Your First Computer?

[Alan]

What was your first computer and how did you get hooked into the wonderful world of technology?

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Mine was a Commodor VIC 20 way back in 1982.
It was the first to sell more than one million units and the first colour computer to break the $300 price barrier.
The games were on cassette tapes and as far as can remember, very slow to load. I was useless at games (and still are) and was frustrated that I could not get my name on the high scores list so I learnt how to hack into the games and changed the high scores list. I made the scores so high that nobody who played them on my machine, or more accurately, using my game tape, could possibly beat them. From that day on, I was hooked!
The 'VIC' stood for Video Interface Chip and the number 20 was because the designer thought it sounded good.
What is your story?

[Daniel]

Mine is quite recent, since I'm only 20.

I've been interested in computers since I was still having my primary education. I didn't have any idea of what a computer does, or what is it used for, but I showed interest. At the time, we didn't have computers at primary education schools, so I never had the chance to use one. Fortunately enough now they start using computers from the age of 6 if I'm not mistaking.

My first experience was when I started my secondary education. We had the obligatory IT lessons (now ICT). I remember the teacher trying to explain Windows and minimize, maximize and all the buttons. I couldn't get to know what is the minimize button doing there, but anyways. Fortunately, nowadays students can choose Computer Studies at 'Form 3' (we do not use grades). It's like when you are 14. They still continue with their obligatory ICT lessons, but in Computer Studies they get into more detail. Unfortunately these studies was not there when I was 14. It was there when I was 15 duh! So I've missed it. But anyways. Still doing great in IT at the time, when I finished my secondary education I took a couple of more advanced Cisco courses. Still at that stage at the moment. Just a bried history of mine :P

I had my first computer when I was 14. So 6 years ago. Everyone knows what is a Pentium 3 so there is no need to explain things :P It had an 8MB of VGA and a 128MB of RAM. Quite recent if I had to compare with Alan's first computer.

Never seen anything similar working Alan. I only remember my dad found a 'computer' and he told me it was in the rubbish. I was like duh! And sometime later I found it was an amstrad with large floppy diskettes, and it didn't work so I couldn't play with it.

At the moment I'm still getting into the IT sector, still long way to go, but I'm trying

[Alan]

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The large floppy's you refer to were 5.25 inch and were introduced in 1976. They had a capacity of just 110kb! In 1978 they made the disk double sided and increased the storage capacity to a whopping 360kb. then they made them double sided, double density and they had a storage capacity of 1.2Mb Remember them well.
Before that they were 8 inch and had a storage capacity of 80kb but ive never seen one.

[Daniel]

Yup, that's the floppy :P I remember my uncle saying that he remembers him designing something on those old 8-bit PCs. Don't remember exactly what he used to do on them.

[pharoah]

my first one was an atari model.have no idea now exactly what it was.its main drive was a cassette deck that looked like audio tapes.had some crazy text based game for it that i loved at the time lol,but i would find it silly now most likely.

[Alan]

Yes, games back then games were basic to say the least. Back in the late 80's / early 90's I built a computer room that had a Sinclair Spectrum, an Atari, a Sharp MZ 700 and a Sharp MZ 800, an, acorn BBC model B and two Amstrads - a 8250 and a 9250. God knows why I had so many machines back then but as far as I can remember, used them all!

[Rob]

I had a Vic20 as well Alan. I thought I got mine a little earlier, about 1980, but do not recall exactly. Games and applications could be loaded from cartridges as well.

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It was great machine, but you are correct saving or loading a file from the cassette drive took forever.

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[Alan]

I cannot be sure, but I dont think we had cartridges in England. I can only remember the cassette tapes. I wonder if the American model was a little different to the European model.

[Rob]

Maybe not Alan, but if you did not have cartridges, you certainly missed out.