Earliest Computer/console memories

[Exlo]

My first console was a Atari 2600, and I have still have it

[iparaglide]

ibm 1130

The first computer I used was an ibm 1130. It had a hard disk! The disk was about 1/2 meter in diameter and held 32Kilobytes of data! Ram consisted of large sheets of cores wired together.

I never used the "console" which consisted of a set of 16 switches that you would set and then flip another to have the instruction fed to the computer.

To run programs, we used a keypunch machine on Hollerith cards. A single typo meant starting a new card. Cards were fed into a card reader the size of a very large modern copy machine.

The only thing "impressive" about it was the attached line printer that spewed printed paper at an amazing rate. Unfortunately that was the only output.

We've come a long way!

TJ Olney

[blinkone]

Im sorry to say mine was a commodore vic20 & iv still got it up the loft lol

[Flumpster]

Im sorry to say mine was a commodore vic20 & iv still got it up the loft lol

Same as me. And I bought one before the tape player, so I would have to type in all the programs out of magazines and then when I turned it off I had to do it all again lmao. It did teach me a fair bit by repetition tho

[blinkone]

Same as me. And I bought one before the tape player, so I would have to type in all the programs out of magazines and then when I turned it off I had to do it all again lmao. It did teach me a fair bit by repetition tho

Even with the tape player it still used to take some of the games over 30 mins to load, look how things have moved on iv still got some of the game cartridge's they were much better lol

[huckeberrypie]

I remember Dad buying a 486 rig circa 1994 or 1996. Looking back at it, the rig wasn't top the line compared to the Pentiums sold at the time, but I had fond memories playing DOS games, messing around with 3D Home Architect (the 3D part being slow as mollasses to render xD), and Dad typing stuff on either WordStar or MS Word, and printing them along with banners on an LX-300.

As far as consoles are concerned, we had a Nintendo Famicom and a US-spec Sega Genesis, to which my brothers would keep a close eye on the wall wart as it heats up fairly easily. We never had any post-16 bit consoles even to this day.

[cappybob]

Atari 800, followed by an early TI (Texas Instruments) with a cassette deck. First languages learned were basic and extended basic. Asteroids was the first game which was written to the cassette and played. I believe the TI was 16KB and the ram was 28KB. I have the new Raspberry 2 running RISC OS, playing with extended basic again.

--cappybob

[RISCy Dude]

My first computer experience, if you do not include going to the arcade, was on a Digital Equipment Corporation(DEC) PDP 11/55 mainframe. The unit was the brain behind an engineering control and surveillance systems simulator(physical mock-up) for the Spruance Class gas turbine destroyer(DD-963), known as the Singer-Link 20H5 ECSS. That was '82. Equipped with a mag tape and a very large, removable, cartrigde-enclosed-platter, disc drive. If I remember correctly, that cartridge was 13"-16" across and contained a single platter. That setup was on an elevated floor and in a tightly controlled temp/humidity environment. I had a chance to work for Cubic Defense Corp, continuing to maintain that installation, but I passed it up. I lost touch with the ole girl soon after.
During that time, I picked up a TI-99 4A(16 Bit) to play with. It was a lot of fun. My coworkers teased me, saying that it could not do anything but "word based" games. So I wrote a little routine to display an animated American flag with God Bless America playing, and told them all to take their criticism and salute it. Those were fun times. Then came the 8086, and here we are.

[ultimatexbmc]

ZX80 then a ZX81 then a TRS80 trash 80 Tandy, 1K was a lot back then