I broke into the world of computers and technology at around the ripe old age of 10. Not so amazing really, but remember…that was in 1984…back when most people on the street didn’t know what a computer was. The day my father came home from Radio Shack with a brand new Tandy 1000 was the beginning of what has turned into a passion for technology.
The Tandy 1000, introduced in 1984, was manufactured to compete directly with the IBM PC. The one I had came standard 128Kb of RAM, one double density 5.25″ floppy disk drive and a 16 color RGB monitor. As add-ons, dad had the foresight to also purchase a matching dot-matrix printer and a Tandy joystick. The system ran on MS DOS 2.11 (maybe the most stable Microsoft OS to date?) and came bundled with DeskMate 1.0. DeskMate was pretty remarkable for it’s time. It was a word processor, spreadsheet, database and calendaring suite that fit on a single 5.25″ floppy…let’s see Microsoft Office do that!
Messing with DeskMate (not me and version 2, but still the same DeskMate)
That’s what I cut my teeth on. There was nobody to ask questions to, no classes to take. I taught myself BASIC programming from the rudimentary manual that came with the system and hours of trial and error. We still had this system up until last year when an unfortunate flood at my parents’ washed this part of my past away…but the memories remain.
What was your first computer? How did it all start for you? Leave a comment and share with the community at large. I would sure be interested in hearing about it.
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I started messing with computers when I was 11, my first PC was a packard bell. It had 64mb ram, 3GB hdd and A 600MHZ CPU. This had Windows 98 installed.
The first computer i remember using was a BBC at school. At home our first one was an Amstrad CPC 464, a direct competitor with the Commodore 64 . Proper old skool with a tape deck. Can only vaguely remember it being that long ago.
My first PC… a no-name “IBM Clone” my parents bought when I was about 8. We were the cool family on the block because we had two 5.25″ disk drives…so we could just leave the MS DOS disk in one drive instead of having to take it out all the time. The dot matrix printer, 16 color RBG monitor and keyboard completed the package. There was one teacher we had… the original the started it all “DOS for Dummies”. Now… 22 years later I’m building machines that were straight out of science fiction at the time.
Being a mechanical designer (non-degreed engineer) back in ’83, I was interviewing potential co-ops at nearby engineering schools for my company and was quickly realizing I was becoming a dinosaur – still working on the board. I started with a personally configured barebones ’286, 8Mb or RAM, 80Mb SCSI hardrive, 15″ color monitor, dual floppies, MS DOS, a wide carriage dot-matrix printer, and loaded AutoCAD 1.9 when it was still being sold out of a garage in California. The total cost for my system was close to $5000 (I still find that hard to believe) because computer stuff was really expensive back then. Regardless, it was the best investment in my career I could have made. Besides which, I can smile when I write a check for computer electronics and software today.
My first computer was an AST 100 MHz Pentium Desktop that I bought while I was stationed in Korea. It came with Windows 3.1, which I later upgraded to Win 95. I remember telling my supervisor about the 1 Gig HDD, and he made the comment, “Man, you’ll never fill that thing up.” He was right; I never did fill it up. That was in 1994.
My first computer was an Atari 800 in 1980. It hooked to an old TV and ran anything I could program into it. I used to copy the code from computer magazines to end up with rudimentary games. I took off though in 1984 with a brand new Macintosh. What really made it go however, was a huge 20 megabyte hard drive I purchased for $700. PC users used to laugh at us “mousers” back then. MS Word & Excel were also written for the Mac long before the programs were available for PCs.
Around 1990 or so a friend had an IBM 8086 running Dos. His software suite was called Zen. You just didn’t copy & paste. You appended at the end of a file, then moved it into the right place. I was fascinated with it. Soon I went to Sears & bought a 386SX running Windows 3.0 which had just come out. The system came with 2M ram, a lot for that day. There was a big difference between SX & DX then. I stepped up to a Gateway 486DX2 & have been stepping up ever since, the last few years building my own.
In 1984, I was due to replace my old car, but decided that I wanted a PC more. Looked briefly at Peanut, frequently recommended, but its specs just didn’t sound right. Finally bought an IBM XT, with a 10 MB hard drive. My son wanted to know how possibly use that much storage.
My first home computer was the Commodore Vic 20. It came with just a Cassette Tape drive for backup/storage. I just hooked it up to my black & white TV rather then spend more for the Commodore monitor. I had several game cartridges (Gorf, Centiepede) and I purchased a Computer magazine every month which had the BASIC code you had to type by hand, save and then run in order to play that months game.
My first computer wasn’t even a PC. It was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum (with 48k of RAM!) with the rubber keys. The games were brilliant and the programming (from me anyway) rubbish. I then eventually (after a few more speccys) upgraded to a 486DX2/50 with 4MB RAM, a 1MB VLBus Trident graphics card and a 110MB HDD running MSDOS 5.0.
My First PC… can’t even remember the official specs, but it was my dads work PC… some Compaq “laptop” type device where the keyboard unattached from the front, revealing some tiny monochrome CRT display, with no HDD and two 5.25 drives. He had Works for it, I think. I have no idea how old I was at the time.
Anyway, he had a 5.25 disk with Digger on it. Reading the Dos 3.30 manual for fun, I found the DIR command, tried it, and found it the disk also had Load Runner, Chess, Asteroids…
Then we upgraded to a 8086, 8 meg HDD! 640k RAM! (ought to be enough for anybody). 14″ VGA screen! I remember when we had our first OS crash and I lost all my savegames.
Then upgraded to a 386DX, 4meg of ram, DOS 5.. I think?
I still use the IBM Model M Keyboard it came with to this day, complete with design omitted Numlock and Capslock lights.
We upgraded this to 486, 8 meg of ram. Dual booting DOS 6.4 and Windows 95. Ever used Windows with 8 meg of ram? Don’t. It literally took 5 minutes to load Netscape.