# First computers



## Scott Huish (Sep 7, 2007)

What was everybody's first computer?

Mine was an Apple IIe.
It had a whopping 64K of RAM 
and the biggest joy was when we finally got the second floppy drive (they cost around $330 at the time).


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## Domski (Sep 7, 2007)

Sinclair ZX81.

http://www.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/computers/zx81/zx81_specs.htm

What a beast!!!

Dom


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## Thorin (Sep 7, 2007)

Toshiba MSX

http://www.gondolin.org.uk/hchof/machines/toshiba-hx10.html


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## litrelord (Sep 7, 2007)

Spectrum 48k for me. Then upgraded a couple of years later to the Spectrum 128k (with built-in tape drive).


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## Richard Schollar (Sep 7, 2007)

An Acorn BBC Model B for me.  I was greatly annoyed at the time that I didn't get a Commodore 64 - since the Beeb only had 32k which seemed a massive drawback to games.

I wish I'd spent a bit more time programming it, and rather less time playing games on it...


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## starl (Sep 7, 2007)

Commodore 64, then upgraded to a 128.
When PCs with Windows 3.1 came out, we got a Packard Bell (big mistake) - but I remember upgrading the chip to a Math coprocessor.

them was the days


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## Oaktree (Sep 7, 2007)

You guys are old   

Mine was a 386.  25 Mhz of ram 100MB hard drive.  Sooooooooooo fast.


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## CyberGuy2004 (Sep 7, 2007)

First computer I owned: Commodore 64, two external disk drives and a Gorilla Banana printer. After a couple of years I got an actual brand X 8088-based PC, with 640K of memory. 

First computer I worked with was the Control Data Corp 6400. I think it had 64K of hand-strung core memory. Two card readers, one in the computer room, one at the academic computing building. By my second year there, they added actual video-display terminals, with sound! (if you consider high-pitched annoying BEEEEEEEP a sound.)


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## QuietRiot (Sep 7, 2007)

You guys are really old..

my first computer had windows 95

it was Compaq Presario don't remember the model number.

don't remember much but it had a pentium, 16mb ram and like a 2gig hardrive.

and I was 12 yrs old


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## Lewiy (Sep 7, 2007)

Mine was a Dragon 64 (anyone else ever heard of it?). I think the 64 referred to the number of minutes it took to load a game! Games came on cassette tapes which were loaded into an external cassette player, or alternatively, there was a 5.5 inch floppy drive (why did those things never take off!). Game highlights were Cuthbert Goes Digging and Frogger.


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## starl (Sep 7, 2007)

> You guys are old
> 
> Mine was a 386.  25 Mhz of ram 100MB hard drive.  Sooooooooooo fast.



you NEVER say that to a woman! I could ban you from the board, boy!


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## Oaktree (Sep 7, 2007)

Oh, that was definitely a calculated, gender-specific "guys" I used 

We all know you're 26.


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## Bean Counter (Sep 7, 2007)

TRS-80 Model I.

I was in 3rd grade at the time so really it was Dad's, but I got lots of time on it.  We started with a tape drive but soon upgraded to multiple disk drives (2 with a third added later).  128k on each disk.  I don't remember how much memory the computer itself had.

We had a few purchased games (Chess, Checkers, Flying Saucers) but 80Micro magazine's August issue was the "games issue".  They gave the BASIC program for games.  That's how I learned to type...


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## starl (Sep 7, 2007)

> We all know you're 26.



flattery will get you nowhere, especially when it's flattery!

Now - people who programmed with punch cards.. *that's* old!


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## Mark O'Brien (Sep 7, 2007)

> Spectrum 48k for me. Then upgraded a couple of years later to the Spectrum 128k (with built-in tape drive).



I too had a speccy 48K.  I was jealous of my friend who got a 48K, then a 128K+ (no built-in tape of disc storage device), then a 128K+3 (with a built in disc drive).  Years later I look back and wonder why he wasted his money.  He only ever had maybe 2 discs that he could use and the only game that I can remember having a 128K version was Barry MacGuigan's Boxing.  The only advantage that the 128K brought was a better keyboard and the elimination of using the 48K assigned keyword keys. 

Oh and Commodore's still suck.  They suck worse than BBC Micros, which were clearly only owned by people who's parents were teachers.  (The Archimedes was ok because you could play a good version of Lemmings on it)


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## starl (Sep 7, 2007)

Mark, better not let John (the hubby) hear you say that. He *loved* his Commodore 64 and drooled when he say our 128. Mof, the 64 is downstairs.. he has plans to set it up again.. even wants to take an old pc and turn it into an emulator.
Gotta admit, some of those old games were fun!


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## Peter_SSs (Sep 7, 2007)

First one I owned was not that long ago so not worth mentioning in this exalted company. However, the first ones I worked with were:

1. Microbee 16.
This (surprisingly) had 16K of memory and an ordinary audio cassette to load/store programs. Loading a high-powered program (eg. Count to 1000 by twos or work out the first 20 prime numbers or even solve a quadratic equation) took about 5 minutes and rarely took more than 4 tries to actually get loaded correctly  :x 

I can clearly recall chastising my colleagues of the time for even considering wasting the money to upgrade to Microbee 32s as I assured them that you could not possibly ever use more than 16K of memory! Naturally, nearly 30 years later I am still finding bits of egg to pick off my face!

2. Apple IIe.
Main thing I remember about this beauty was playing a fantastic game called (I think) "Brick Bat"


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## Domski (Sep 8, 2007)

> You guys are old



Whatch it 'kid', just remember all the fun we've had in the years you haven't!!!



> ou NEVER say that to a woman! I could ban you from the board, boy!



I agree, at least a period in the sin bin!



> Mine was a Dragon 64 (anyone else ever heard of it?).



Sure do, my mate had one. Wasn't there a series of games about a bloke called Cuthbert? Why???

Dom


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## SydneyGeek (Sep 9, 2007)

First computer I used was a Cromemco, running CP/M and a version of Wordstar that a bloke in the department had hacked so you could issue stop codes to the printer. That allowed you to change daisy wheels, so you could print a single symbol character, then stop again to switch back to the standard daisy wheel...

First I owned was a Mac SE, with a whole 2.5MB RAM and a 20 MB hard drive. You could back the whole machine up on about a dozen floppies, which took half an hour. I thought it was pretty cool at the time...

Denis


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## Lewiy (Sep 9, 2007)

> > Mine was a Dragon 64 (anyone else ever heard of it?).
> 
> 
> 
> Sure do, my mate had one. Wasn't there a series of games about a bloke called Cuthbert? Why???



Yes! Cuthbert was a legend! I guess you could say he was the precursor to Mario. I seem to remember Cuthbert Goes Digging, Cuthbert Goes Walkabout, Cuthbert in the Mines. They were all quality games for their time even if you did have to start loading them about a week before you actually wanted to play!


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## steve case (Sep 9, 2007)

Some time in the early 80s my wife came home with a box from "K" Mart. 

It was a Vic 20.  I had no idea what it was and certainly didn't know what to do with it.  We hooked it up and of course all it did was display syntax error whenever we typed anything in.  

I called my brother the computer wiz.  He dictated over the phone a short program, and after I read it back to him he said, "Type in 'RUN' and press enter. 

Stars twinkled on the screen and it played music.  

Since then we've had a commodore 64, Apple 2GS a Mac and finally a PC, a compaq pressaario 7240   and so on.


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## MorganO (Sep 10, 2007)

The first computer I ever used was in highschool.  It was a teletype machine attached via telephone to a mainframe computer (don't know what model) at the downtown school district.  

I still remember the amazing amount of effort it took to press the keys on this thing.  You had to press really hard, and the keys would depress at least a half-inch before being recognized.  The 'Screen' was yellow roll paper, and there was even a punched tape machine for printing a hard-copy of your programs, except we tended to use it to print banners with it!

The only language we has accessible to us was BASIC, and I mean basic BASIC.  Still have some printouts of my early programs laying around in yellowing yellow paper.

Here is a link to view what this beast looked like:  http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/teletype.html


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## starl (Sep 10, 2007)

hm - I think it's official - ExcelingintheAF is the oldest member at the board


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## TinaP (Sep 10, 2007)

Apple IIc

I could write my papers on it, but not much else.


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## Darren Bartrup (Sep 11, 2007)

First computer was the Sinclair ZX81 with 1k of memory (if I remember correctly my dad had to build it for me and it cost £100).
I later got a 16k memory pack for it which plugged into the back, but if you so much as even looked at it the whole thing would crash.
I then got a Cheetah speech pack for it and a thermal printer which came with a roll of silver paper and burnt the text onto the paper (I'm still sure that was a fire hazard).
My first game was a game called Mazogs which consisted of running around a maze trying not to run into these blob monsters that would wave their blobs in your face and you would die (http://www.classic-retro-games.com/Mazogs-and-Maziacs_124.html).

After this I got a ZX Spectrum with 16k of memory and the "dead-flesh" keyboard.  The best games out then were anything by ACG Ltd (also known as Ultimate - anyone remember Attic-Attac which consisted of running around a maze trying not to run into coloured blob monsters that would wave their coloured blobs in your face and you would die.  God those games were good). 
I actually found my Spectrum in the cupboard a few years ago - I think I should of cleaned the circuit board first as when I plugged in it just fizzled and died.

Then it was an Atari ST (what was I thinking?)

After that it was onto the 486's.


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## milesUK (Sep 11, 2007)

My first PC was very nearly a Vic20 but I cancelled the order when I discovered & bought the trusty BBC Micro with 16k in 1982. I upgraded it to 32k then a 'double-sided double-density' 5 1/4" floppy capable of 400kb.

That was followed by an Acorn Archimedes in 1989 with 512k which got various upgrades like ports, RAM and a HD of 40Mb!
It wasn't until 1994/5 that I got a windows PC. Pentium100 and Win95.

Our household now has a desktop, 2 laptops and a media centre PC. The latter is my best-value (the one I get most out of) machine if you ignore my laptop that was given to me!

In all I have had many PC's pass through my hands but have only actually purchased 5 in 25 years!

My biggest computing-purchase mistake was buying a colour dot matrix printer - didn't get value for money out of that beast.

Hope to try out some open source OS soon either a version of LINUX or ReactOS just for hell of it.


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## Greg Truby (Sep 11, 2007)

Commodore PET with 8K of RAM.  So, like Peter, I am familiar with loading from a tape (cassette) drive.  The upside was that you could get a cassette tape anywhere.  The downside was loadtime. Took _forever_ to load an 8K program.  Though it did make you a tight coder, not a lot of extraneous fluff (like REM statements).  

I can still remember first time a fellow geek came into freshman English and told us about some dude inventing something called a "floppy" disk (adolescent wisecracks followed).  It holds *how much?!*  And it loads all this *how fast!?*  We thought he had to have gotten the facts wrong. When I finally got to play on a TRS80 and saw it firsthand, I could barely believe it.

Third computer was a DEC mini computer, about 6' tall and perhaps 2 foot square. Got 16-32K per terminal (what bounty!).  

Then an Apple II -- graphics! Yowza! Could write code to actually plot the points on all them "formula for a circle" and "formula for a parabola" crapola we were learning in math (never did get character-outputting "Star Trek" game I wrote in 8th grade converted to a graphic output).

And @ ExcelingInTheAirForce: _I know that machine!!!_ The summer after my freshman year of college I took a job with DCASMA (Defense Contracts Administration Services Management Area) in Wichita and they had one of those teletype machines for communicating with Tinker, McConnell, Whiteman and other AFB's.  It was the exact same machine pictured in the link you provide.


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## daniels012 (Sep 11, 2007)

HOw about Software!

I thought I was so cool having Word Star.  This was so cool using this word processing software.  Then four or five years after that getting QuattroPro spreadsheets!!!
Man was that fun!!!


Michael


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## texasalynn (Sep 11, 2007)

Oh yes!  My first - I think was an NCR Posting machine, that had a huge carriage that clunk around and one day I had my hand in the wrong place and my palm by  thumb part got caught and got pinched.  I still have a scar from it.  

I also worked on an IBM with punch cards.  One day the punch cards got spilled all over the floor.  What a mess and trying to get them back into the correct order, #@#%^&, not a pretty site.


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## hatman (Sep 11, 2007)

Not quite old enough for Punch Cards.  Like many others here, my first Computer was ye Old Commodore 64.  The best part is that when I went to college in 1993, I brought the CRT from the C64, and used it in conjunction with an ancient VCR that I had inheritted, in lieu of an actual TV set.

It wasn't until 1994, as a sophomore, that I finally got my SECOND computer, a 486 100MHz DX4... it was FASTER than the new Pentiums... still remember playing DOOM2 across the dorm network with my buddies down the hall... had the SFX piped through my stereo... opened up all of our doors, and shouted to each other as we battled the horde.  Actually, one of those friends spent a semester writing a C64 emulator for his PC, so we could play the old games (He even rigged it to run the old C64 floppy)... the WEIRD thing is that there was some freaky interaction between his computer and my C64 monitor across the hall... when he booted up windows, I got a ghost image of the Windows startup graphic on my C64 screen.

I finally upgraded that in 1999 to a Gateway Destination... Pentium2 450MHz... 36 inch monitor... cable ready video card.  I Still use this beast as the only television in the house.


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## Norie (Sep 11, 2007)

ZX Spectrum for me, though I do recall people that had ZX81s.

Didn't really do much programming on it but some of the games were good.

But they sure as hell took there toll on the keyboard, especially something like Daley Thompson's Decathlon (is that the right name).

Also the tape thing was a bit crazy.

You could never be sure that the game/program would load, especially if it was one you used regularly.

Mind you it did have it's advantages - especially if you had a double tape deck but I won't go into that.


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## MorganO (Sep 11, 2007)

> hm - I think it's official - ExcelingintheAF is the oldest member at the board



Although I appreciate the award, I feel it necessary to expand on my post!  :wink: 

The first computer I *owned* was, as many here on the board have also owned, was a Sinclair ZX.  I bought the build it yourself kit with 16K expansion pack.  I must of soldered something a bit wrong because the darn thing would up and die after just a few minutes of use.  I moved onto a Radio Shack color computer with 32K.  While it did have Basic on board, I never could get it to do much for me.  The Commodore 64 became my mainstay afterwards, many hours of programming and game playing (swapping) took up my early Air Force years.  I moved onto the Commodore Amiga 500 during my college years, and would probably still be using if I hadn't been FORCED into the PC world when I re-joined the Air Force.  I am glad I did though, because I probably wouldn't have learned about Excel, and I just love this program!


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## shades (Sep 11, 2007)

First computer I owned was Mac Classic B&W 9" screen, all in one, using System 6, 4 MB RAM and 80 MB hard drive (1990).

First computer I ever used was IBM 360, using Fortran IV with the card punch (College programming class in 1968). Yeah, that puts in my in "old codger" category.


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## steve case (Sep 11, 2007)

*QuattroPro*

I had Quattro on my first computer at work. When they forced Excel down our  throats I  provided the IT deparatment with a list of things that Quattro would do that Excell wouldn't!  

Didn't do any good!

You still can't have colored tabs in Excel )-:


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## SydneyGeek (Sep 11, 2007)

> You still can't have colored tabs in Excel )-:


They introduced colored tabs in Excel 2003. 

I had a similar fight once when I was on a short contract with IBM. I knew Excel pretty well but they insisted that everyone use Lotus. OK, that was fine until I tried to write some code. Lotus uses a version of VBA, but it's way behind Excel's object model. Even really simple stuff was hard to do, and none of the IBM guys had a clue. I ended up smuggling Office on site so I could do my job. 

Denis


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## Mark O'Brien (Sep 11, 2007)

> Then it was an Atari ST (what was I thinking?)



You were thinking that you wanted to play Kick Off 2 and IK+ on a machine better than the Amiga.  Maybe even a little Buggy Boy.  (Commodore's still suck)


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## Darren Bartrup (Sep 12, 2007)

> You were thinking that you wanted to play Kick Off 2 and IK+ on a machine better than the Amiga. Maybe even a little Buggy Boy. (Commodore's still suck)



I think it was more a case of I saw the adventure game called 'Pawn' (or something like that) and really liked the look of it.  Never did finish the game though.

Then I tried to program on the ST - after Sinclair BASIC it was like hell on earth and I gave up.

Took me ages to get my head around not having line numbers to reference in code.

I think ST BASIC had some kind of split screen thing going on and I couldn't find any manuals for it (ok, I didn't really look further than my bedroom).

BBC BASIC was good though.  I made a love-match database for my exam at school.  That caused a few blushes and mickey-taking


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## Peter_SSs (Sep 12, 2007)

In this thread I originally didn't read the topic correctly and wrote about the first PCs that I worked with. However, when ExcelingInTheAirForce wrote:





> Here is a link to view what this beast looked like:  http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/teletype.html



... and Greg Truby wrote:





> And @ ExcelingInTheAirForce: I know that machine!!! ...... It was the exact same machine pictured in the link you provide.



... I realised we were also talking about more than that and felt compelled to rummage through my cupboards and dig out an old high school magazine that contained a picture of that exact same machine (exact except that we had white tape, not yellow). Hopefully this link 
http://www.box.net/shared/rtt2r9pdrx
to the picture will work and you will be able to compare what I look like now with what I looked like when I was about 18 (that' me seated in the foreground).

Now, don't be too rude!! And no more than three of these       at a time thanks!


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## SydneyGeek (Sep 12, 2007)

No more than 3...     
...on any one line!     

Denis


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## MarkAndrews (Sep 12, 2007)

http://tatungeinstein.co.uk/front/computer.html


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## Domski (Sep 12, 2007)

What a beauty Mark , never heard of one of them. £499 as well, that would have been a decent deposit on a house back then I reckon.

Could be due to it's obscurity you were forced to do something useful with it instead of play games which is all I did with computers until I used my first proper PC in my 20's.


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## MarkAndrews (Sep 12, 2007)

> What a beauty Mark , never heard of one of them. £499 as well, that would have been a decent deposit on a house back then I reckon.
> 
> Could be due to it's obscurity you were forced to do something useful with it instead of play games which is all I did with computers until I used my first proper PC in my 20's.



I think i was about 5 when we got that, shocking PC!

We had it sat in the loft until about 8 years ago, oh how things have moved on

Thank god!


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## shades (Sep 12, 2007)

I was math and physics major in college - several years before handheld calculators were invented. I did everything in my head and wrote down about every 4th step for reference.  I didn't know how to use a slide rule. After graduating from college I had to teach high school physics students how to use the slide rule, so I finally taught myself.

Oh to have had some of the "antiques" that ya'll have been showing pics of when I was in school.


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## hatman (Sep 12, 2007)

> I was math and physics major in college - several years before handheld calculators were invented. I did everything in my head and wrote down about every 4th step for reference.  I didn't know how to use a slide rule. After graduating from college I had to teach high school physics students how to use the slide rule, so I finally taught myself.



 

Flash back to my Analytical Geometry Class Junior Year of High School (way back in 1991).  In order to teach the class about base 10 logs, the teacher pulled out two important props: 1) A Birch Log, about 12 inches in diamter and 36 inches long; and 2) A demonstration slde rule, about 18 inches high and 6 feet long, which hung from a coupld of hooks above the black board, and was visible at the back of the class room (of course, there were only 8 of us in the class, so this was overkill).  I almost embarassed to admit that I actually learned me how to use a slide rule as a member of the Computer Generation...


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## ExcelChampion (Sep 13, 2007)

Atari 400.  actually, it wasn't mine...it was my Dad's, but I was only about 8 or 9 when he bought it.  Then, a year or so later he upgraded to an Atari 800...whoa, get out of the way, this baby sportted TWO internal cartridge slots!

gosh, I remember to program in BASIC you actually had to insert the BASIC cartridge.

Geese, 'puters sure have come a long way.  Makes you wonder what the future holds.


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## Excel Ranger (Sep 14, 2007)

*My first computer*

Aside from the various Dell C-series and D-series laptops that I borrowed (boss said yes) for evening college classes, I did not get "my" first computer until last year. It was provided to me by the US Veterans Administration. I am a disabled vet. The computer is some no-name tower, but it has dual Pentium-4 processors, 3.00 GHz, CD-R/RW/DVD-ROM and originally came with 512MB RAM. My office colleague, a computer technician, "accidently" bumped it up to 1GB. They also threw in a 17" NEC flat panel display. I'm running Windows XP with the MS Office 2007 Enterprise edition, as well as a bunch of Office 2003 extras (Visio, FrontPage, etc) that I "got from a friend". All in all, it works fine for me, although I would like to find out the theoretical limit of RAM for this machine.


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## Richard Schollar (Sep 14, 2007)

Hi Ranger

The RAM limit for your computer will depend on the Motherboard.  The upper limit for Windows XP (32-bit version) is 3.2Gb, so even if your motherboard will take more (if it has 4 memory slots then it will likely take 4 x 1Gb modules so an upper of 4Gb in total) Windows XP won't 'see' the extra memory.

You can use the following website to discover what your motherboard is and also what memory it is capable of taking:

http://www.crucial.com/

The Crucial System Scanner will tell you what you want to know.


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## lenze (Sep 14, 2007)

I built my first home computer from scratch. I can't remember what all the hardware was, but it was all top shelf. It had an excellent sound card and video with PC to TV and reverse. I remember the mother board was top rated and the processer was around 236. This was in 1998. Since then, I've built one more for my son when he went to college. This one was much more powerful.

lenze


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## davidav (Sep 14, 2007)

Texas Instruments TI99-4A.  I don't remember much about it, though.  I do remember computer class in grade school, where we had to program in basic on an Apple II c, or the like.


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## iknowu99 (Sep 17, 2007)

SuperNintendo - Donkey Kong


a year down the road i got an IBM Aptiva in 1996, i remember trying to copy the first birds-eye view GTA from a friend. A 28 MB game, zipped. It took 36 A-drive diskettes; getting back to my place to unzip, it would mess up on disc 30 something so i could never get it, until 28k modems came out!! with many attempts i eventually got the game!


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## Excel Ranger (Sep 24, 2007)

*Thanks RichardSchollar!*

I checked out crucial.com and let it run it's check. It is showing that my system is running at about 79% of full potential. I don't see a good ROI for the cost of bumping up 1GB just to gain 11% more brainpower. Intel® Desktop Board D101GGC. 2GB max.


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## Norie (Sep 24, 2007)

I've just had a look at crucial.com too.

It's telling me I have a maximum memory capacity of 4194304 MB.

Now isn't that 4096GB?


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## Domski (Sep 24, 2007)

```
I've just had a look at crucial.com too. 

It's telling me I have a maximum memory capacity of 4194304 MB. 

Now isn't that 4096GB?
```

Maybe your pc inflates everything exponentially. Is it possible if that the case that you've only actually made 31 posts on the forum?   

Dom


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## steve case (Sep 25, 2007)

> HOw about Software!
> 
> I thought I was so cool having Word Star.  This was so cool using this word processing software.  Then four or five years after that getting QuattroPro spreadsheets!!!
> Man was that fun!!!
> ...



Quattro was cool!  There are still things Quattro would do that Excel won't.  Just today I would have used the color coded tabs if Excel had that feature, but it doesn't!


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## Scott Huish (Sep 25, 2007)

```
Just today I would have used the color coded tabs if Excel had that feature, but it doesn't!
```

Sure it does, they've had that since XL2002.

Right click the sheet tab and click on Tab Color


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## Scott Huish (Sep 25, 2007)

What I wish they had is something like Applework's glossary though.

As I recall, you could put it in a word or phrase, I don't remember how the keystrokes were assigned, but then when you hit the appropriate keystrokes it would insert the text into your document.


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## steve case (Sep 27, 2007)

SydneyTheGeek wrote:



> > You still can't have colored tabs in Excel )-:
> 
> 
> They introduced colored tabs in Excel 2003.



Yes! And lo and behold but didn't I discover it on my own just today!

About 20 years too late!

But hey! I do love Excel, makes my job easy!


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## sythong (Sep 28, 2007)

Mine was a Wang.  And the spreadsheet was called Multiplan.
Benq aka Acer was also known by another brand which I forgotten.

I think now the price is inversely proportionate to the performance
of that era.  The whole set costs about USD 4000 at that time and
I think the chip was either an 8088 if I am not mistaken.  Floppy
came with 5.25.

Very troublesome and unable to switch programs since in
DOS mode.  I still remember one virus from that time was (C)
Brain.

Anyone sharing the same time zone?


Thong


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