How old were you when you got your first computer? What kind of computer?

[Andrew]

and I mean a REAL computer... not a Talking Computron (http://www.vidgame.net/misc/images/computron.jpg) ;)

I was 9 when I got mine. It was an Apple IIc clone called the Laser 128 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_128). It's also the machine I first learned to program on. As soon as it finished booting, you were presented with a command line where you could start entering lines of BASIC. Most of my programs back then went something like this...

10 PRINT "INSERT NAME OF SIBLING HERE"
20 GOTO 10

[Leisure Suit Lurie]

Hm. That would have been Charles Babbage's Difference Engine. It was 1822, so I would have been -149 years old. Sadly, there weren't any games for it...not even Code of Hammurabi.

In my next incarnation, I got a Commodore 64 at the age of 11. My father spent half the night trying to figure out how to program it. I spent the other half playing Congo Bongo. Later on, I got a Koala Pad (http://www.answers.com/topic/koala-pad) for it and then all hell broke loose...

[Max]

My first computer was a Commodore 64... good old floppies. :lol: I had like 200 games, most of them never worked. And I also had Mac OS for Commodore 64! Yes, it's true! There was a Mac OS for Commodore 64, with a mouse! It took me a long time before I realize I had to double-click the files to open them... :p

[akb825]

At the age of 10 I got an LC475. Until I got my current computer, the computer I would have would always be just old enough to not do what I wanted it to do... :( (luckily it's all changed now :))

[Nick]

I have no idea what it was called, but it was just some old PC I got when I was 10. Used the 5.25" floppies. That was a fun little machine.

[OneSadCookie]

My parents got a Mac SE 20 when I was 10, and about a year later when it became clear that computers weren't just some passing fad for me, they bought a second hand Mac Classic with an external hard disk drive to be mine alone.

I got my start in programming with HyperCard on that first SE 20... what's bad is that it was my only computer until 1997 :o

[blobbo]

First computer was a Tandy 1000: http://www.fortunecity.com/marina/reach/435/trs1000.htm

My mom bought it to write her Masters thesis on. Had 4 copies backed up as floppy disks weren't so reliable then ;) Not to mention that the file didn't fit on a single disk.

Then we had a 286 (given to us).

First mac was a Mac Plus on loan for a month to "experience how great macs were." Then we bought a Performa 5200CD (yes, the ultimate lemon of a mac).

Then an indigo iMac, and then my beloved first personally owned mac, a new iBook.

[codemattic]

The first computer I used was a friend's TRS-80. I immediately made an adventure-type game in it using basic - and a scrolling driving game. Then my folks bought an Apple ][+ and I fell in love with the thing. Geekiness has ensued ever since.

[JustinFic]

My first computer was a hand-me-down Commodore 64 when I was 6. A few years later, my dad got a new computer and I comandeered his old Mac Plus.

My first exposure to programming was Just Enough Pascal when I was in third grade. It ran in a desk accessory and it gave you lessons along with code you'd copy-paste into your program. I didn't really follow what was going on but followed the tutorials and made their little Gridwalker game.

Fifth grade I got started on Hypercard on our classroom Mac. First stack was an animation of a skateboarder going up a 3/4 pipe, falling from the top and then splattering into mush. Good times.

[belboz]

This will show my age.....

I got an Atari 800 in late 1979.

Went from that to an Atari 520ST, then a Mega ST, Mega STE, then TT030. Finally moved on to PC/Linux after the Atari TT030 and jumped to OS X about 3 years or so ago.

I also had a Spectre GCR emulator cart for my Mega ST and up that allowed me to run Mac software on my Atari. It even allowed the Atari floppy drive to read Mac diskettes.

I still have all my old Atari stuff except the 520ST and Mega ST.

[AnotherJake]

TRS-80, I think it was a Model 2. It was one of the older grey models, not the newer white ones. Mine didn't even have the sticker on top in the corner. I think it was like 1982 or something. I guess I was probably 8 or 9 at the time. I actually managed to program in a moving star field from a magazine called Riptide. I'll never forget that moment, it blew my mind that it worked!

[Malarkey]

Wow. Who didn't get a C64 here and learn to program on it? That was my first computer too and I learned BASIC and assembly on it. Sadly, it was my only computer until I traded up for the newly released Powerbook 520c (which tells you how long I had that C64 for).

[Malarkey]

And I also had Mac OS for Commodore 64! Yes, it's true! There was a Mac OS for Commodore 64, with a mouse! It took me a long time before I realize I had to double-click the files to open them... :p

Ah, good ol' GEOS.

[Max]

Ah, good ol' GEOS.
Yeah! GEOS! It was related to Mac OS, right? I'm sure the mouse was Apple's. I remember seeing the Apple logo.

[Baldock]

Ah I started out with a C64 when I was 8. Dad has just finished a spell teaching computing with punch cards in the RAAF and he knew they were going to be big. He wanted to make sure both his boys got the best chances. So we had a C64 with tape drive and a 7 pin epson dotmatrix printer. About 1.5 - 2 years later we got a 1541 5.25" floppy drive. Then about 4 years later I saved for an entire year and went half with my parents for an Amiga 500 with 1 MB RAM. Man.. brings back the memorys.

Ah yes Geos. Up until a last year it was still for sale at full price. You can still buy it for $25 or download it from their company web site. GEOS and GEOS application software produced by Geoworks (formerly Berkeley Softworks) but now available from
http://cmdrkey.com/cbm/geos/geos1.html

And for good old fun on the Amiga who could go past AMOS! I've still got the original boxes / manuals and disks. Come to think of it, I've still got all the original C64 stuff as well
:)

[Kevin Lindeman]

When I was 7, I was home from school for a week because of chicken pox. A day or two into it, my dad came home with a Color Classic. I played Hellcats on that thing for hours at a time :p

[BeyondCloister]

1983 - ZX Spectrum 48K
I was 10. We sat all night trying to tune the television into the computer when it first arrived only to discover it had a dud power supply. I started messing around with Sinclair BASIC. My main love was writing adventure games, although I did try some Manic Miner style platform games. At some point I got LASER BASIC and wrote a 'Everyone's a Wally' / 'Pajamarama' style game.

1987 - Commodore 128
I started my first dabbling at assembly (6510) on this one. Also got my first disk drive (1571). No more waiting 10 minutes for stuff to load from the very slow Commodore cassette.

1990 - Commodore Amiga 500
Due to the failure of the 1571 drive for my C128 I upgraded to the first of my three Amigas. 68000 assembler coding and my first look at C.

1991 - Commodore Amiga 500+
I feel guilty thinking about it now but for the only time in my computer owning life I sold my current loyal computer to buy a new one.

1992 - Commodore Amiga 1200
I got this computer direct from Commodore via their developer scheme. I had the delight of this one sitting on my desk while reading in the Amiga press that it was either just a rumour or did not even exist at all!

1995 - Cyrix 150Mhz PC
With the lack of new Amigas about I had no choice but to buy my first PC. Brand loyalty is all well and good, but when the time comes you have to get a computer that will do the job you need it to. My first adventures in Visual C++ on this one.

1998 - PII 333Mhz PC
I did my first OpenGL work on this computer.

1999 - Sinclair ZX81
A suprise addition to the computers in my collection. This fully boxed ZX 81 with 16K RAM pack came to me via marriage.

2000 - Palm IIIc
My first hand held and the first computer to actually make me some money. My wife still uses this and plays some of my games on it.

2001 - Dell PIII 400MHz workstation and Dell Inspirion 7000 laptop
The only computers I've bought second hand. I turned the workstation into a server and had my first network.

2001 - Compaq iPAQ 3850
Yet another platform for me to release games on in my plans to conquer the world. This PDA also brought some money in.

2002 - G4 iMac (the good looking iMac)
I got this for 4 reasons.
1. I was feed up with firewire cards, video cameras and editing software not speaking to each other on my PC's.
2. The LCD screen on the arm looked so good and very useful.
3. The Mac now came with a real OS.
4. It would run Lightwave.

I ordered this within a few days of it being announced and waited over a month for it. It arrived on my birthday.

This computer now acts as my email server and my wife's computer.

2002 - 12" G3 700 MHz iBook
This replaced my Dell laptop.

2003 - 14" G4 800 Mhz iBook
The logic card failed on my 12" iBook twice so Apple set me this as a replacement. As it came with 10.3 it saved me the cost of an upgrade.

2004 - 1.5Ghz Sony Viao Laptop
I needed a modern Windows computer to learn .NET on as unfortunately in the UK there is greater opportunity to make a Windows based living than a Mac one as a developer.

2005 - G5 20" iMac
I wanted more screen resolution and something to run Adobe CS on. Also my G4 iMac was nearing the end of its 3 year warranty.

2005 - Dell Axiom PDA
I needed my car sat nav software updated but my iPaq was not up to the job any more.

You can tell that I'm bored today can't you and that I should be doing some work instead ;)

[igame3d]

Wow. Who didn't get a C64 here and learn to program on it?

Me. :(
Around November 1983 my parents snuck a Mattel Aquarius http://oldcomputers.net/pics/aquarius-expander.jpg
into the house, for about $105 it came with 16K RAM Expansion http://www.silicium.org/images/catalog/us/aquarius/aquarius_16k_ram.jpg
game controllers, a six inch wide thermal printer, a casette recorder for all your back up needs, Night Stalker, and probably the deal kicker that my Mom said "Bill will love this" as she pulled out the credit card: TRON Deadly Discs http://www.silicium.org/images/catalog/us/aquarius/aquarius_tron.jpg

I was the only other kid in town and one of like 400 people on the entire planet that owned one of these things. It was cool, I could make these pictures:
http://www.igame3d.com/aquarius_bw.jpg

This little program and a thousand changes to it kept me busy months

5 PRINT CHR$(11)
10 PI=3.14159
20 FOR J=30 TO 2 STEP -2
30 R=J
40 FOR I=0 TO 2*PI STEP .1
50 X=R*COS(I)
60 Y=R*SIN(I)
70 PSET(40+X,40+Y)
80 NEXT I
90 NEXT J

[sealfin]

Eleven when my mother bought a Performa 460 for her MBA; the Mac was given away for five years or so, but I got it back earlier this year, and it still runs, and has been the system I've been drafting my uni assignments on. ClarisWorks still launches as being registered to "mba enterprises" :p And Prince of Persia still rocks :p

Thirteen when my mother bought a Performa 6200 for my GCSE's; the first system I did any coding on (CodeWarrior, followed by Klik&Play, followed by a return to CodeWarrior), and later the first of my systems to be upgraded with an modem ;)

Also the first of my systems to suffer the death of a hard drive; since then every system I've had has had at least one hard drive die...

[Carlos Camacho]

Tandy Color Computer 6809, 16kB, 8 colors, with a super fast tape drive ;)

That was in JHS, at the height of the Atari 2600 craze. The CoCo had a slew of magazines and a great community of hacker users. Many "clone" games with clever title twists were available, like Zaksud (Zaxxon), and so on. I got a CoCo2 and 3 briefly before moving to an Amiga 500. I have great memories of my 6809 and 68000 days.

Cheers,

[Carlos Camacho]

>Mattel Aquarius
Ah, "chicklet style" keyboards! We were too spoiled, weren't we!!!

I remember spending so much time digesting every word in Byte magazine, when they mentioned a new machine. So many companies tried their hands at computers in the 8-bit days. What sticks in my mind the most was how EVERYONE could program, since the BASIC prompt was the first thing you saw when you turned on the machine -- these days, its rip/burn, & surf.

I also really enjoyed watching the BBC Computer Show on PBS.

[Taxxodium]

I believe I was 14 when my dad bought a Performa 5200 running at 75 Mhz. Cool machine with cool games (Spectre Supreme). It was then when I started to do some AppleScript programming, followed by Pascal.

The second computer I got to play with was a PowerMac 6500 (still have it btw) where I had a copy of CodeWarrior Pro 2 (Learning Edition) installed.

Much later I got an iMac blueberry (still have and still runs, but is not used so much), the first computer I could declare my own. Followed by a G5 (almost 4 years later) which is my current machine.

[ThemsAllTook]

There was an Apple IIe in the house when I was born. This was upgraded to a IIGS when I was 3 or so, and we got a Mac Plus around the same time. The first computer that was actually mine was an LC II. I was... 8, I think? Maybe 7. Can't remember clearly.

Good times.

- Alex Diener

[Dan Potter]

GEEZ, was no one here a 99/4A kid? :D

My dad worked at TI in the day and got an employee discount on it all. So I had the works: a TI-99/4A with loads of hand-soldered modifications, the big gray PE Box, ram expansion, two disk drives, speech synth, and later on a modem and a RAM disk (512K baby.. yeah!! :))

We almost bought an Amiga after that but they were just too pricey. So I ended up with a PC, mostly running Linux after '93 or so. :)

[szymczyk]

GEEZ, was no one here a 99/4A kid? :D

My first computer was a 99/4A. My parents bought one for the family when TI went out of business. I was 12 or 13.

[TomorrowPlusX]

The first programming I ever did was on a Mac classic, with 496kb RAM, if I recall. A couple friends and I wrote a pretty rockin TRON game for it -- I was responsible for the AI and they did the graphics and UI. That was back in high school, in the early 90s.

The first computer which I could call "mine" however, was a pentium 90, on which I learned DOS mode VGA and eventually win32 programming, and later BeOS & linux/X11 programming. It wasn't until 10.2 when I came back to the fold...

[diordna]

Right, my turn.

First computer I ever used: Centris 660AV with System 7. I played Astro Chase 3D for hours on end, but I never actually beat the darn thing. (How I wish we still had it so I could beat it!) I also learned to program on it, in TrueBASIC (note to people: NEVER use that.). After a while, I moved on to Visual MacStandardBasic, where I stumbled around for a while, learning next to nothing.

Soon, the family got a PowerMac G3 tower thingy which ran OS 8 for a while, then 9. That's when I discovered METAL BASIC, which taught me to a) push limits, and b) read books on other languages so I can stop using this piece of crap. METAL made me inadvertently learn the nuances of object-oriented programming, if not simply because I read that book on Java, and another one on C++.

Then came the iMac. Ah, the iMac. Good machine. Then the next iMac. Ah, the next iMac. Good machine. Soon the Older iMac (blueberry) started having this monitor problem, and it's dead now. I'm gonna make the case into a lamp.

The standing these days is an eMac for me with extra RAM, an eMac for my brother which runs horribly slow due to insufficient RAM, and an iBook for my mom.

I guess the nice thing about having a dad who's an ex-programmer is that a) there's lots of extra equipment in the basement (monitors are especially useful to have extras of) and b) he knows that I like to have a computer that can actually run the software I need. So we get computer upgrades every few years.

I guess it's fortunate that I'll be going to college when I do. The Intel Macs will be out by then, so I can have OS X, Windows, and Linux all on the same box.

[Joseph Duchesne]

Hmm.... my first computer was a Mac Classic... it had one game: Oregon Trail 1.0. It had SuperPaint, WriteNow!, a secret ROM disk that could me made visable ob an obscure startup key combo, and lots of other neat features. It was pretty pumped too. I got a massive 4MB of ram, an 80GB hard drive, and had a friend that had a CD burner. He could make CDs.... and this was when a high end computer came with 10-40MB hard drives and 1.4MB floppies were not quite standard...

At some point Chipmunk Basic...
Later ResEdit...
I had no games so I made them.

Later I bought a PPC 7600/132. 200MB of ram, 10 GB HD. PPC 604. It was decent but MetaL crashed, CodeWarrior was expensive. Photoshop was slow.

Now I have a Powerbook G4 667 with a 60GB HD and 768 MB of ram. It does everything I need it for and I won't be replacing it until spring/summer 2006. It's not really that slow. For example encoding video gets 40fps on a dual 2.0 G5 with 2GB of ram, wheras it gets 22fps on mine. You would think the G5 would get 100fps or something...

Should I hold out for photon channel computers that run on light?
Bio-computers that make the animal protection agencies adopt old comps?
Get Liquid-N cool and and replace the clock chip? Do I hear 4Ghz dual G5 ;)

As my brother of 3 years and two days fought in Halo on my dad's G5, I wondered what his mindframe around computers will be. He grows up able to skip scenes on DVDs, without touching a VHS, never seeing any code or command line. The computer assumes an almost magic mystique.

I'm a fantasy fan. In the abscence of magic, computer programming and electronics are the next best thing. Maybe it's a power thing... ;)

And my mom asked me to clean my room. I try to be efficient and when she saw "the fastest code is the code that doesn't run at all" in one of my books... I think that explained a bit.

I wonder what would happen if a kid was taught to code along with reading, writing, addition and subtraction?

[Andrew]

I wonder what would happen if a kid was taught to code along with reading, writing, addition and subtraction?

Check out the Logo programming language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_programming_language). I remember them teaching us SOLI Logo, a French implementation, in elementary school (I was in French immersion). Maybe you remember seeing something like this robotic turtle (http://www.klbschool.org.uk/ict/control/logo/logo01.htm) in elementary school?

Edit: here's some pics:

http://www.southcom.com.au/~robot/Robot%20Pics/Turtle.jpg

http://www.gajdaw.pl/html/36-artykul/przyklady/2-2/turtle.jpg

http://www.apple2clones.com/images/turtledisk1-260.jpg

[deps]

I was about 7-8 years old when I realised that the box my dad had in his study was rather fun to play with. It was a Sharp MZ-700 and it spoke BASIC. This was around 1988 or so. I got my first PC around 92-93. Compaq something 486. 25 mhz. More PC's followed.
A couple of months ago I got myself this Mac Mini.

[blobbo]

Yeah, I did LOGO in elementary school! Anyone remember trying to make the turtle zoom around infinitely? Hah!

[CarbonX]

I was about 7 or 8, first computer was a secondhand IIfx from my parents... Long live the weed whacker!

[unknown]

I made lots of fractals with logo in 1st year, recursion is fun!

[IBethune]

I can't believe that nobody has mentioned the amazing BBC Model B http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro. Although I guess it's a UK thing.

Slightly OT, but out of interest, did anyone else every read the magazine "Let's Compute" http://www.8bs.com/letscomputemag.htm. BBC/Amos/WG/etc. - all kinds of BASIC code, complete with GOTOs, and friendly cartoon characters called ROM and RAM (not forgetting Uncle REM!).

Ahh, nostalgia!

- Iain

[Zwilnik]

I can't believe that nobody has mentioned the amazing BBC Model B http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro. Although I guess it's a UK thing.

Slightly OT, but out of interest, did anyone else every read the magazine "Let's Compute" http://www.8bs.com/letscomputemag.htm. BBC/Amos/WG/etc. - all kinds of BASIC code, complete with GOTOs, and friendly cartoon characters called ROM and RAM (not forgetting Uncle REM!).

Ahh, nostalgia!

- Iain

Mainly because the Beeb Micro was a UK only thing that helped put the UK way behind the rest of the world in teaching computing.

It had a great set of interfaces for scientific work, but it forced the user to learn inneficient coding styles and the complete government focus (including terrible TV computing programs as it was backed by the BBC) that went on years after the BBC Micro was obsolete (ie about a year after it was released) meant that nobody in the UK learned about modern computing until Acorn lost the BBC deal some years later on. While the rest of the world was learning to code at machine level on Apple ][s or being introduced to the radical concept of the GUI and user friendliness, the UK was still forced to use a dodgy version of BASIC and trying to use word processors that were command line based.

Not to mention the BBC Micro being far more expensive than comparable home computers or even office computers, so yet again UK schools blew all their cash on something useless :/

[AnotherJake]

Wow, that is totally interesting. I've never heard about the BBC Micro before. When people eventually started replacing them, what would you estimate was the most popular, and around when?

[Zwilnik]

This is the UK. Some schools are probably still using them :/

BBC Micros were still being sold into the late 80s and 90s, despite being outclassed by everything out there. The ports and such on them made them excellent for setting up with robo kits, turtles or scientific recording gear, but as an introduction to modern computing, they definitely weren't.

[BeyondCloister]

I was told of businesses still using BBC's as recently as a couple of years ago.

However, if the computer still runs and it does what is required of it then why replace it?

[Zwilnik]

I was told of businesses still using BBC's as recently as a couple of years ago.

However, if the computer still runs and it does what is required of it then why replace it?

That's true if it's just as efficient as getting a new computer. However, if you've got to train staff to use archaic methods and it would be faster to do the job on a modern computer then it's worth switching.

With some small businesses though, it's pretty marginal. If the computing tasks aren't particularly heavy they might get away with it. The main problem comes if the member of staff that knows how to work the old machine moves on and you have to train someone new to use command lines etc. It's also possible that due to the limits of their computer they're not using it for other areas of the business that might benefit from computerisation.

[Najdorf]

Looking at the pictures, my first computer was probably an apple classic.

The first of which I knew the model was a LC 475

[DavidJJ]

The first one I owned must've been an Apple II back in the late 70s so that would've been when I was in my late teens. I also had a Tandy TRS80 Model 4 with two of the big 8" (?) floppy drives in it during the same time period. I worked on a big old punch-card Wang in grade 9 though. Oh, the power!

[TomorrowPlusX]

Yeah, I did LOGO in elementary school! Anyone remember trying to make the turtle zoom around infinitely? Hah!

I was completely absorbed in a LOGO program in 3rd grade when the Challenger blew up. As in, the whole class was watching, except for me in the back at the Apple. I heard the whole class inhale and the teacher say something sharp, then I turned around and saw the explosion on the TV.

Ever since, I have an association between LOGO and the death of the American space program :cry:

[SOUR-Monkey]

Wow, our first computer was a G4 Cube, so we would have got it sometime around 2000 or 2001. I didn't start programming for a few years after that either, so I must have only been programming for a couple of years all-up.

I hadn't really thought about it before, but that seems like a really short period of time. Technology and programming have both become such an integral part of my life since we got that computer, it's weird to think that only five years ago I was a farm boy who didn't even have a TV :-/

EDIT: I am 17 now, so I would have been about 12 when we got the Cube.

[Marjock]

Hmm. I think it was a MacPlus but by the time I actually started using a computer it would have been an LCIII. I guess I first started coding on that, but that was just changing another program so the background was green and the words said rude things about my siblings, so it doesn't really count :p

I really first started coding when somebody introdouced me to Metal BASIC and that was on a G3 iMac.

-Mark

[hazelden]

My First Computer was an Atari 400 with the basic cartridge & cassette drive.

Later I got a Vic-20.

Then I moved up to a 512K Mac with 2 external 3.5” floppy drives. I so wanted the external 1200 baud modem and red ryder modem software so I could use the many BBS in the area.

I got an Epson pc and used Turbo Pascal. It had a built in speech synthesis driver called “now speak”. It had a 2400 baud modem. Now that was fast 1 mb / hour downloads. Amazing ANSI graphics…

At this point in time I got an old Commodore 64 from my cousin and did hardware interfacing projects through the joystick ports. I even made my own water cistern tank monitoring software. Ahh… the joys of country living.

Then there was a Performa 580CD. It was my first multimedia experience.

I was really excited about 3d and the promise of PPC so I bought a cheap Power Computing Powerbase 180. I found Metal basic and fell in love with graphical programming. I had a love hate relationship with MPW and QD3D. I used Strata Vision 3D and Strata Studio Pro to make 3D models.

I moved up to a Power Macintosh 9600 with a Radius Video Vision PCI/ SP video hardware so I could do some serious
Video and multimedia. Electric Image 2.9 with modeler now that was cutting edge.

Years later I got a Mirror Door G4 and a Sony 24” CRT monitor.I felt guilty of abandoning my 9600… My first Mac OS X system! It even came with Project Builder. Maya 4.5 was just released and I wanted in.

On eBay I discovered a precious jem the Newton MessagePad 2100 something I had always wanted. Now I am learning to program the green brick. It has pretty good handwriting recognition. The device had some advanced Ideas a dynamic programming language and soups.

[mandrixx]

my first computer was an amstrad CPC 464, I was 10.
I never grew up, and now I'm still running emulators and oldschool related sites like Plopbox (http://www.plopbox.net)