What Was Your First Computer??

[ferlew]

Prompted by AbEd's thread, it reminded me of ours.
It was an Acorn Electron 32K, what was yours?

[Calibax]

ZX81

[Ouzel]

At work - an IBM XT

[DTCwordfan]

Apple 2E, 64kb, first outside the IT department, working in Belgium, credibility issues on cashflow spreadsheets on our new build and upgrade projects solved when I let one of our young sales staff go over the sheet and he went back with the message, 'he's absolutely spot on - we have been using a dud crib sheet...'

[Ann]

Mine was an Amstrad PCW8256 in 1986.
http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/528/amstrad-pcw-8256/

[Cloverjo]

Mine was a Spectrum. I loved it, even though the power cable socket was so hopeless that one nudge could make you lose power and waste the hours you spent typing in those programs that were printed in computer games magazines. I still have it even though I can't use it now. Loading the games on via a tape recorder was great, too! My son half thinks I'm joking about that.

[Stephen_G]

Didn't buy my first one until 2002. Advent desktop.

[ferlew]

Flipping heck Stephen, how have you managed so long without?

[SlackAlice]

Spectrum ZX81

[barney15c]

Zx81 then spectrum 48k c64 oric atmos msx Atari 800xl electron BBC b Atari St Amiga 500 and finally various PC's over a 30 year period!!!

[SpikeyBush]

I had a ZX81 for a while. It was tuned to the spare *** on the telly in the drawing room. That telly only had four knobs and they were used for BBC1, BBC2, Granada and the ZX81. Then without the slightest bit of sympathy in 1982 Channel 4 opened and we ran out of knobs. So my ZX81 and 16k rampack were both sidelined while I saved up for a black & white portable, secondhand from the charity shop. Took me three months to save up for it. Even longer for the valves to warm up.

[SpikeyBush]

AB won't let me use the singular of knobs

[DaisyNonna]

An abacus

[ferlew]

Try nob Spikey.

[Stephen_G]

Was an Electrical Draughtsperson for a period, but didn't need t'internet. Just CAD trained.

[SpikeyBush]

But ferlew, nob begins with a K. AB you should be ashamed. You allow ***, 5h1t but I can't refer to a switch on my 1972 PYE television set without sensorship.

[Buenchico]

My first computer was an Atari ST, which cost me around £200 but I had to pay £250 extra to get a decent DTP program for it (which came on about a dozen floppies) and, later, a large amount of money (but I can't remember exactly how much) to buy a hard drive for it, that held a massive 80Mb of data!

However I'd used BBC Model Bs before that (at the school where I was teaching).

Prior to that I'd used Sheffield Polytechnic's mainframe computer when I was at college. Initially we had to prepare loads of punched cards and post them (by good old snail mail) to the Poly and then wait a week or so to see the results of our 'programmes'. (Yes, we still used the British spelling then, not 'programs'!). In practice all we got back most of the time was a note telling us that we'd mis-typed one of the cards, so the programme couldn't be run!

Later on we were able to put out programmes onto punched tape, phone the Poly (but only during a few, very limited, time slots) and ask someone to put the receiver into the modem cup at their end while we started the tape running at our end (and, joy of joys, we even had a monitor and printer so that we could see the results of our efforts straight away!).

[Caran]

I had an amstrad, heck that has taken me back in time, what a nightmare that was!

[janbee]

At work, a million years ago - it was an IBM 38. I think it was gas powered or even steam powered. It was a gigantic great clunky thing. I thought, at the time, it was VERY swish !! Wrong.

[Old_Geezer]

At work, a PDP11.
At home, an Atari 800.

[TTG]

Sinclair ZX81 with 1k. Upgraded to 16k later on. I had a lot of fun making games in Basic. "That black blob is a space ship, those grey splodges are asteroids and those asterisks are astronauts"....such a good time.