My First Computer
Adam Kalsey kindly invited me to participate in a distributed writing project called Newly Digital: A distributed anthology of early computing experience. Adam has coordinated a group of writers who are posting about an early computing experience.
Christmas morning, 1993 – the Garrity family tears through a pile of gifts and revels in a sea of wrapping paper (I have a large family). After we were through exchanging our gifts, my parents lead us into the dining room. Right there on the dining room table, all setup, sat a fantastic new Packard Bell 20Mhz 486sx, with 2MB of RAM and a 100MB hard drive. It had a 3.5” disk drive and a 5-1/4” floppy (actually floppy) drive. It was pre-CD-ROM.
The bright colors of Windows 3.1 amazed us. We played solitaire all morning. The animation that played when you won Solitaire delighted us. My father still gauges the power of a new computer by how fast it renders the solitaire victory animation.
It had a Turbo button (after a few months, I figured out that green meant slow and yellow meant fast).
A couple of years later, we upgraded from 2MB to 6MB of RAM. Four megabytes of RAM cost $400. $100 per megabyte. It now costs about $0.20/megabyte. The PS/2 keyboard from that old Packard Bell was still used every day at my parents’ house until I bought them a new keyboard this past Christmas. That keyboard lived through 9 years, three computers, and three operating systems.
On that old 486 I discovered the web and designed my first website for-pay.
I paid $45.95 US for an early beta version of Windows 95 (then codenamed “Chicago” or “Windows 4.0”). It came on 37 floppy disks (honestly).
When did you get your first computer? I’m not looking to see who had the oldest computer – I’m more interested in what made your first computer memorable.
Other participants in the Newly Digital project:
You know my answer, Steve. I still use it.
Born 19 May 1996 according to the sticker on the back. 1.2 GB hard drive with 16 MB RAM. 4x CD drive. 28.8 modem. It came with Windows 95, Corel Draw 4 and a bunch of other crap like a CD encyclopedia that was full of expectation that you'd never find its contents on the internet. A 3.5 inch disk drive but no floppy. DataTrain 15 inch monitor and mitsumi keyboard. It came with a Espons Color IIs bubble jet printer and cost me over $3,000.00 bucks with tax.
I am not really in love with it or a relative luddite. Plays crap video patchy audio and takes 20 seconds to update a page on my blog's editor. Now I suppose I really am interested in seeing how long it'll go with daily use. The back says it came with a 4 year Parts and 5 years Service warranty. Never needed to use it. Would anything today be covered that long even if paying extra for coverage?
After that came a Commodore 64 (rein ne peut battre mon soixante quatre), a Sanyo MBC-550 "partially IBM compatible" machine, and finally, around 1988, a genuine IBM compatible clone.
I went through a series of PC clones of gradually increasing memory, speed, and hard disk space, until an [almost] complete switch to Macs about 6 months ago.
Right now we've got two iMacs, a iBook and two PC-based servers in the World HQ. That's a computer-to-person rather of almost 2:1.
However, I remember some of my first computer experiences including hours of playing what at the time seemed like the best game ever- Scorched Earth, and cruising message boards looking for posts by Ed Rock and references to Mike Knott, all over at my friend's place. Mike says "hi" by the way Steven- I saw him tonight in Ottawa. What a performer.
Language of choice at that time was COBOL, BAL and RPG.
My (now) 32 year old daughter was nearly born in that room and my kindly wife wanted me to finish the program I was running before telling me she was in labour - my daughter was born an hour later.
The first computer that I had that was truly mine was an IBM PC Jr - can't recall the date - Early 80's guessing. No hard drive, 256 K ram and a floppy.
I learned a lot on that little system.
Anyway, I think I have an earlier story but not one with any real active substance. Before Dad went to divinity school around 1968, he worked with Pitney Bowes selling business machines around Toronto. Went to the New Yorks World Fair on an junket - 1964? Our Mississauga basement was always the site over weekends of some metal boxy monstrosity with knobs and buttons we were told not to touch. We scribbled on punch cards as scrap paper - does that count as my first use of computing equipment? Dad's career change was due to the fact that despite having better features, better service and lower prices, the client would often pick the IBM. Not to mention the bitchin' wages and benefits of the life of a minister.
Now I use Linux CLI's most of my day. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Wow.
I was hooked from day one and spent many a bright sunny day in the basement playing with SmartBASIC. I must have read the manual from cover to cover at least twice. Looking back, the manual was kind of funny -- it related human depression to infinite loops and stated that computers were just like dogs. Similar to Dave (but much less practical) I spent hours typing a 10 page program that served one purpose, to emit a beep. I finally got the program to run and it made a high pitched beep and held it there till I reset the computer.
However, unlike many of you (I'm guessing), I had no proclivity for entering code (the payoff was not worth the effort) and it was from this little TRS that I realised that I'd be no geek. I remember wishing there was a way that I could reap the benefits of the program without having to know the program and/or how/why it worked.
Now I am so far behind the computer-knowledge curve that, even though I'd like to know more about how computer-thingys work, it's far too daunting to know where to start even. I'd still like to reap the benefits of other's diligence, but I'd also like to know what most of you are talking about most of the time.
Can any of you write some code that would allow me to have it both ways?
After owning an Amiga 500 for a few years (and going through a RAM upgrade from 1/2 Mb to 1Mb that cost me £25 (approx $40) ) I once said that the IBM-compatible PC would never displace the higher-end Amigas. ("Monkey Island" was an example of a state of the art game available for the IBM-PC).
One day my parents brought me home a 486-SX, and it wasn't long before we'd upgraded to a DX2-66 and I installed my first CD-ROM drive. Since then, I've worked my way up the food chain of beige boxes, and look forward to the (not too distant) day when we can all have a teraflop computer on our desktop (or in our pocket!).
used to work on Dos / lotus 123 and play chess and bricks.
also a game DOG. it was a game in which you try to save your pet dog (if someone has this, please mail it to me. thanks).
it was fun. i think there also was prince.
The first computer assigned as mine was an IBM 1130 with a big case that housed a disk (not so floppy, but a disk) that stored the programs and data. It used Fortran IV as the primary language.
I first owned one in 1979 ( an apple which was traded for an apple II). It had a whole 16K (yes that is a K) of memory. We did not know what we would do with ALL of that memory. The programs were saved on a cassette recorder. You learned to save things 3 times in a row in order to get one good save.
Since then, a TAVA ( IBM XT clone) that was a "turbo" model and could run at the unheard of speed of 12.5 mhz. (Who ever would need a faster computer???)
That was followed by VIC 20's, Commodore 64's, Timex/Sinclair, Atari, Franklin (Apple clone). a plethora of XT, AT, and other IBM clones.
I have used all kinds of storage media including the big 8 inch floppies which few ever needed.
As we bought games from several establishments (everyone was copying games on their stereos - any local shop could copy them and sell them with their brand - shockingly we in Portugal didn't have a law at that time that copyrighted software, so it was a free for all orgy by then), and if you know how recordings on those tapes went, the recording point on the tape varies from recorder to recorder. So we had a tiny screw driver to catch that different point from earing in every tape! Talk about fun!
Then we had to type 'Load ""'+Enter for the game to load. It took from 10 to 20 minutes. And sometimes it didn't worked and you had to do it all over again.
I remember playing "Samantha Fox's Strip Poker" and marveling with delight at those fantastic bitmap pictures.
In those days a bunch of friends gathered in each one's houses and played. And until the games loaded, we had a fantastic time.
I remember learning basic at that time and doing a kind of e-newspapers on it that I distributed to some friends. Maybe that's because I'm a Web Designer today.
Oh it came in handy if you were launching apps designed for a slower processor. That affected the graphics mostly. I remember swithching the turbo button off for playing some spectrum games on an emulator. With it on it was impossible to play that fast...
what year? why did he make it?
LALALALALLALALALLAL
I like to sing!
ALALALALLALAALALLALAALALALALAALAL!
WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
ok ill stop....
LALALALALALALLALALALAL!
I like to sing too!
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ (o/c 3200+)
256MB PC2700 DDR RAM
80GB SATA hard disk drive
Windows XP Pro SP1A
And so on... lol
In fact, my first ever monitor is still downstairs and it still works very well indeed.
I didn't do much with it the first year except play solitare (I couldn't figure out how to play minesweeper). Anyway, some kids at school were excited about playing Prince of Persia which came on 4 floppies. I didn't know what cd/mkdir/copy meant, but I carefully followed the other kids instructions (They had no clue what that meant either). Somehow I got the game to run, which was pretty exciting and fun.
I then picked up the Windows 3.1/DOS Manual and read it front to back. All of it didn't make any sense until I hit the appendix which was on DOS commands and the filesystem. This opened up a whole new level in my interest in computing. I can still remember getting excited about learning what a directory structure meant and what dir/cd/move/mkdir/copy meant. The fruit tree analogy really helped. Soon after I started reading up on HELP (kinda like man *nix) which lists every DOS command.
This whole learning experience got me interested in programming and interested in computing in general. It was at that point I knew I wanted to do something with computers for the rest of my life. I guess it occurred to me that I was enjoying the experience and I was capable of making the computer do things.
Anyways, that was 10 years ago and now I'm fully immersed in computer science and making a living from it. Thanks to that 486SX~ ;^)
Anyway, I wrote a piece about my first computer, a TRS-80, over on my site today.
