Mike Casey
Postmaster
Reged: 11/11/04
Posts: 5922
Loc: Pasadena CA
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 What was your first “real” computer?
In 1985 I purchased my first real PC. Here are the specs:
AST Premium 286 - 10 MHZ
640K RAM
20 Meg Hard drive
1.2M Floppy drive
$3,500 new
I had first purchased a Radio Shack PC2 pocket computer in 1983. With an extra memory module, it had 1,200 bytes of RAM. Ran at about 1.2 KHZ. $300. I learned pocket BASIC on that little machine.
Then an Atari 800. I forget the specs on the little box, but I first learned MS BASIC on it as well as wrote some rudimentary programs using Player/Missile (sprite) graphics.
I still consider the AST my first real computer though.
What was yours?
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Mike (tVA)
All those who believe in psychokinesis, raise my hand.
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rboe
Numbfinger
Reged: 03/16/02
Posts: 39690
Loc: Phx, AZ
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Packard Bell 486 33MHz. Ran Windows 95, OS/2 Warp 4, Solaris and Linux on it.
Spent $600 for a 16MB simm and I refuse to get rid of it! 
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Ron
NS11GPS
Pronto
16" dob
15X70 Obies
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LivingNDixie
Lord of Ferrets
Reged: 04/23/03
Posts: 15790
Loc: Hoover, AL
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Apple IIc. It was a gift from my parents, I think I was in the 1st grade
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Preston
Celestron 11" Nexstar GPS XLT
Lunt LS60T/Ha 60mm f/8.33 (on order)
It’s not finishing something when your tank is empty that makes you a stronger person. It’s brushing yourself off and refacing the foe that defeated you with the same determination and willingness to fight that you had when you began your journey.
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Albie
Post Laureate
Reged: 02/22/05
Posts: 3520
Loc: Alberta,Canada
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Amd Athlon 800mhz with windows ME.It was given to me from my friends' wife.What a learning curve that was.The computer's display would blank out after a few hours of uptime.Drove me halfway insane 
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Skywatcher 10" f/4.7 Dob with Moonlight CR1
Televue 2x barlow and 5T6,7T6,9T6,16T5 and 26T5 Televue Naglers.
SkyMaster 15x70,Regal LX 8x42 and Noble 10x28
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dgs©
Postmaster
Reged: 03/29/04
Posts: 13899
Loc: West Monroe, Louisiana
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Zenith 8088 8MHz with 256k RAM, two 360k (5¼" Floppy Drives), Hercules monochrome graphics. No hard drive, no mouse, certainly no sound board. 
The keyboard is so heavy, it feels like the back plane is a ¼" steel plate.
Later I added a Plus 20Mb Hard Card, another 512k of RAM, 8087 math coprocessor, and a Logitech 3 button mouse.
That 20Mb hard drive held: DR-DOS opertating system, WordStar, Lotus123, dBase III+, Fortran compiler, Turbo Pascal compiler, Autocad 2.17b, and most of the files I created with those packages, plus Tetris. Amazing what could be done in so little space before Windows came along.
I remember, during the court goings on over Microsoft and their "monopoly", I was using that computer at work with absolutely no Microsoft content.
I still have it at home, and last time I hooked it together, it still worked.
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- david
8"Ø Newtonian on SVP, Moonlite CR2, Telrad
PST Oberwerk Ultra 15x70 Orion Ultraview 10×50
Hand-me-down Sears Refractor (Discoverer) 60mm×900mm
"What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world, remains and is immortal." --Albert Pike
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Victor Kennedy
Pooh-Bear
Reged: 05/22/03
Posts: 9837
Loc: Slovenia
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Franklin Ace 100 (not 1000), the first Apple clone.
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To err is human; to moo is bovine.
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rboe
Numbfinger
Reged: 03/16/02
Posts: 39690
Loc: Phx, AZ
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At work I use a Zenith data systems AT style keyboard built in January 1991. It has this wonderful feel to it - as close to the old IBM keyboards I've been able to find. 
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Ron
NS11GPS
Pronto
16" dob
15X70 Obies
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Hillbilly_Gazer
Court Jester
Reged: 11/17/04
Posts: 1775
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It was a Commodore 64 which ran at 1.023 mhz. Man, I got hours of fun from that thing! As I did when I made the move to the Amiga 1000 and later the Amiga 2000 (which ran at a blazing 7.14 mhz and had 1 whole megabyte of RAM!!).
I still have all of those machines. Sometimes I miss playing around with them.
IMO, the Amigas were ahead of their time, and I'd like to know where the technology would have went if they had really caught on.
My first "modern day" computer was a used 486 given to me by a friend. It was not very long before I felt the need for speed and bought a moderately speedy (for the time) 400 mhz HP.
A few years ago, the same friend who set me on the path built me the 1.5 Ghz computer that I am still using to this day.
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Orion XT-8
Orion Scenix 10x50 WA Binoculars
And not a whole lot else!
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Tom L
Reged: 01/07/04
Posts: 29817
Loc: Sunny Oregon
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TI-994A was my first computer. First PC was an IBM PC, the original, with 2 floppy drives! WooHoo! I upgraded it to an IBM PC XT, which added a 5MB HDD running at 4.77 MHz, 64K system memory... I am a 'C' and assembler programmer and a whole slew of other languages and could make a DOS-based PC sit, roll over and play dead! 
After that I started going through TI PCs (since I worked for Texas Instruments and yes, we did have PCs...Rod Canion of Compaq fame was my department manager at TI at the time....)
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Tom 
Tele Vue 102mm f/8.6 on an EzTouch
Vixen 80mm f/5 A80SSWT on a grab-n-go mount
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kfred
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 11/11/03
Posts: 2001
Loc: Dayton, Ohio
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No name brand computer - 1994
486 DX2 (100MhZ) w/math co-processor
850mb Hardrive
6.0mb of RAM
Fred
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River Cam - Cambridge England
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John Kocijanski
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 08/22/03
Posts: 1487
Loc: Monticello, NY
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A Macintosh Performa 6200. It had a Power PC 75mhz with 8mb of ram and a 1gb hard drive. It is considered to be a "Road Apple" for its poor design but it served me well.
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John
Deep Space Observer 10 * SPC-8 * C102 HD f/10 * XT 4.5 * AT1010N * PST *
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dgs©
Postmaster
Reged: 03/29/04
Posts: 13899
Loc: West Monroe, Louisiana
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Quote:
I am a 'C' and assembler programmer and a whole slew of other languages and could make a DOS-based PC sit, roll over and play dead!
Especially the play dead part.
 Whoah!
Kind of left yourself open there.
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- david
8"Ø Newtonian on SVP, Moonlite CR2, Telrad
PST Oberwerk Ultra 15x70 Orion Ultraview 10×50
Hand-me-down Sears Refractor (Discoverer) 60mm×900mm
"What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world, remains and is immortal." --Albert Pike
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David Knisely
Postmaster
Reged: 04/19/04
Posts: 6778
Loc: Beatrice, Nebraska
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I don't know about a "real" computer, but other than a programmable calculator, the first one with a keyboard was a Timex/Sinclair 1000 (early 1980's). I even got the memory extension and the thermal paper printer! I had fun learning to program a bit in its rather odd-ball form of BASIC, but I did manage to create some astronomy software for precession correction, Newtonian telescope layout, Jovian radio burst predictions, and a few others. One satellite tracking application that I got from AMSAT took over 4 minutes to load from the casette, but did allow me to get good predictions for satellite access. It was several years after that when I finally got a "decent" computer (a "Leading Edge" model "D" IBM-PC clone that didn't even come with a decent manual). Clear skies to you.
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David W. Knisely
Hyde Memorial Observatory
http://www.hydeobservatory.info
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s58y
Post Laureate
Reged: 12/12/04
Posts: 4850
Loc: Eastern NY
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First Computer owned -- Timex/Sinclair (1980?)
First Computer operated -- IBM 1130 (1967)
First Computer used -- IBM 7044 (Quicktran) (1966)
First Computer seen -- IBM 705 (1958)
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Hutech 30D, SBIG ST-402 autoguider
SV80S, SV66 guidescope
AP900, G-11, Barndoor tracker
http://www.pbase.com/s58y
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Tom L
Reged: 01/07/04
Posts: 29817
Loc: Sunny Oregon
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Quote:
Quote:
I am a 'C' and assembler programmer and a whole slew of other languages and could make a DOS-based PC sit, roll over and play dead!
Especially the play dead part.
Whoah!
Kind of left yourself open there.
Just for you to pick it up, David! 
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Tom
Tele Vue 102mm f/8.6 on an EzTouch
Vixen 80mm f/5 A80SSWT on a grab-n-go mount
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Paul Rix
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 11/06/04
Posts: 2924
Loc: Zanesville, Ohio,USA
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My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81 with 1K of RAM. My father bought it for me in 1983 I think and we upgraded it with a 16K RAM Pack. A little later I was thrilled to get a Sinclair ZX Spectrum with 48K of RAM which served me well right up until the early '90s. A couple of years with an Atari ST were fun then I entered the PC world with a 486SX 25 Mhz machine wih 4mb of RAM and 160MB Hard Disk. Most of my computer upgrades were motivated by wanting to play the latest flight sims. I was young and foolish back then .
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Climbing the Learning Curve
Meade 10" LX200 Classic: WO 66SD.
Philips SPC900NC, DMK21AU04.AS, Meade DSI Pro and DSI Pro II.
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Rusty
Postmaster
Reged: 08/06/03
Posts: 16399
Loc: Brooker, FL
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The first I owned was a Commodore 64; then a C64 SX (portable, with an actually-usable 5" color screen).
The first "IBM Clone" was a Mitsubishi 286/8, with a screaming 40 Mb HD with 28 ms access time!
The first computer I programmed on was a Univac, and the major advances were FORTRAN's supplanting GOTRAN, and the punch cards putting in an extra 8 rows so if you dropped 'em, the sorter could put 'em back into the right order....
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N11GPS Fastar
TOA-130S
MK66 Std
Vintage C5
Megrez II 80mm ED Triplet APO
SolarMax 40
NJP Temma II
Sirius EQ-G
ST8XE/CFW-8(LRGBHa)/AO-7/DF-2/STV Dlx/ST237a/350D (Unmodded)/Mallincam Color Hyper Plus/DSI III Color/DSI II Pro
Two not-spoiled Golden Retrievers - Maggie and Casey
Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering. - Arthur C. Clarke
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Tom L
Reged: 01/07/04
Posts: 29817
Loc: Sunny Oregon
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I used to walk around with my box of cards for my fortran programs and a diagonal magic marker line down the top of them...sure was nice to move to magnetic media...8" floppies!
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Tom
Tele Vue 102mm f/8.6 on an EzTouch
Vixen 80mm f/5 A80SSWT on a grab-n-go mount
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Macavity
scholastic sledgehammer
Reged: 02/10/06
Posts: 792
Loc: Oxfordshire, UK
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Punched cards certainly trained you to TYPE accurately. Or maybe I was too shy to ask the (rather intimmidating) "cogniscenti" how to correct typos?
As a working System Manager, I guess I didn't like to take my work home too much - But I did enjoy using my Atari STE. I don't think e.g. the *programming* documentation has ever been equaled - And certainly NOT in my latest leisure foray, PalmOS. But the latter does have some "homebrew" appeal! 
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Chris
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basel10
scholastic sledgehammer
Reged: 07/15/05
Posts: 805
Loc: TN
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Mine was a dell 486 sx 33 with 16 megs of ram. I kept it virus free like all computer since and I learned how wonderful Windows is. Wow all the software I could run to enrich my life. Windows has gotten better and better. Now not only can you run many many programs for all purposes it is rock solid stable. I love Windows!
The above computer is the only computer I have bought. The rest I built.
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www.knoxvilleobservers.org
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