First computers

[Domski]

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.

 

[MarkAndrews]

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!

 

[shades]

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.

 

[hatman]

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...

 

[ExcelChampion]

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.

 

[Excel Ranger]

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.

 

[Richard Schollar]

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.

 

[lenze]

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

 

[davidav]

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.

 

[iknowu99]

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!