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Tell us about your first computer.

Atari 800, I actually went to Atari Computer camp. :shock:



atari-mule.jpg





Even had the modem:

atari830.jpg

Did you ever play Rear Guard or STRATOS on your Atari computer? It was the premier gaming computer at that time. The Apple II couldn't touch it in graphics or sound.
They both used the same 8 bit chip running at 2 mhz!
 
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Did you ever play Rear Guard or STRATOS on your Atari computer? It was the premier gaming computer at that time. The Apple II couldn't touch it in graphics or sound.
They both used the same 8 bit chip running at 2 mhz!

M.U.L.E and some sailing explorer game....
 
commodore 64,enough said
 
Tell us about your first computer.

It was some kind of laptop I bought from my father in-law. I think it was a dell. Not sure. I never knew what any of the specs were because it would be years before I ever learned what the specs meant, how a computer worked, etc, etc. All I knew was I could use e-mail and play various games, and that's all I wanted.
 
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A Macintosh performa running Mac OS 7.5, I believe. We also had a Quadra running OS 8, A Powerbook running OS 7.5, and Another performa running OS 8. Then toward the end, they bought a G4 Cube running OS 9, before I upgraded it to X. I grabbed an iBook G4 for personal use.

I bought a Performa, too. Damn thing laster over 10 years and the only reason it died was because it got rained on... a few times (I had a habit of leaving the window next to my computer desk open :3oops:). The thing cost me over $4Gs brand new.

I had this discussion with a co-worker a few years back and his story had me in stitches. He and his brother were big computer nerds back in the day. They lives in the sticks and were like little children on Xmas eve the night before heading into town to buy an-add on for their Vic20. This add-on gave them a whopping extra 8k (yes, kilobyte) of memory to add to their already whopping eight. He said he nearly jizzed in his pants when they installed it. :lol:
 
My first computer was an IBM 360 model 30. And, no, I'm not dating myself .. I can get a date any time I want!
 
My first computer was an IBM 360 model 30. And, no, I'm not dating myself .. I can get a date any time I want!

You're not dating yourself. The first computer I remember was made with vacuum tubes and occupied a room. The input was via cardboard punch cards. No individual could possibly have owned and maintained such a computer.

I saw a program about it on our first TV, a one channel black and white that had a little bitty screen in a big piece of furniture.

We got it about the same time we got our first telephone - black with a dial and hooked up to a party line.

I love modern technology.
 
I bought a Performa, too. Damn thing laster over 10 years and the only reason it died was because it got rained on... a few times (I had a habit of leaving the window next to my computer desk open :3oops:). The thing cost me over $4Gs brand new.

I had this discussion with a co-worker a few years back and his story had me in stitches. He and his brother were big computer nerds back in the day. They lives in the sticks and were like little children on Xmas eve the night before heading into town to buy an-add on for their Vic20. This add-on gave them a whopping extra 8k (yes, kilobyte) of memory to add to their already whopping eight. He said he nearly jizzed in his pants when they installed it. :lol:

We can look back in amusement over computing power that makes us crazy some years back, but I respect it, and don't frequently get amused at how far we have come and where they were at then. :p It was interesting to see some of the old x86 vs. RISC debates, to look again at the chip speed race of the late 1990s through the early 2000s, the strange debate of open source vs. closed source (especially operating systems).

Related to this sort of thing, my relatives purchased a camcorder in 1988. Well, for our family, we have a favorite family home tape. It centered around November 1988->Spring 1989. The relatives fell in love with the thing. It got to the point where literally, they recorded everything. In fact, my uncle was coerced into recording the family eat a Christmas dinner while he filmed the whole thing (not eating). My grandfather would video tape mundane tasks at the ranch, tending to the cattle, and so forth. Another uncle would record the television playing an episode of Cheers. Most frequently, however, were conversations about the camcorder were captured. Picture a group of old ranchers talking about how you can hit the record button and it stores everything on this video tape and you can play it on your tv later.

We consider it comedic gold, and I treasure something like that.
 
Oh yeah, removable disk packs rock.
Then later we get an IBM System/3 Mod 10 and those little bitty 8 meg packs weren't enough, so we got a couple of the big honkin' multi-platter 20 meg drives .. and we were big time!

It's a bit weird, how far we've come in a few decades or so.

Today my laptop could run the Pentagon of the '60s.
 
You're not dating yourself. The first computer I remember was made with vacuum tubes and occupied a room. The input was via cardboard punch cards. No individual could possibly have owned and maintained such a computer.

I saw a program about it on our first TV, a one channel black and white that had a little bitty screen in a big piece of furniture.

We got it about the same time we got our first telephone - black with a dial and hooked up to a party line.

I love modern technology.
Yeah, we had one of those TVs, part of a console stereo system .. no, that was mono.

And party lines were a hoot .. no need to actually make a crank call, as there was already someone there -- you just pick up the phone and start breathin' heavy.
 
Gateway 2000. Got a freebee monitor, which didn't work right. Pentium 75 Mhz Processor. Had 32MB RAM. 900MB Hard Drive. 2MB Video Card PCI. Creative Sound Blaster ISA (costed extra). Ran Windows 95. I received this computer about the time Pentium 4 processor where new. I could install: "MS Word," "Roller-coaster Tycoon" and my hard drive was full.
 
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