When did you get your very first computer?

Commodore calculator for my 8th birthday

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I wrote about it in my profile, but I was saving up $400 or so from delivering newspapers (at a rate of about <$10/week) to get the Commodore Vic-20 after my aunt allowed me to play with it at her workplace. My parents took pity on me and added what was missing to get it for me for Christmas. That would have been in 1982 or so. I got a package deal that also included a dataset, and a PacMan clone on cassette.

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Vic 20 was my first real computer after the Commodore calculator. Then C64 then C128 and then Apple LC.

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I believe mine was a Compaq Presario 5000 series in the mid 90s. I think it had a blazing fast 250MHZ processor. I remember I could download a song on Napster in about 2 hours!

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oh how I miss Napsterā€¦ and wow 2 hour download time is pretty good

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First computer was a ZX Spectrum 48K when I was five. It was actually my brotherā€™s but I used it more when he left for university.

My computer history in the 1980s and 1990s:

Sinclair ZX Spectrum
Sinclair ZX Spectrum +2
Atari ST 520STFM
Commodore Amiga 500
Commodore Amiga 4000
Generic PC - Pentium 166

After that it was PCs that I built myself. Not counting laptops later on. I wish I kept the Amiga 4000; selling it was forced as I was student and I needed compatibility with university machines.

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Really? I mean yes free is enticing, but the value offered by any music subscription service far outweighs the downsides I remember from Napsterā€¦ namely miscategorization and bad tagging, low quality and corrupt or truncated content. And with a family subscription, up to 5 people can get pretty much all the music they can stand for about $3/month.

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Maybe '85 or '86? Monochrome. Donā€™t remember brand. Pre-GUI. Pre-networking. Used it to transcribe interviews for a magazine, also classified ads from answering machine tapes. Carried floppies back and forth from home to work, so early sneaker net. I remember the foot pedal for the cassette player came from Radio Shack. The machines have changed in 35 years, but not what I do for a living. Yes, I am very old .

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This may interest you:

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Wow, the new-style dataset. We had the blocky, original style.

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My first was an Osborne One. The first ā€œportableā€ computer. It rocked a Z80 and crushed CP/M. I loved me some WordStar and SuperCalc.

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Those of us that are into lossless recordings of the jamband scene are not satiated with streaming services.

Although we have much better solutions than Napster now but the basic idea still holds!

Also I hate Spotify. If it wasnā€™t for the student discount I wouldnā€™t be using it. I miss Google music.

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my first pc that i use was a 286 running DOS and i remember that i could park the HDD. i think i got this around 1991

my first bought pc was a Pentium 3 somewhere in 2000 running a 10gb hdd and 256mb of ram

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It was in 1982 and was a TI-99/4A with the memory extension card. I used it with a small B&W TV which was a lot of fun /s.

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The C64 was my first computer. My family would sit at the dining room table. My Dad would read programs out of a magazine, my Mom would type, and I laid under the table proofreading. Then we would leave the computer on as long as possible since at first we did not have the cassette storage. Eventually ESD through the keyboard would cause loss of the program in RAM.

My next computer was a C128. I wrote an accounting program for my paper route. I tracked subscribers, who paid, and how much they tipped. I could print out a delivery list or a list for collection.

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Me too. I even upgraded the RAM and added a 5 1/4" floppy drive.

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I was young and seen as a pirateā€¦that is what I missā€¦my youth

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hooo boy, seems like a long time agoā€¦
My very own first was a Commodore Vic20 in 1983 when I was 13.
I had been learning on an Ohio Scientific Challenger1P
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=813Challenger 1P
The boarding school I went to bought a few Vic20ā€™s so those who didnā€™t have computers could have the use of them. I loved those, and bought my own on summer vacation.
It could do COLOUR unlike all the AppleIIā€™s my friends had. The only thing cooler was the Atari 800 my friend had, but sadly, it was not well supported, and was dumped for an IBM PC a few sememsters later.

Trash 80 with Cassette driveā€¦ I envisioned using it in my Real Estate company for a customer database. I was about 10 years early. it would crash after inputting the 46th customer name and address. But as slow as it was, I could have driven to the customers house and delivered a message before it would show up on the computer. Oh wellā€¦

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My first computer was a gift from my parents in 1982, the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A. I remember how excited I was to hook it up to the tv and start playing around with it. Saved everything to cassette tape. The first computer I purchased for myself was the IBM Model 5150. I got it when the company I worked for (Godfathers Pizza) closed the call center we had for taking orders. I believe that was around 1988, soon after Hermain Cain had taken over running the brand for Pillsbury. He toured our office and then shut it down. All that asideā€¦that machine spent many hours running Sopwith and Tetris for me!

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