII Deskpro. (Yeah I had a big long vacation called High school and University :) )

Timex Sinclair 1000, baby!

http://oldcomputers.net/pics/ts1000.JPG


Shortly thereafter I got one of these:
http://oldcomputers.net/pics/C64.jpg

Ours was an Aquarius (I know no one seems to have ever heard of it) It had no way of storing memory - not even a connector to use a tape player to record on. So in order to get it to make concentric circles or even more difficult stuff lol I had to type in the whole program in basic every time I turned the thing on. Learned my Basic language well though. That was back in 4th grade about 20 years ago. Yikes! Next computer we had about 4 years later Dad, brother and I put together from the parts ourselves. Lasted for about 8 years before my parents actually purchased one.

C64 for me, too. I was about 5, and my Mom was remarrying, so my stepdad impressed me with his C64 and let me use it constantly. I remember playing a game where it gave me $20,000 for winning... and I was so excited, I thought the money was really coming to me in the mail.
First I owned outright wasn't until I was about 11 and they bought me a 386. I still chuckle, it had 4mb of RAM, and for getting As on my report card, my parents upgraded it to 8 MEGABYTES!!! It seemed like such a great thing at the time. Now I have 4mb of RAM in my soundcard :-P

1983 Kaypro II. Wordstar ruled!

I still remember playing Ladder on that thing. . and the G key was labelled "Bell G" for some reason. The thing was built like a brick shithouse. You could almost shoot it with buckshot and it wouldn't break. Ran on CP/M, which was a lot better than MSDOS.

God Im OLD at 43, first PC was a Alltair kit in the late 70's had to build it yourself and program all funtions, even had a wooden case and cost several thousanfd dollars, No screen flashing lights only. Next real PC was a Kaypro 2 portable, running CPM and large floppy disk, Portable meant it was a 9inch by 26 inch metal box that weighed almost thirty pounds had a five inch screen built into the lid. After that original MAcs Apple 11e on and on and on, up to current with about five pcs right now including Sony Vaio PC Apple dual G4, 12 and 15 ich powerbook G$ and a couple of the new XP tablets

I had one of these for a short while in 1984. You could program it in Basic. You could use any cassette deck to store your work. It had no internal drives. I think my HP programmable calculator at the time could do a lot more.

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/...ndy_mc10_1.jpg

I am with the masses, I too had a C64, but my first was a Packard Bell (Pack-it-to Hell) 486/66, crashed my first HD on Doom :).

...was an x86 piece of crap, with a 14" orange monochrome monitor, 640KB RAM, 21MB HDD, a 1400bps modem (that I never was able to get to work), running MS DOS.

The only programs that I had that would run on the thing were WordPerfect 5.1, and Jeopardy.

Made a better doorstop than a computer.

I'm 27, and I distinctly remember using some trs-80's that were in the math hall of my high school. Punch card heaven!! Of course our school was way out of date anyways. We also used some 286 in the computer lab, and one of the classrooms had some brand new apple's in it my junior year. Anybody remember playing DarkCastle? :D

SecretMethod70, you sure pack a lot of knowledge for such a relatively short time in this hobby! Glad you are around here to help answer my questions.

Around 1988 I bought an IBM 8088. I used to use Prodigy with no hard drive, 256k ram, and a large 300baud external modem. I bought a Seagate 20mb hard drive for it and thought that was the last hard drive I would need.

I first computer I remember using was a 386 with 2mb ram. My grandfather is like an old tech guru and has been doing tech stuff since the early 70's. He always had 10-15 TVs taken apart on his porch with 2-3 atariis and lots of computers but I can't really remember anything else since I was probally only 5 or 6 years old.

An IBM XT clone. Don't remember when that was though

Apple ][c in '82. Then I got a Mac Plus in '85 and have owned Macs ever since.

Should we? Quit trying to be the moral police and let the kid be. This IS a computer section anyway. I am curious though to find out how long he stays since I thought you had to be 18 to register. I could be wrong and to tell the truth there are worse things going on than a 13 year old looking at tits and ass every once in awhile.

/end rant

The first was a pong game .. that's all it was .. the first computer you could enter stuff on was an Atari 400.

First computer I ever used was an Apple IIe in elememtary school. The first computer my family owned didn't come until I was 14, it was a Compaq 486 with 4 mb of RAM and about a 200 mb hard disk. The first computer I owned is this homebuilt I'm typing this on that just turned 2 years old. Wow, my computer is almost as old as some of the posters in this thread :)

Oh, I'm 23

I started kinda late. My first comp was a packard bell 66mhz DX-2. I thought I was the shit cause I had the math co-processor. I remeber when I did some raytracing on it and it took about an hour to render one frame. Boy am I glad I am not using that thing anymore.

Damn Apple ][ in Kindergarden... I loved playing number munchers... wow that brings me back to the day... i'm 19 now.

At 33, the first computer I had access to was an Apple ][ in about 5th grade or so. The first copmuter I bought was an Apple ][e. Those were the good days!

IBM 5150
green monochrome......mmmmm....

First computer I remember using was a Tandy 1000. I was about 5 or so, don't remember many of the programs other than a basic paint program and a text editor. I played my first games on that computer (gauntlet and king's quest).

I am 20 now.

I guess the first computer I used was a
Burroughs mainframe -- don't know the
model. I'd fill out COBOL coding sheets at
home, my dad would take 'em to work and
have the keypunch ladies punch 'em up in
their spare time, and he'd bring the printouts
home with him.

That would have been about 1967 or 68.

First machine I ever laid hands on was a
Data General Nova, I think. Programmed
in machine language using the front panel
switches. Results read out of memory, one
lamp per bit.

I'm 47. Please please please let there be
an older old fart here than I am.

First computer I used was probably a BBC Master at school, and I eventually got a second-hand BBC B at home.

First PC was a 386 my dad bought, I think I was the only kid at school with a 'proper' computer at home around then (around 1990)

For the record (and since everyone else seems to be doing so) I'm 21

Timex Sinclair 1000 with 1 KB of RAM - we bought the 16 KB memory expansion and a tape drive.

Commodore VIC-20 with tape drive.

TI 99/4A. Nice machine at the time but $ to expand.

Atari 800, 800XL, 1200XE, then ST modded out with hard drive and the awesome Magic Sac to emulate MacOS. I used the MacOS far more than the Atari TOS.

By college we went with 286 and it was Intel/Microsoft from there out. Oh, I did run OS/2 2.0 for awhile at work until NT 3.51 came out.

im 17 and i can only remember have an old crappy pc my dad got from his job than ran on basic. I new how to use basic when i was 5 and now im havin trouble usin xp at 17 thats kindaa funny

Some weird computer, think it was a c64, too young to really remember to pay attention, but other than than an old computer that ran off of cartridges and hooked up to your tv and had an printer that needed the holely paper. used apple IIEs and got a feel for them more than the other 2. But first computer I REALLY owned was a Apple Performa 630CD, one of the first with cd roms, 8 mb of ram, 256mb hd. also my first laptop was an apple powerbook 165c, THE VERY FIRST COLOR LAPTOP!!! Anyways, now I've crawled out of the stone age and am running a highly modded Compaq Pressario 900mhz Athlon, where i think the only stock parts are the lan card, motherboard, and cpu, nothing else including the case is stock anymore. runs like a champ, gonna keep it and keep using it til it dies, came close a couple times, but I saved my baby.

First computer for me Im 26 was atari 400 then a comadore 64 was loving life then

I'm forty-fuckin-one. First computer owned was a 386 with 2megs of RAM running DOS. I upgraded it to death. I distinctly remember buying a 4meg memory upgrade for $200

First computer used was in "computer lab" in high school in the late 70's. It was wired to a main frame somewhere. No screen, just everything printing out on a paper roll. Man it was slow, but it was alot of fun! After a couple hours of using it, you'd have these piles of paper built up all around you!

heh
 

Apple 2c, 1982, and im 35

Computers I have Owned:

1982 -- Atari 800 (programming in BASIC.....not just playing games)

1984 -- Apple IIc (with a 1200 baud modem.....loved those BBS's)

1989 -- Mac SE/30 (Got me into and through college)

1992 -- Mac IIvx (Purchased through the teachers' discount program)

2003 -- Dell Dimension 4550 (Before the "Dude" guy got busted...)

My laundry list:
386SX 33mhz
486/75 laptop
P150
P200MMX
PII 333
T-Bird 900
Quantispeed 2100

im 19 and my first (family) computer was a 486, my dad later sold it to my aunt who still has it

I don't remember exactly, but in the 80s a Philadelphia-area college was requiring/highly recommending students buy a Mac (SE at the time?) for enrollment.

First experience would have been in 2nd grade, '72 or '73, when the University(of Illinois) installed a Plato terminal in our classroom. It had a plasma screen, so we could actually play game type stuff on it. The terminals where frickin' huge,about the size of a small refridgerator. A couple years later, they added sensors around the screen, making them 'touch' sensitive. They could display photographs, too, if they had the slide projector mounted in the back.
By junior high, some of my friends were learning to program on them, at an open computer lab on campus.
My high school's 'computer lab,' a side room offa the math office, had, I think, TRS-80's. I never got into it, though.

I decided about five years ago that it was time to see what this computer/internet nonsense was all about, and got a generic-ish refurb with a 233 cyrix, onboard sound and video, and running win95. Started upgrading after a month or two, and haven't looked back since.

Well I'm 32 and I was about 10 years old when I got a Spectrum 16k. Cool computer, I did like the rubber keys !

I was able to borrow a couple Apple IIe's at different times in my youth. My senior year of HS (Dec '91) we bought a Mac LC. Two months later I spent $120 to upgrade the memory from 2 to 4mb. Another bump down the road, and two external HD's along the way, and it got me through college in good shape.

In Spring '96 just after I got my first 'real' job I cobbled together a 486sx, mostly out of other pplz' castoff parts.
Since then I've gotten into the buy/sell/trade/repair game,mostly used and vintage hardware, so I have had perhaps 50 whole machines pass through this house...Macs Suns PCs.

I have a couple 8" floppy drives and a 300 baud acoustic coupler on a shelf in the garage. I know how to whistle into the coupler ;)

first used, wang 2020 (i think that was the number) then a sinclair zx80 a real one not a timex :)

then the usual roadmap in approx order, pet, zx81, spectrum , vic20, c64, c128, aquarius, cpc 464, bbc model b, amiga , pc

19, IBM Aptiva 486dX win3.11/dos6.3

mine was a 386

Yeah, and it looks like he's been banned along with the 17 year old. Can't belive they're too dense to lie about thier age.

Um, been using computers since I was like geez... before I can remember. Before kindergarten.... Some old luggable running MS DOS 3.20 ( i think it was new at the time) was the first, unless there was something before that that I cannot remember, then something running windows 3.1, then a p166 with windows 95, then a celeron 500 with windows 98, then a celeron 700 with ME and linux on it, it ran XP for a while... now a celeron 1200 running mandrake 8.2.... damnit, I need to get me an athlon. for age perspective, I'm 18.

Computers I had/owned since I was a kid.

Apple IIe - 1MHz
Commodore VIC 20 - 1MHz
IBM 8530, PS/2 Model 30 - 8MHz
ZenithBull - 286MHz
Unisys - 386MHz
HP - 486MHz DX2
Handbuilt Pentium - 166MMX
Dell Pentium II - 450Mhz
Handbuilt - P3 1.4GHz
Alienware - P4 2.8GHz

I loved the Vic20 with the "Datassette" add on. Before the "Datassette" I would sit and type in code (for some random game) all day from the manual only to have it not work or have to go back and try to find any errors I made. In the end I would shut off the computer only to lose all data and have no game to play. Then my parents bought the "Datassette" and I was able to save all my data onto a cassette tape. :)

The first computer I remember using was a 386. Ah the good 'ol days. The first one I could actually call my own I built when I was around 13 or 14. It was a PII 333.

I'm 19 now btw.

386. the TURBO switched it between 8 and 16 Mhz, with a nifty led readout of what speed it was going. dos/5 windows/3.0 (i think i was the only one I knew with 3.0, everyone else had 3.1). don't remember other details... just that i ran "del .." from a directory i was trying to remove (since "del DIRNAME" said "directory not empty" and all that was in the directory was "." and "..")... that hosed autoexec.bat quite nicely :-\

My first was a Timex Sinclair 1000 with 8K (yes, K, not MB) of memory. Hooked up to a TV for a monitor. I ltaught myself BASIC with it. I still have it!

My second was a Franklin ACE-1000 (guess I liked the 1000 series of things). It was an Apple ][ clone. Fun little machine. Got me through high school and college.

The Texas instruments computer TI-90? can't remember the number. When I was 18, I worked for Radio Shack and we sold the TRS-80s. I remember the Color Computer was the hot item with 16K of mem. upgradeable to a whopping 64K!

Then I moved up to the commodore C128. First real computer was a Compudyne 286 16mhz. Back then memory was so expensive that it wasn't included with the computer. It came with a keyboard and 3.5" floppy. That's it. Started out with (I think) 256K of mem. on it.

First one I used was in 1975. Punch cards. Fortran. Huge magnetic reel-to-reel tapes to load the OS in the morning.

First one I owned was in 1987 or 88. Commodore Amiga. In many respects, a better video tool than the P4 2 gig machine I'm on now.

Tandy CoCo 2 in 1982 (at age 25).

My first ever pc was a 1985 hunk o' junk (tm) German pc with 16K RAM, 3 inch disks, no hard disk and BASIC 1.0 on it. Can't tell you the brand name because I honestly don't remember. Thing is, I was born in 1984 so the PC was only a year younger than I was. Still, it was cool since my first computer experience was with programming - something that's always been an advantage.

In 1996 we got a Pentium 100Mhz with 8MB RAM, and a few years ago I got a Pentium III 900Mhz, which I'm still using today. I plan on getting a new one next year.