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On another forum, which has actually got little to do with computing, somebody nevertheless asked about people's first computer. So here goes:

32mb hard disk
1.2mb floppy drive
360kb floppy drive
80286 processor running at about 12MHz
1mb of memory
monochrome monitor
MS-DOS 3.3

Cost: Something over £1,000

Hi,

First computer or first ibm compatibale pc?

First computer: BBC Model B with 32k RAM and tape storage drive with 2Mhz cpu - more info here. Cost about £300. Additional wordprocessor ROM installed - name was something like WordPlus/WordPro?

First PC was a 286 Apricot and I don't remember too many specs, but think it had a 20MB hard drive and of course a 1.44MB floppy. OS was DOS 5.

Cheers,
Adam

My first computer I got a few years ago used from my uncle, was a toshiba 335cds... it had a 266Mhz pentium with MMX, win 98, 4GB hard disk, 32MB of pc66 soldered on ram (Latter increased to 64 via expansion slot), and 4MB of video ram and an 800x600 24bit color monitor even though it didn't look to different from 8bit color (witch is were I eventually left it at to save power)... Never seen a laptop with better speakers though... (at an inch thick you actually have room for REAL speakers) Man I only they made things more like it, were you adjusted brightness via a nob on the side of the monitor, and the sound was adjustable via hardware instead of software...

AJ wrote:Hi,

First computer or first ibm compatibale pc?

First computer: BBC Model B with 32k RAM and tape storage drive with 2Mhz cpu - more info here. Cost about £300. Additional wordprocessor ROM installed - name was something like WordPlus/WordPro?

First PC was a 286 Apricot and I don't remember too many specs, but think it had a 20MB hard drive and of course a 1.44MB floppy. OS was DOS 5.

Cheers,
Adam

If you can remember the BBC Micro, you must be almost as ancient as me.

I still have the first computer that was actually mine, which was a 200MHz Pentium 1 machine. It's called Saturn and is as a test rig probably record holder in my better OS achievements (first machine where I managed to coldstart a videocard, do accelerated 3D, and get multihead output). Specs here even though it has seen it's share of updates over time - at least some RAM and the voodoo card were added later.

Before that I had some irregular access to dad's work machine, of which my first recollection would have been about 21 years ago when I really was too young to register the exact details. Given the circumstances, it would have been either a 386 or 286. We didn't quite do consoles and their sort of luxury.

My first computer:

• MSI MS-6161 Motherboard
• Intel Celeron 366MHz CPU
• 64MB 100Mhz SD-RAM
• 4GB IDE Hard Drive
• Floppy drive
• CD drive
• RTL8139B network card
• And my first hardware modification ever: adding in a Creative Soundblaster (some 16-bit ISA model).

My current computer has a direct lineage of part replacements to that computer, so you could say that they are one and the same.

I'm relatively young, so...

eMachines T1090
Windows XP
128 MB memory
20 GB hard drive

The first computer that was distinctly mine was old model canon, I think it was a A-200 but it did have at least a CGA adapter and monitor.

I'm not sure of the exact specs as the computer bit the dust ages ago. Here's some rough guesses based on what I could scrounge up on the net.

256k of RAM
10 MB HD
MS-DOS 2.11
GW-Basic
Jumpman Lives!
Tetris

The great thing about the computer is that it actually came with a full set of manuals for GW-Basic and that was pretty much the first computer I programmed anything on.
The manuals themselves were pretty distinct as they were those old style hardbacked binder type of manuals.
The binders themselves came in their own little boxes which were all an odd shade of light purple.
Probably a pretty meager computer, even at the time (it was basically mine as a hand me down, pentiums were out but I was basically allowed to toy around on this old PC since it wouldn't matter much if I broke it). Definitely some of the best days of my childhood were spent toying around on that machine and teaching myself basic, figuring out how to make the PC Speaker play music and so forth.

First computer game that I used was a pong game that connected to the TV.

First computer game that was mine was an Atari VCS2600.

First computer that I used was a Sinclair ZX81 I borrowed from a classmate.

First computer that was mine was a Commodore C128D.

My first real computer experience was probably with the Amiga 500. A friend of mine had a dad who had a bunch of computers so I spent a lot of time there. I think we were between 11-13 when we started programming our own games in Amos. Back then you would buy Amiga magazines which always came with snippets of Amos code that you could manually enter line by line. I honestly had no idea what I was doing back then but my friend knew a lot more. He was one of those real computer wizards that suddenly just lost interest in computers. I also remember using what was probably a 8086 or 286 with a monochrome screen that we ran some Basic on and Kings Quest 3 or 4 and an early laptop with a monochrome screen running some old windows version. I also remember surfing around BBSs with a 14.4 modem. It is interesting how vague my details are but I really don't remember much details.

First computer that I used: Elektronika BK-0010.01 with 3MHz CPU, 32KiB RAM and embedded Vilnius BASIC. Tape recorder as a storage.

First computer that was mine: Am486-DX2 66MHz CPU, 8MiB RAM, 200MB HDD and MS-DOS 6.22 / Windows 3.10

It was quite a while ago, but I think the first computer I ever used was a Mac Classic or Mac Classic II (based on Wikipedia pictures and the fact that it had a hard drive but no color.) The earliest memories I have of using it I believe were in 1997 or 1998 (this would be when I learned what Date Modified meant), which would put me at about age 5.

I was handed down a Powerbook G3 (333 MHz with 64MB RAM, IIRC) around 2003-2004, which I guess I sort of owned. The first computer I truly owned was a Mac Mini G4 (1.42 GHz with 512MB RAM IIRC) sometime around 2005-2006. I moved to PC hardware and Linux a couple years later when I built a Core 2-based desktop from some parts I got online.

Man, I feel young...

An old home-made pc with 64mb of memory, a 4gb disk, and a Cyrix 300Mghz processor.
This has been my very first computer, but before I used an old Siemens Liteline laptop (I use it still today for debugging), an Atari 286 I guess and some many other pc I can't remember.

first computer i used: my dads C64

first computer that was mine: 386DX-40, 5MB RAM, 424MB HDD (IDE!), MS-DOS 6.22/WFW 3.11 (assembled from broken/outdated computers at my dads work, and that was the OS they were using at the time)

my first brand-new hardware was a few years later, for christmas, my parents bought me a p5-90 MB/CPU -- and a whole 16MB RAM!

I really don't remember but I remember it was this big white menu-based thing with word-perfect installed as well as the game "wheel of fortune". It had a light on the front that said "8" and "16" periodically. OR something close to that. Maybe it just said "8".