Computer Nostalgia: Do you remember......

[MrWhoopee]

Last night, while trying to go back to sleep, my mind wandered back to the days before Windows ruled the PC world. I began to think about all of the technology that was cutting edge at the time, now forgotten. My first love was the original IBM 5150 PC, purchased by my employer and entrusted to my eager, trembling hands.



With a 4.77 MHz 8088 processor, 64k RAM, 80 character x 24 line green monochrome display
2x 160k 5-1/4 Floppy drives (hard drives were not available) and ROM BASICA

Oh, the hours I spent programming that wonder to do all sorts of amazing things. I still have that set of instructional binders, including the original disks.

So please, share with us your memories of those days long gone.

 

[badger906]

well I was about -20 years old back then =p
my first computer was a macintosh of some description, my dad gave it to me when I was like 5.. it was broken and I never got it working that well.. but I was hooked instantly.

first pc I used was built by me not so long later, it had windows 3.1x and the rest of the specs have been destroyed by lots and lots of beer..

 

[Fantail]

Tandy 1000SX - Card drive, 640k, DeskMate II
Identical to this image.

Edit to add a 'memory' - I had a vending route at the time, where the software was productive. Customized invoice system with spreadsheets etc. If you went over 9999 records in the database though, the software crapped itself.

 

[Ranger4]

Had a Point of Sale computer in 1988, with 8088 processor, 20Mb HDD & 5 1/4 floppy for back up. All of it worked OK.

At that time I think Word Perfect was the No.1 word processor, & Lotus 123 was the No.1 spreadsheet.

Later about 1992 I moved to Windows 3.1, Access 1.0, Excel, & MS Word. MS brought out Office after that & later added Office Pro which incorporated Access. Also at that time faxes were the rage so most used Winfax. Later on emailing replaced most faxing.

I also had a beta version of Windows 95 about 6 months before it was released. 95 was a big improvement on 3.1 & there was a worldwide launch as well, all from midnight in each time zone.

 

[strollin]

My first was an IBM 5150 PC like the one in the OP's picture except that I splurged on a CGA card and color monitor. That combo produced 4 of the ugliest colors ever. I bought it in 1984 and even with my IBM employee discount, it cost me $2,500.

 

[UsernameIssues]

I worked with an Intel 8080 on a breadboard in the late '70s.

No keyboard, just toggle switches for binary inputs :-(

 

[Joan Archer]

The first one we played with was an Amstrad, I think it was the 464, it had a cassette player for the games, the kids loved Jet Set Willy and another couple of them, one to do with a school and one to do with in a mine, can't remember the name.

Did try a couple of simple programming with it, wasn't much good though.

 

[Britton30]

My first "almost" computer was an Atari 2600 game console we got for the kids. No monitor, it had an A/B switch and attached to the TV. Pitfall and Frogger were popular games at the time.

 

[HonorGamer]

I'm to young to remember these days xD lol.

My first windows i experianced was 98 lol. I was like 5 years old.

 

[LMiller7]

With a 4.77 MHz 8088 processor, 64k RAM, 80 character x 24 line green monochrome display
2x 160k 5-1/4 Floppy drives (hard drives were not available) and ROM BASICA

That was a more advanced model than some. The PC could be purchased with as little as 16 K RAM and without any floppy drives. 64 K RAM was expensive, as were floppy drives. Data storage was a standard cassette recorder and was very slow. The system booted into the resident ROM basic.

My first computer was a Commodore PET purchased in 1977. The entire system, including keyboard and monitor, was a single unit. Mine had 8k RAM but some had only 4 K. Storage was a built in cassette drive. The OS and Basic was in ROM.

 

[strollin]

With a 4.77 MHz 8088 processor, 64k RAM, 80 character x 24 line green monochrome display
2x 160k 5-1/4 Floppy drives (hard drives were not available) and ROM BASICA

That was a more advanced model than some. The PC could be purchased with as little as 16 K RAM and without any floppy drives. 64 K RAM was expensive, as were floppy drives. Data storage was a standard cassette recorder and was very slow. The system booted into the resident ROM basic. ...

Yep. The early IBM machines such as the PC, XT, AT and XT-286 all had BASIC built in to ROM so the machine didn't need any disk drives or cassette to be able to boot to a command prompt, which technically meant that no OS was needed. However, without an attached cassette there was no way for the ROM BASIC to save and retrieve programs so you would need to type them in each time which wasn't particularly useful. The ROM BASIC also couldn't access a disk drive, in order to do that you needed to boot DOS and run BASICA from the DOS disk.

 

[datapod]

Here's my first one. I remember one great day when I found a pair of "doubler" chips for the disk drives in a box of crap at the back of an electronics store in a box of junk.

Mine also had the cassette tape "drive" so you could save your tediously typed Atari DOS programs. Also had a modem that plugged into one of the joystick ports and connected at a blazing 300 baud. I used it to dial into BBS's and eventually CompuServe for Usenet access . To use the modem you loaded a "dialer" program from a 5.25" floppy. (for those that don't know most people read faster than 300 baud)

 

[whs]

This was my first system - a Zuse Z11 in 1958 at my University.

 

[MrWhoopee]

Our first home system:


The Tomy Tutor, I bought it "for the kids" in '84. It was actually a TI-99 clone and used the TV for a monitor. Along with the games that came with it, it would program in BASIC and you could save the programs to the cassette drive. I wrote a tone generator program which incremented by 10 hz each step. Found out I was deaf from 6000-10000 hz.

 

[Tews]

This was my first computer ... I used it to write software for a trucking company...

 

[strollin]

This is the first computer I ever got my hands on, an HP 1000 Minicomputer. Used it in one of my college classes on computer repair in the mid 1970's. No keyboard, monitor, storage, etc... Just the computer. Front panel switches for input, blinky lights for output.

 

[Britton30]

Wolfgang you got us all beat with a computer in 1958, I was 10 years old.

 

[whs]

Wolfgang you got us all beat with a computer in 1958, I was 10 years old.

Yeah, I was 21. I wish now I would have been 10 then. LOL

 

[badger906]

well im feeling rather young and spritely! I was -31!!

 

[Boozad]

The first one we played with was an Amstrad, I think it was the 464, it had a cassette player for the games, the kids loved Jet Set Willy and another couple of them, one to do with a school and one to do with in a mine, can't remember the name.

Probably Manic Miner and School Daze. Loved those games! I played them on the Spectrum 48k

Manic Miner:

School Daze: