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Brian0787
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20 Aug 2024, 11:07 pm

Hi All, I just thought it would be fun to see what everyone's first computer was they used or owned. Mine was a IBM PS/2 Model 25 that was given to me by my uncle in probably 1997 (estimating the year but think it was around this time. It used to be my cousin's computer but they got another one. It's where I first learned DOS :D My first "computer game" was "Avoid the Noid" :lol: I also had a "Pearl Harbor" game for it as well. Very, very primitive but was fun. Getting a computer at a young age definitely helped me in school and in later years. Very thankful for that first one I got. Here is a video from someone else of what I had with a unboxing. Kind of like this guy's videos. His voice reminds me of a former IT guy I knew. Good video to zone out to for a while if you need a destresser.


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20 Aug 2024, 11:49 pm

Technically...my Texas Instruments SR-72 magnetic card reading calculator.
224 bytes of program memory.

Then a Ferguson big board Z80 hooked to an ASR-33 Teletype (yep.with the paper tape punch)



Brian0787
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20 Aug 2024, 11:56 pm

Carbonhalo wrote:
Technically...my Texas Instruments SR-72 magnetic card reading calculator.
224 bytes of program memory.

Then a Ferguson big board Z80 hooked to an ASR-33 Teletype (yep.with the paper tape punch)


Very cool! I will have to look the SR-72 and the Ferguson big board Z80 up! I like seeing older computers and how they worked.


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"In this galaxy, there’s a mathematical probability of three million Earth-type planets. And in all the universe, three million million galaxies like this. And in all of that, and perhaps more...only one of each of us. Don’t destroy the one named Kirk." - Dr. Leonard McCoy, "Balance of Terror", Star Trek: The Original Series.


Carbonhalo
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21 Aug 2024, 12:04 am

See if you can find a Singer model 40 disk drive.
I had one hooked to a PDP11, but the bootloader had to be keyed in on toggle switches.
The drive featured 64 bytes of core memory, took disk packs that needed 2 arms to carry and ran on 3 phase.



Brian0787
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21 Aug 2024, 12:07 am

Carbonhalo wrote:
See if you can find a Singer model 40 disk drive.
I had one hooked to a PDP11, but the bootloader had to be keyed in on toggle switches.
The drive featured 64 bytes of core memory, took disk packs that needed 2 arms to carry and ran on 3 phase.


I will see if I can find anything :D


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"In this galaxy, there’s a mathematical probability of three million Earth-type planets. And in all the universe, three million million galaxies like this. And in all of that, and perhaps more...only one of each of us. Don’t destroy the one named Kirk." - Dr. Leonard McCoy, "Balance of Terror", Star Trek: The Original Series.


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21 Aug 2024, 12:24 am

It was not the very first Apple Macintosh but the second one that came out. When I had it, in the early 90s (about 1993), it was already obsolete. You could use it for word processing and that was almost all, at least that was all I used it for. There was a dot matrix printer I had that worked with it, so I could print documents.



Brian0787
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21 Aug 2024, 3:36 am

bee33 wrote:
It was not the very first Apple Macintosh but the second one that came out. When I had it, in the early 90s (about 1993), it was already obsolete. You could use it for word processing and that was almost all, at least that was all I used it for. There was a dot matrix printer I had that worked with it, so I could print documents.


Awesome, awesome! We had some Apple IIc's in elementary school. Such neat computers! The dot matrix printers were cool back then. I actually had one for the IBM PS/2 that my Uncle gave. He had a CAD Key program on it and I remember fooling around with it and printing things.


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"In this galaxy, there’s a mathematical probability of three million Earth-type planets. And in all the universe, three million million galaxies like this. And in all of that, and perhaps more...only one of each of us. Don’t destroy the one named Kirk." - Dr. Leonard McCoy, "Balance of Terror", Star Trek: The Original Series.


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21 Aug 2024, 4:49 am

Texas Instruments T.I.99. Was given it by my cousins who gave up on it because tney had had it cheap as a Christmas present when Texas Instraments stopped making them, and found they could not buy the slot in games. So it was passed on to my brother and I to use it. Would take a whole day to write a program and we would use it for about half an hour or an hour and then it was switched off as my Dad wanted to watch the TV! (Computer used the TV as a monitor. Was a black and white TV as we didn't properly get colour until the 1990's as the hand me down colour TV we had before then one could hardly see the screen! (TV livence for colour was £140 while for black and white it was only £40 (Per year) so we stayed with black and white for years after most psople had colour. We thought Sooty and Big Bird were white while growing up!)
The computer had no accessories to record the programs we typed up. There happened to be a book in the local library which we borrowed which had T.i. 99 programs in it so we borrowed the book whenever school holidays were on so we could use the computer, and we made a little dot move around a maze pattern on the screen after most of the day typing and correcting typing errors as needed.
When I went to secondary school, from the age of 14 we could chose Computer Studies as a subject which I did, and I got to use the Commodore Pete and (Though rarely) the BBC micro! The BBC Micro was very modern as it had colour and only the ones who bullied the others got to use them, though we all had to use them once for a certain programming project which is where I used them. The Commodore Petes were elderly but they did have the latest gadget in those days. Floppy disks! These discs had a thin card covering them so one had to keep them flat inbetween pages of a hard backed book. We had to go into town on our days off school to buy our own disc and I remember them being 10p a disc. That disc had all my school work on. I was never able to access the disc outside school as the very few kids who had computers had cassettes. (They had the very expensive so only a few kids had them "Commodore 64", which I actually only knew two kids that had one but they were in the next village so I didn't even know where they lived. The BBC's the school had were considered slightly more advanced and cost about eighty to hundred pounds more than a 64? (In those days my weekly pocket money had risen to 50p a week in the last couple of years before I left school and my parents would buy my brother and I birthday or Chrietmas presents costing around £20. Though when in my early teens they did buy me a cool bike costing £120 for my birthday and it took my parents five years to pay it off! But computers in them days started around £365 for the Commodore if I recall correctly and was well above the £400 mark for the BBC. If I had that sort of money I would have bought a Hornby Zero 1 to control my trains! :D



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21 Aug 2024, 5:29 am

Mountain Goat wrote:
Texas Instruments T.I.99. Was given it by my cousins who gave up on it because tney had had it cheap as a Christmas present when Texas Instraments stopped making them, and found they could not buy the slot in games. So it was passed on to my brother and I to use it. Would take a whole day to write a program and we would use it for about half an hour or an hour and then it was switched off as my Dad wanted to watch the TV! (Computer used the TV as a monitor. Was a black and white TV as we didn't properly get colour until the 1990's as the hand me down colour TV we had before then one could hardly see the screen! (TV livence for colour was £140 while for black and white it was only £40 (Per year) so we stayed with black and white for years after most psople had colour. We thought Sooty and Big Bird were white while growing up!)
The computer had no accessories to record the programs we typed up. There happened to be a book in the local library which we borrowed which had T.i. 99 programs in it so we borrowed the book whenever school holidays were on so we could use the computer, and we made a little dot move around a maze pattern on the screen after most of the day typing and correcting typing errors as needed.
When I went to secondary school, from the age of 14 we could chose Computer Studies as a subject which I did, and I got to use the Commodore Pete and (Though rarely) the BBC micro! The BBC Micro was very modern as it had colour and only the ones who bullied the others got to use them, though we all had to use them once for a certain programming project which is where I used them. The Commodore Petes were elderly but they did have the latest gadget in those days. Floppy disks! These discs had a thin card covering them so one had to keep them flat inbetween pages of a hard backed book. We had to go into town on our days off school to buy our own disc and I remember them being 10p a disc. That disc had all my school work on. I was never able to access the disc outside school as the very few kids who had computers had cassettes. (They had the very expensive so only a few kids had them "Commodore 64", which I actually only knew two kids that had one but they were in the next village so I didn't even know where they lived. The BBC's the school had were considered slightly more advanced and cost about eighty to hundred pounds more than a 64? (In those days my weekly pocket money had risen to 50p a week in the last couple of years before I left school and my parents would buy my brother and I birthday or Chrietmas presents costing around £20. Though when in my early teens they did buy me a cool bike costing £120 for my birthday and it took my parents five years to pay it off! But computers in them days started around £365 for the Commodore if I recall correctly and was well above the £400 mark for the BBC. If I had that sort of money I would have bought a Hornby Zero 1 to control my trains! :D


Very cool! I will have to look up the T.I-99! Thank you for sharing Mountain Goat :D


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"In this galaxy, there’s a mathematical probability of three million Earth-type planets. And in all the universe, three million million galaxies like this. And in all of that, and perhaps more...only one of each of us. Don’t destroy the one named Kirk." - Dr. Leonard McCoy, "Balance of Terror", Star Trek: The Original Series.


Mountain Goat
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21 Aug 2024, 6:21 am

Brian0787
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21 Aug 2024, 4:20 pm

Mountain Goat wrote:
Texas Instruments T.I.99. Was given it by my cousins who gave up on it because tney had had it cheap as a Christmas present when Texas Instraments stopped making them, and found they could not buy the slot in games. So it was passed on to my brother and I to use it. Would take a whole day to write a program and we would use it for about half an hour or an hour and then it was switched off as my Dad wanted to watch the TV! (Computer used the TV as a monitor. Was a black and white TV as we didn't properly get colour until the 1990's as the hand me down colour TV we had before then one could hardly see the screen! (TV livence for colour was £140 while for black and white it was only £40 (Per year) so we stayed with black and white for years after most psople had colour. We thought Sooty and Big Bird were white while growing up!)
The computer had no accessories to record the programs we typed up. There happened to be a book in the local library which we borrowed which had T.i. 99 programs in it so we borrowed the book whenever school holidays were on so we could use the computer, and we made a little dot move around a maze pattern on the screen after most of the day typing and correcting typing errors as needed.
When I went to secondary school, from the age of 14 we could chose Computer Studies as a subject which I did, and I got to use the Commodore Pete and (Though rarely) the BBC micro! The BBC Micro was very modern as it had colour and only the ones who bullied the others got to use them, though we all had to use them once for a certain programming project which is where I used them. The Commodore Petes were elderly but they did have the latest gadget in those days. Floppy disks! These discs had a thin card covering them so one had to keep them flat inbetween pages of a hard backed book. We had to go into town on our days off school to buy our own disc and I remember them being 10p a disc. That disc had all my school work on. I was never able to access the disc outside school as the very few kids who had computers had cassettes. (They had the very expensive so only a few kids had them "Commodore 64", which I actually only knew two kids that had one but they were in the next village so I didn't even know where they lived. The BBC's the school had were considered slightly more advanced and cost about eighty to hundred pounds more than a 64? (In those days my weekly pocket money had risen to 50p a week in the last couple of years before I left school and my parents would buy my brother and I birthday or Chrietmas presents costing around £20. Though when in my early teens they did buy me a cool bike costing £120 for my birthday and it took my parents five years to pay it off! But computers in them days started around £365 for the Commodore if I recall correctly and was well above the £400 mark for the BBC. If I had that sort of money I would have bought a Hornby Zero 1 to control my trains! :D


Found a video on the T.I 99 :D Looks pretty neat!


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"In this galaxy, there’s a mathematical probability of three million Earth-type planets. And in all the universe, three million million galaxies like this. And in all of that, and perhaps more...only one of each of us. Don’t destroy the one named Kirk." - Dr. Leonard McCoy, "Balance of Terror", Star Trek: The Original Series.


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21 Aug 2024, 4:50 pm

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21 Aug 2024, 4:53 pm

It was either a Commodore 64 or a BBC Master 128. I acquired both of them in 1988, but can't remember which came first. It was another 26 years before I acquired my next computer.


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21 Aug 2024, 5:39 pm

DeepHour wrote:
It was either a Commodore 64 or a BBC Master 128. I acquired both of them in 1988, but can't remember which came first. It was another 26 years before I acquired my next computer.


Very cool! I heard of the Commodore 64! My best friend had one when he was young. I think his Dad had it and just had him play with it. My friend told me a little about it. My best friend's the same age I am so it was probably early 90's he was fooling around with it. I remember hearing different things about it over the years.


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"In this galaxy, there’s a mathematical probability of three million Earth-type planets. And in all the universe, three million million galaxies like this. And in all of that, and perhaps more...only one of each of us. Don’t destroy the one named Kirk." - Dr. Leonard McCoy, "Balance of Terror", Star Trek: The Original Series.


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21 Aug 2024, 9:55 pm

Mine was an Odyssey 2 video game console that had a programming card. I still have it in the original box with all of the games in their original boxes. It came out in 1978, but I did not get mine until around 1980. It competed with the Atari systems and the Commodore 64. I have all versions of the before mentioned systems and a few more from that era.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnavox_Odyssey_2



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21 Aug 2024, 10:01 pm

That's awesome! I have heard of the Odyssey 2 also! I might have to look up a video of it now. I like watching videos with older computers and game systems. It's just neat. I still have sound in my head of my old IBM PS/2 when it started up. I've been trying to find the sound of it on Youtube because it had a distinctive beep that sounded like morse code. I haven't been able to find it though. A next door neighbor I was living next to when my parents had an apartment when I was young had a Tandy computer. I remember thinking it was really neat at the time.


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"In this galaxy, there’s a mathematical probability of three million Earth-type planets. And in all the universe, three million million galaxies like this. And in all of that, and perhaps more...only one of each of us. Don’t destroy the one named Kirk." - Dr. Leonard McCoy, "Balance of Terror", Star Trek: The Original Series.