Thread: What was your first computer?

For some end of the year fun, I have three questions for you:

1) What was the first computer you have owned?

2) What was the first computer you used?

3) When did you first have an email account?




My answers: Timex Sinclair 1000, TRS-80 (not sure the model, it was in elementary school, and resembled the same console as a Model III, but definitely BEFORE that), and 1989 -- a bitnet email address.

1. Apple IIe (And still have it. Funny, Sheldon had an Apple II he wanted to have signed by the Woz last night).
2. IBM 1401 (followed by IBM 360, while in school in 1968).
3. 1988

1. Atari 400
2. Specific fire control computers in the Navy (circa late 60's)
3. No idea

1) Timex Sinclair 99/4A
2) Apple II
3) Don't remember but I ran an online BBS called Cheers, and we were the first site to give our members email addresses. People thought it was cool to have their own internet email addresses but at that time the only people you could email was friends on Prodigy and Compuserve.

My parents got me a TI 99/4A (dad works for TI) when I was 4 years old (1984). My first PC was a custom built 8088 based IBM clone I got when I was 9 (1989). The first email address I had when I was 16 (1996).

My family had our first PC when my dad had a custom built 286 done in 1986 or 1987.

First computer at home was an HP portable "laptop"
First computer I programmed and used was an inertial navigation computer circa 1953.
First e-mail account was in 1979. I was part of the group that did the initial investigation of HP-UX unix. Those early e-mails were fascinating because they hadn't invented domain servers yet. email addresses contained the entire path of every computer between you and the recipient. Something like hpfcsvr1!hplabs!inhp4!sunysvr!cornellcs!fred. hplabs was a major hub as was inhp4 (Bell Labs Indian Hills Illinois)

1. Was given an Apple
2. Compaq Presario with Win98SE
3. 1998

Originally Posted by Scott Greczkowski

1) Timex Sinclair 99/4A
2) Apple II
3) Don't remember but I ran an online BBS called Cheers, and we were the first site to give our members email addresses. People thought it was cool to have their own internet email addresses but at that time the only people you could email was friends on Prodigy and Compuserve.

Was it a Timex Sinclair 1000 or a TI 99/4A ?

1.1998 I bought the family an HP Pavilion Win98,PII 350mhz, 8g HDD, 8mb video, 32mb ram.
2.first work experience with computing, was data proccessing "punch cards" in 1967.
in the early 80's I worked for the phone company on computer terminals, taking orders and reports and other data entry.
As an operator in the mid 80's, we used computer monitors and keyboards to process the calls. That was light years from the corded switchboard with dials that I learned on in 1973.
3.)1998 elkhntr33@aol.com

I have a younger brother born with severe cerebral palsy, unable to do most simple things we take for granted. He can grasp a pencil and with a uncontroled arm swinging away, type on a keyboard with the eraser end. Of course he makes many mistakes and takes him hours to type a small segment of code. We got him a Radio Shack Tandy 2000 computer. Used a cassette tape drive. We bumped up the memory from 2k to 8k. The salesman said we'd never use that much, LOL He typed in lines of code for days to make a graphic of a spinning circle, he was very proud. I didn't see much use for computers then. That as a long time ago and I'm not sure when but most likely 1975ish