My first computer was...

[Brains]

Guess it's not much of a surprise, I'm a software engineer

[Evnldr]

Vic 20 with Tape drive and 2 5" drives

[ministersin]

My first computer was a Commodore Vic 20.
It had a cassette tape drive for storage.

I also owned a Commodore 64.

A Commodore 64 "portable" that had a snap off keyboard over a small color tube tv with two 5.25 floppy drives.

I also owned a Laser 128 (the only Apple compatible computer ever made..I think)

My first "big machine" was a Tandy 1000.

I ran a Wildcat! BBS on a 300baud modem.

Porn was all ASCII.

jpg's had not been invented.

I had a $1200 long distance bill to CompuServe (they had .gif porn)

I am an old old nerd.

[G1FTW]

ZX Spectrum 48. 48 stands for 48 kb. It pwned the initial 16 kb version.

[Evnldr]

Well it's all good =]

[MrGibbage]

Guess it's not much of a surprise, I'm a software engineer

You're right. I'm not surprised.

[richard]

Guess it's not much of a surprise, I'm a software engineer

LOL! I remember how angry my teachers used to get...I ended up a software engineer too. Now I make people with 'VP' in their title angry...

[RegGuheert]

Great thread! Thanks!

Lessee...

My first "computer" was a little chess computer that my family bought me for Christmas in the mid-to-late 1970's. That thing was built up from MSI logic chips. I was SO excited. Unfortunately, I don't think that thing *ever* finished a game. It either had a bug or a problem with overheating that cause it to lose track of the proper piece location partway through the game. I still have it!

But that doesn't count!

In high school in 1980 I learned to program in basic on the school's ONLY TRS-80, which had 16 kB of RAM and stored programs on cassette tapes. Our computer was kept in the media room in the library and our young librarian lady was teaching herself to use it during lunchtime. So what did I do? I wrote a program that made a screen that looked JUST like the normal screen, but waited for someone to touch ANY key. At that point it would beep and flash a message on the screen saying "Computer meltdown imminent!! Please get immediate assistance!" It was a LONG WAY to the room of the computer teacher. We enjoyed watching her tear out of there to run to get him!

I was in the first class at VA Tech that required all incoming freshmen to get Compaq luggable PCs. The ones with the orange screens. Unfortunately, I transferred in, so never got one. All my classmates had them, so I got to borrow one on occasion. I remember playing Lode Runner all night! I still love that game, as do my kids!

Anyway, the first real computer I actually owned was a no-name Intel 386-25 MHz computer with 8 MB of RAM and 128 MHz of hard disk space. I paid $2200 for that computer. Later I purchased an HP LaserJet printer for $1000. What a great computer and printer! I think I ran Windows 3.0 on that one. Maybe 3.1. One thing that always amazed me about Windows: Solitaire is the ONLY program I think I have used EXTENSIVELY that seemed to have NO BUGS. It never crashed! Even on Windows 3.0! Whoever wrote that program was a genius!

OK. I'll stop now.

Thanks for the memories!

Reg

[Ramma]

I had an old old dell. The only thing I can remember about it is the graphics card was horrible. I got it from my dad (because he replaced his computer) right when WoW came out. Somehow I managed to level 1-60 at about 2-5 FPS...

Those were the days...

Now I have an awesome custom built PC that glows RED!

[joshtheitguy]

I had a IBM 80286 running at a whopping 10 Mhz with a 30 Mb HD, 1 Mb of Ram and a 3.5 in Floppy.

It kicked ass, I had it running Windows 3.1 and dos 6.22

My current PC features

ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe with a Athlon X2 5200+
6 Gb Patriot 4-4-4-12 800Mhz DDR2
EVGA 9800 GX2 with 1 Gb DDR3
150 Gb WD Raptor and a WD Caviar Black edition 1 Tb
HT Omega Striker Sound Card
Dell WFP2007 20.1 Widescreen @ 1680x1050
Dual booting Kubuntu Intrepid Ibex 8.10 and Windows Vista Business x64

Amazing how things have changed since then.